(Posted: 06/12/2013) - Researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine and its Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, along with colleagues from the Terry Fox Laboratory, BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver, Canada, have discovered how normal breast precursor cells may be genetically vulnerable to developing into cancer. Their study identified a rare and critical subset of normal human breast cells, luminal progenitors, that possess extremely short chromosome ends known as telomeres. Telomeres are the very end regions of chromosomes that serve as protective caps to prevent DNA-damaging events such as fusion of the end of one chromosome with the end of another.

(Posted: 06/12/2013) - A study examining trends in X-ray computed tomography (CT) use in children in the United States has found that reducing unnecessary scans and lowering the doses for the highest-dose scans could lower the overall lifetime risk of future imaging-related cancers by 62 percent. The research by the UC Davis Health System and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center is published online in JAMA Pediatrics.

(Posted: 06/11/2013) - Men with prostate cancer may significantly improve their survival chances with a simple change in their diet, a new study led by UC San Francisco (home of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center) has found. By substituting healthy vegetable fats – such as olive and canola oils, nuts, seeds and avocados – for animal fats and carbohydrates, men with the disease had a markedly lower risk of developing lethal prostate cancer and dying from other causes, according to the study. The study was published online on June 10 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

(Posted: 06/11/2013) - A new study involving Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute researchers contributing to work by scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that the shape of nanoparticles can enhance drug targeting. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that rod-shaped nanoparticles—or nanorods—as opposed to spherical nanoparticles, appear to adhere more effectively to the surface of endothelial cells that line the inside of blood vessels.

(Posted: 06/07/2013) - Cancer cells’ appetite for sugar may have serious consequences for immune cell function, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have learned. The scientists found that when they kept sugar away from critical immune cells called T cells, the cells no longer produced interferon gamma, an inflammatory compound important for fighting tumors and some kinds of infection.

(Posted: 06/07/2013) - Using increasingly cheap and rapid methods to read the billions of “letters” that comprise human genomes – including the genomes of individual cells sampled from cancerous tumors -- scientists are generating far more data than they can easily interpret. Scientists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have published a mathematical method of simplifying and interpreting genome data bearing evidence of mutations, such as those that characterize specific cancers. Not only is the technique highly accurate; it has immediate utility in efforts to parse tumor cells, in order to determine a patient’s prognosis and the best approach to treatment.

(Posted: 06/04/2013) - Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine (home of the Moores Comprehensive Cancer Center), with colleagues at the University of Rochester Medical Center, have identified a new mechanism that appears to suppress tumor growth, opening the possibility of developing a new class of anti-cancer drugs. Writing in this week’s online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team reports that a particular form of a signaling protein called STAT5A stabilizes the formation of heterochromatin (a form of chromosomal DNA), which in turn suppresses the ability of cancer cells to issue instructions to multiply and grow.

(Posted: 06/04/2013) - Researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center presented findings at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology from a study testing the experimental drug selumetinib as a treatment for patients with metastatic uveal melanoma. This treatment more than doubled the time to progression when compared with chemotherapy. Many patients receiving selumetinib experienced tumor shrinkage, making selumetinib the first systemic therapy ever to benefit patients with this cancer. The findings are potentially practice changing for a disease that has previously had no known effective therapy.

(Posted: 06/03/2013) - An international team of researchers – led by researchers from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the Department of Pathology at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine (home of the Moores Comprehensive Cancer Center) – has found that a singular gene mutation helps brain cancer cells to not just survive, but grow tumors rapidly by altering the splicing of genes that control cellular metabolism. The findings are published online in the journal Cell Metabolism.

(Posted: 06/03/2013) - Thousands of patients with an advanced form of lung cancer that carries a specific dysfunctional gene are likely to fare better if treated with a targeted therapy than with traditional chemotherapy, report Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers and a team of international collaborators.