Assessing just three features of a common kind of testicular cancer-called non-seminomatous germ cell tumor-can identify those at most at risk of relapse even where there is no evidence of tumor spread.
Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, analyzed 177 tumor samples from patients with stage I non-seminomatous tumors enrolled in clinical trials through the Medical Research Council (MRC
Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR found that three different features of the tumors were important indicators of relapse risk:
the levels of a molecule called CXCL12, the percentage of the tumor with an appearance of cancer stem cells and whether or not blood vessels were present in the tumor.
They scored tumors based on these features, and found that combining scores could divide patients up into three different risk groups based on how likely patients were to suffer a relapse of the disease within two years.
It is rare for a patient to relapse from testicular cancer beyond this time. They found that the vast majority of patients were in the low-risk group-where 94.3 percent of patients were relapse free for two years.
Testicular germ cell tumors are the most common solid malignant tumor in young Caucasian men. Patients diagnosed with early-stage disease face a choice between monitoring with treatment
if relapse does occur or upfront chemotherapy with its associated long-term side-effects. Predicting who does
therefore important to minimize treatment in this largely curable disease. Study leader Professor Janet Shipley Professor of Cancer Molecular Pathology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said,
"Our research has led to the development of a test that can detect patients that will benefit from treatment up front
Approaches such as this to minimize chemotherapy are particularly important for cancers like testicular cancer, which affect young adults who could live with the side-effects for decades."
"Professor Robert Huddart, Professor of Urological Cancer at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Consultant at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said,
"Patients with stage 1 non-seminomatous germ cell tumors have to make a difficult choice of
We now need to test this prognostic index in larger groups of men in the clinic"The work was funded by the MRC with support from the National Cancer Research Institute Testis Cancer Clinical Studies Group,
and is published in Clinical Cancer Research h
#Artificial'skin'Provides Prosthetics With Sensation Using flexible organic circuits and specialized pressure sensors, researchers have created an artificial skin"that can sense the force of static objects.
#Protein Found In Malaria Could Help Stop Cancer Researchers have discovered how a protein from malaria could some day help stop cancer.
While exploring why pregnant women are particularly susceptible to malaria, they found that the mosquito-borne parasite that causes malaria also produces a protein that binds to a particular type of sugar molecule in the placenta.
Researchers found that the same type of sugar molecule also is present in many types of cancer.
They realized that the sugar molecule--oncofetal chondroitin sulfate--could be a target for anticancer drugs,
called VAR2CSA, could provide the tool for carrying such drugs to tumors. It's somehow fitting that a disease as destructive as malaria might be exploited to treat another dreaded disease like cancer."
"Based on our clinical data, we helped validate that this could be applied to melanoma and lung cancers,"said Dr. Nhan Tran, an Associate professor in Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGEN)' s Cancer and Cell biology Division,
and one of the authors of the study.""This specific type of developmental protein--oncofetal chondroitin sulfate--is expressed in the placenta,
and is expressed also in lung cancer and in melanoma.""Malaria uses VAR2CSA to embed itself in the placenta--hiding itself from the immune system--by binding to oncofetal chondroitin sulfate.
In laboratory experiments, researchers found that if they used the malarial protein, VAR2CSA, and attached an anticancer drug to it,
it would bind with the oncofetal protein in the cancer, delivering the drug to the tumor."
"Scientists have spent decades trying to find biochemical similarities between placenta tissue and cancer, but we just didn't have the technology to find it,
"said project leader Mads Daugaard, an assistant professor of urologic science at UBC and a senior research scientist at the Vancouver Prostate Centre, part of the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute."
"When my colleagues discovered how malaria uses VAR2CSA to embed itself in the placenta, we immediately saw its potential to deliver cancer drugs in a precise, controlled way to tumors.""
""This is an extraordinary finding that paves the way for targeting sugar molecules in pediatric and adulthood human cancer,
and our groups are vigorously pursuing this possibility together, "said Poul Sorensen, a UBC professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and distinguished scientist with the BC Cancer Agency and co-senior investigator on the study y
#Epilepsy Switch Discovered Approximately five percent of people suffers an epileptic attack, during which the nerve cells get out of their usual rhythm and fire in a very rapid frequency, over the course of their lives.
This results in seizures and such synchronous discharges in the brain occur most frequently in the temporal lobe.
Often, a seizure disorder develops after a delay following transient brain damage-for example due to injury or inflammation.
So-called ion channels are involved in the transfer of signals in the brain; these channels act like a doorman to regulate the entry of calcium ions in the nerve cells.
