(Posted: 05/06/2013) - Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (home of the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center) have discovered why breast cancer patients with dense breasts are more likely than others to develop aggressive tumors that spread. The finding opens the door to drug treatments that prevent metastasis.

(Posted: 05/06/2013) - Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine (home of the Stanford Cancer Institute) have identified a group of proteins that are mutated in about one-fifth of all human cancers. The finding suggests that the proteins, which are members of a protein complex that affects how DNA is packaged in cells, work to suppress the development of tumors in many types of tissues.

(Posted: 05/06/2013) - Breast cancer brain metastases present a challenge to clinicians because there are few systemic therapies capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier to control the disease. An international team, led by scientists at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, reports pre-clinical research showing improved efficacy of a PEGylated liposomal (encapsulated) anti-cancer agent compared with a non-liposomal formulation of the same drug in an intracranial model of breast cancer.

(Posted: 05/03/2013) - A common cancer pathway causing tumor growth is now being targeted by a number of new cancer drugs and shows promising results. A team of researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (home of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center) have developed a novel method to disrupt this growth signaling pathway, with findings that suggest a new treatment for breast, colon, melanoma and other cancers. The research team has pinpointed the cancer abnormality to a mutation in a gene called PIK3CA that results in a mutant protein, which may be an early cancer switch.

(Posted: 05/03/2013) - Researchers at Johns Hopkins (home of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center) have identified a gene that, when repressed in tumor cells, puts a halt to cell growth and a range of processes needed for tumors to enlarge and spread to distant sites. The researchers hope that this so-called “master regulator” gene may be the key to developing a new treatment for tumors resistant to current drugs.

(Posted: 05/01/2013) - A type of low-grade but sometimes lethal brain tumor in children has been found in many cases to contain an unusual mutation that may help to classify, diagnose and guide the treatment of the tumors, report scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The researchers led a study of pediatric low-grade gliomas, samples of which were collected through an international consortium organized by brain tumor specialists at Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center. Their findings are being published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of April 29.

(Posted: 04/25/2013) - When the eye cancer retinoblastoma is diagnosed in racial and ethnic minority children whose families don't have private health insurance, it often takes a more invasive, potentially life-threatening course than in other children, probably because of delays in diagnosis, researchers at Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center (DF/CHCC) in Boston are reporting at the 26th annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology in Miami, April 24-27.

(Posted: 04/24/2013) - A prospective study by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (a component of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) observed an association between risk of second primary cancer and history of non-melanoma skin cancer in white men and women. The researchers found that people with a history of non-melanoma skin cancer had a modestly increased risk of getting cancer in the future, specifically breast and lung cancer in women and melanoma in both men and women. Non-melanoma skin cancer, which includes basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma, is the most common form of cancer in the United States.

(Posted: 04/23/2013) - Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University (home of the Albert Einstein Cancer Center) have developed a therapy for pancreatic cancer that uses Listeria bacteria to selectively infect tumor cells and deliver radioisotopes into them. The experimental treatment dramatically decreased the number of metastases (cancers that have spread to other parts of the body) in a mouse model of highly aggressive pancreatic cancer without harming healthy tissue. The study was published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

(Posted: 04/23/2013) - Researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah have developed a novel and powerful technique to identify the targets for a group of enzymes called RNA cytosine methyltransferases (RMTs) in human RNA. They applied their technique to a particular RMT, NSUN2, which has been implicated in mental retardation and cancers in humans, finding and validating many previously unknown RMT targets—an indication of the technique’s power. The research results were published online in the journal Nature Biotechnology on April 21.