Scientists at the University of Bonn and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) have decoded a central signal cascade associated with epileptic seizures.
If the researchers blocked a central switch in epileptic mice, the frequency and severity of the seizures decreased.
it was possible to observe the processes prior to the occurrence of epileptic seizures in living animals."
"It has also been known for a long time that following transient severe brain injury and prior to an initial spontaneous epileptic seizure, the concentration of free zinc ions increases in the hippocampus.
If the number of zinc ions increases following transient severe brain damage, these ions dock in greater numbers onto a switch, the so-called metal-regulatory transcription factor 1 (MTF1.
This leads to a large increase in the amount of a special calcium ion channel in the nerve cells and overall, this significantly boosts the risk of epileptic seizures.
The scientists demonstrated the fact that the transcription factor MTF1 plays a central role in this connection using an experiment on mice suffering from epilepsy."
we inhibited MTF1 in the epileptic mice and as a result, the seizures in the animals were much rarer
This makes it possible to examine the processes which take place during the development of epilepsy in a living animal."
"If the fluorescence molecules glow, this indicates that the mouse is developing chronic epileptic seizures, "says the molecular biologist Prof.
and break down the blot clots that cause heart attacks and strokes. No only does the minuscule device start working within minutes, it portable,
Christopher Hagemeyer from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, told Rachael Brown at ABC News. Around 80 percent of all strokes occur
If this formation of blood clots, known as thrombosis, happens to block blood flow to the heart,
a heart attack can follow. The longer the brain or heart are oxygenated without blood the greater the risk that vital tissues will begin to die,
it set to make a huge difference to the many heart attack and stoke patients who don actually respond to current treatments.
around half of the 55,000 Australians who experience heart attack or stroke every year cannot use the clot-busting treatments administered by paramedics due to the severe side effects that can cause excessive internal bleeding."
"They administer drugs which are also very fast-acting, but because it's free in the blood stream everywhere it causes side effects like bleeding
that sort of'range anxiety'could be gone for good-the roads actually charge your car as you drive.
survey shows New figures released by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that fewer Americans are smoking than ever before,
it could lead to the creation of MRI machines that don't require people to lie inside the claustrophobic machine,
Having been paralysed for more than a decade due to a spinal cord injury, the man was able to identify
Responsible for the majority of marijuana's psychological effects-including the high-THC can also be use to treat symptoms of HIV infection
which have shown promise in treating everything from seizures and inflammation to cancer and parkinson disease.
'"rather than figuring out which component of that cocktail is really beneficial for the specific disease.
Paralysed man walks again via brain waves rerouted to his legs A paraplegic man who was paralysed for five years has walked again on his own two feet,
The anonymous man, who experiences complete paralysis in both legs due to a severe spinal cord injury (SCI), is the first such patient to demonstrate that brain-controlled overground walking after paraplegia due to
SCI is feasible. ven after years of paralysis, the brain can still generate robust brain waves that can be harnessed to enable basic walking,
one of the researchers, Zoran Nenadic from the University of California, Irvine in the US, said in a press release. e showed that you can restore intuitive, brain-controlled walking after a complete spinal cord injury."
The early detection of virus infection is critical for patients, since the faster you start to treat someone the more likely they are to survive.
says her test could also be adapted to detect HIV, Dengue and Yellow fever viruses, Lyme disease, and even certain cancers.
The winners of the fifth annual Google Science Fair were announced live from Google Headquarters in Mountain view
and a 13 percent increased risk of developing coronary heart disease, while a separate study found that working 49-hour weeks was associated with lower mental health, particularly in women.
#Scientists discover new gene that increases Alzheimer's disease risk An immune system gene that associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer disease has been identified by researchers in the US.
which is one of the key drivers of the disease. Not only could the discovery lead to quicker diagnoses and better identification of at-risk patients,
but researchers suggest that by manipulating the IL1RAP immune pathway they could figure out how to either slow the progression of the disease,
and fighting an important cause of progression in Alzheimer's disease,"said one of the team, Andrew Saykin from the Indiana University School of medicine.
Previous research has linked another genetic factor to the development of Alzheimer's disease-the APOE e4 allele.
they found that the IL1RAP variant had an even stronger effect on the progression of the disease than APOE e4.
which triggers the production of pro-inflammatory proteins in response to infection, tissue damage, or stress.
'and the focus of heavy investigation in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases,"said one of the researchers, Vijay K. Ramanan.
the presence of the IL1RAP variant was associated with an overall greater likelihood of progression from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's disease.
and fighting an important cause of progression in Alzheimer's disease,"said Saykin n
#China now spends more on science than the EU, will soon overtake the US On Monday,
Chinese scientist Youyou Tu was awarded jointly the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of a new malaria therapy.
In addition to Tu's malaria drug, Artemisinin, China has pioneered also development of solar and wind technology, and is working on trains that will reach 500 km h.
which racers with disabilities pilot advanced assistive devices. racks are excellent for this use case
"It's a totally new approach to cancer, and we're working to test it in human patients
it can actually turn leukaemia cells into cancer killers. The antibody in question binds to a receptor called TPO-or thrombopoietin-which is found on most acute myeloid leukaemia cells.
which suggests that it could work as a targeted cancer therapy. And for some reason, the NK cells also didn't seem to attack all cancer types-only their former brethren.
That's both good and bad, as it means they're more specific and are less likely to have side effects.
The team is also screening for antibodies that could have a similar effect on other cancer types.
#Scientists finally figure out the structure of a key cancer-driving enzyme It been a long time coming,
an enzyme complex known to play a crucial role in the development of several types of cancer.
which has been linked to the development of lymphoma, leukaemia, and brain tumours, plus a number of congenital diseases that affect a person growth."
"Our findings bring us one step closer to understanding the chemistry of how PRC2 functions in normal cells
and how mutations in the gene cause disease,"said one of the team, Xin Liu, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical centre.
and therefore triggering the development of cancer and disease has been practically impossible. But now, for the first time, Liu and his colleagues have reproduced the 3d atomic structure of PRC2 crystals,
using an imaging technique called x-ray crystallography. This means we can finally compare exactly how it behaves in normal and diseased cells,
researchers are looking at the potential of such drugs as a treatment for several types of lymphoma."
#New electronic sensor can detect ovarian cancer in your breath Your breath says more about you than you might think-not just how inebriated you are or
A new type of sensor that can'sniff out'traces of ovarian cancer in a patient's breath has been developed by researchers in Israel,
and painless way to screen for the disease. We've seen the idea of a breathalyser being used to detect different types of cancer before,
but what makes this new technology stand out is the amount of data that can be captured,
which are matched then up to various diseases.""Changes in metabolism that accompany a specific illness cause changes in the composition and/or concentration of VOCS in the breath,
"lead researcher Nicole Kahn from the Technion-Israel Institute of technology told Jordan Rosenfeld at Mental Floss.
Based on some initial testing, Kahn and her colleagues were able to correctly detect ovarian cancer in 82 percent of cases,
only high-risk patients are tested for ovarian cancer to reduce the chance of false positives, and seeing as most women don get symptoms until the disease is advanced quite,
it means many cases go undetected until it too late. With further research, Kahn thinks the same technique could be used to test for different types of cancer,
as well as other diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. She also says there's still room for improvement in making the sensors smaller
and more sensitive before they're ready for clinical use. Ovarian cancer currently accounts for around 3 percent of cancers among women
and with around 200,000 cases reported in the US each year, it's one of the rarer forms of the disease.
However, it causes more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system, and so new techniques to battle it would have a significant impact n
#Researchers create lithium-air battery that could be 10x more powerful than lithium-ion A new lithium-air battery created by researchers at the University of Cambridge points the way to the ultimate battery packs of the future,
Almost two thirds of the sites suggested that vaccines cause autism, and more than 40 percent claim theye responsible for rain injury The majority present information as scientific when it doesn actually qualify for that distinction.
In addition to condemning vaccines, the sites also promote some positive behaviours, such as healthy eating (recommended by 18.5 percent of anti-vaccination sites),
What's more, they have demonstrated the practicality of this approach by identifying a novel molecule that blocks a key enzyme used by the hepatitis C virus."Our dream is to provide a do-it-yourself method--one that can be applied by anyone,
a farmer could identify a novel combination that treats plant infections. He adds that the next step is to determine the most efficient way to screen the thousands
and fail to prevent disease progression. Several studies have indicated that the transplantation of embryonic stem cells improves motor functions in animal models.
However, until now, the procedure has shown to be unsafe, because of the risk of tumors upon transplantation.
the researchers tested for the first time to pre-treat undifferentiated mouse embryonic stem cells with mitomycin C a drug already prescribed to treat cancer.
These animals also developed intracerebral tumors. In contrast, animals receiving the treated stem cells showed improvement of Parkinson's symptoms
and survived until the end of the observation period of 12 weeks post-transplant with no tumors detected.
Four of these mice were monitored for as long as 15 months with no signs of pathology. Furthermore, the scientists have shown also that treating the stem cells with mitomycin C induced a fourfold increase in the release of dopamine after in vitro differentiation."
by eliminating the risk of tumor formation, "says the leader of the study Stevens Rehen, Professor at UFRJ and researcher at IDOR.
"Our technique with mitomycin C may speed the proposal of clinical trials with pluripotent cells to several human diseases,
#One dollar blood test using gold nanoparticles outperforms PSA screen for prostate cancer, study suggests The simple test developed by University of Central Florida scientist Qun"Treen"Huo holds the promise of earlier detection of one of the deadliest cancers among men.
It would also reduce the number of unnecessary and invasive biopsies stemming from the less precise PSA test that's now used."
"said Dr. Inoel Rivera, a urologic oncologist at Florida Hospital Cancer Institute, which collaborated with Huo on the recent pilot studies."
"When a cancerous tumor begins to develop, the body mobilizes to produce antibodies. Huo's test detects that immune response using gold nanoparticles about 10,000 times smaller than a freckle.
certain cancer biomarkers cling to the surface of the tiny particles, increasing their size and causing them to clump together.
whether a patient has prostate cancer and how advanced it may be. And although it uses gold,
If we can catch this cancer in its early stages, the impact is going to be big."
"After lung cancer, prostate cancer is the second-leading killer cancer among men, with more than 240,000 new diagnoses and 28,000 deaths every year.
Huo also is researching her technique's effectiveness as a screening tool for other tumors."
"Potentially, we could have a universal screening test for cancer, "she said.""Our vision is to develop an array of blood tests for early detection and diagnosis of all major cancer types,
and these blood tests are all based on the same technique and same procedure.""Huo co-founded Nano Discovery Inc.,a startup company headquartered in a UCF Business Incubator,
or the risk for genetic disease and it could provide a new avenue for gene therapies and guiding stem cell differentiation.
"Some genetic diseases are straightforward --if you have a mutation within a particular gene, then you have said the disease
Isaac Hilton, postdoctoral fellow in the Gersbach Lab and first author of the study.""But many diseases, like cancer, cardiovascular disease or neurodegenerative conditions, have a much more complex genetic component.
Many different variations in the genome sequence can affect your risk of disease, and this genetic variation can occur in these enhancers that Tim has identified,
where they can change the levels of gene expression. With this technology, we can explore what exactly it is that they're doing
and how it relates to disease or response to drug therapies.""Gersbach added, "Not only can you start to answer those questions,
'Office inkjet printer could produce simple tool to identify infectious disease, food contaminants Consumers are one step closer to benefiting from packaging that could give simple text warnings
when food is contaminated with deadly pathogens like E coli and Salmonella, and patients could soon receive real-time diagnoses of infections such as C. difficile right in their doctors'offices,
saving critical time and trips to the lab. Researchers at Mcmaster University have developed a new way to print paper biosensors,
simplifying the diagnosis of many bacterial and respiratory infections. The new platform is the latest in a progression of paper-based screening technologies
simple answer in the form of letters and symbols that appear on the test paper to indicate the presence of infection or contamination in people, food or the environment."
For patients suspected of having infectious diseases like C. diff, this technology allows doctors to quickly
when a specific disease biomarker is present--is enough to ensure it remains immobilized and therefore stable.
which would include rapid detection of cancer or monitoring toxins in the water supply,"says Brennan."
#Alternating antibiotics could make resistant bacteria beatable Researchers from the University of Exeter has shown that the use of'sequential treatments'--using alternating doses of antibiotics--might offer effective treatment against bacterial infection.
The researchers used a test-tube model of a bacterial infection to show that, even in bacteria that already harbour drug resistance genes,
#Biologists identify brain tumor weakness The study, led by researchers from the Whitehead Institute and MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, found that a subset of glioblastoma tumor cells is dependent on a particular enzyme that breaks down the amino acid glycine.
Without this enzyme, toxic metabolic byproducts build up inside the tumor cells, and they die. Blocking this enzyme in glioblastoma cells could offer a new way to combat such tumors,
says Dohoon Kim, a postdoc at the Whitehead Institute and lead author of the study,
which appears in the April 8 online edition of Nature. David Sabatini a professor of biology at MIT and member of the Whitehead Institute, is the paper's senior author.
along with members of his lab. GLDC caught the researchers'attention as they investigated diseases known as"inborn errors of metabolism,
Such patients must avoid eating phenylalanine to prevent problems such as intellectual disability and seizures. Loss of GLDC produces a disorder called nonketotic hyperglycinemia,
which causes glycine to build up in the brain and can lead to severe mental retardation. GLDC is also often overactive in certain cells of glioblastoma,
the most common and most aggressive type of brain tumor found in humans. The researchers found that GLDC,
These regions are often found at the center of tumors, which are inaccessible to blood vessels.
which makes them better suited to survive in the ischemic tumor microenvironment, "Kim says. However, this highly active SHMT2 also produces a glut of glycine,
#Study on new treatment for prostate cancer Published in The british Journal of Cancer (BJC), the study is the first time low temperature plasmas (LTPS) have been applied on cells grown directly from patient tissue samples.
It is the result of a unique collaboration between the York Plasma Institute in the Department of physics and the Cancer Research Unit (CRU) in York Department of biology.
and prostate cancer tissue cells from a single patient, the study allowed for direct comparison of the effectiveness of the treatment.
Scientists discovered that LTPS may be a potential option for treatment of patients with organ confined prostate cancer
espite continual improvement and refinement, long term treatment for prostate cancer is recognised still as inadequate. In the case of early stage organ confined tumours, patients may be treated with a focal therapy, for example cryotherapy, photodynamic therapy,
or radiotherapy. owever, around a third of patients will experience recurrence of their disease following radiotherapy.
This may be due to the inherent radio-resistance of a small fraction of the tumour the cancer stem-like cells.
we have presented the first experimental evidence promoting the potential of LTP as a future focal cancer therapy treatment for patients with early stage prostate cancer.
LTP could be used to treat cancer patients within 10-15 years 1
#Researchers deliver large particles into cells at high speed The researchers created a highly efficient automated tool that delivers nanoparticles, enzymes, antibodies, bacteria and other"large-sized"cargo into mammalian cells at the rate
and help researchers study diseases caused by mutant MITOCHONDRIAL DNA. It also could help scientists dissect the function of genes involved in the lifecycle of pathogens that invade the cell
and understand the cell's defense mechanisms against them.""Now it doesn't matter the size
"The new information learned from these types of studies could assist in identifying pathogen targets for drug development,
or provide fundamental insight on how the pathogen-host interaction enables a productive infection or effective cellular response to occur,
"said Dr. Michael Teitell, chief of the division of pediatric and developmental pathology, and a co-author of the paper.
#Breakthrough finds molecules that block previously'undruggable'protein tied to cancer The findings, which could lead to a new class of cancer drugs,
thus blocking Hur function as a tumor-promoting protein, "said Liang Xu, associate professor of molecular biosciences and corresponding author of the paper.
The results hold promise for treating a broad array of cancers in people. The researcher said Hur has been detected at high levels in almost every type of cancer tested,
including cancers of the colon, prostate, breast, brain, ovaries, pancreas and lung.""Hur inhibitors may be useful for many types of cancer,
"Xu said.""Since Hur is involved in many stem cell pathways, we expect Hur inhibitors will be active in inhibiting'cancer stem cells,
'or the seeds of cancer, which have been a current focus in the cancer drug discovery field."
"Hur has been studied for many years, but until now no direct Hur inhibitors have been discovered, according to Xu.""The initial compounds reported in this paper can be optimized further
and developed as a whole new class of cancer therapy, especially for cancer stem cells, "he said."
"The success of our study provides a first proof-of-principle that Hur is druggable,
"A cancer-causing gene, or oncogene, makes RNA, which then makes an oncoprotein that causes cancer
or makes cancer cells hard to kill, or both,"Xu said.""This is the problem we're trying to overcome with precision medicine."
not a well-defined pocket seen in other druggable proteins targeted by many current cancer therapies."
and involved the collaboration of chemists, cancer biologists, computer modeling experts, biochemists and biophysicists at KU--notably the labs of Xu, Jeffrey Aub in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Jon Tunge in the Department of chemistry.
For Xu, the findings are reflective of a personal commitment to improving odds for people diagnosed with cancer
the second-largest killer in the U s. after heart disease.""Trained as medical doctor and Ph d.,with both a grandfather and an uncle who died of cancer,
I devoted my career to cancer research and drug discovery--aiming to translate discovery in the lab into clinical therapy,
to help cancer patients and their families, "he said.""We hope to find a better therapy--and eventually a cure--for cancer
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