Development of cancer is conventionally viewed as a gradual process, taking years to accumulate multiple point mutations and chromosomal rearrangements, and progressing through increasingly malignant phenotypes. New research by a team at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has shown that,…
Blog Archives
A Closer Look at the Immune Response to Cancer Cells
Last week it was reported that a daily (low) dose of aspirin can significantly reduce the risk of dying from a variety of cancers, and a study published in PloS Biology now opens a new window on the role of…
Blocking Faulty Replication Could Boost Response to Chemotherapy
Many chemotherapy drugs, including cisplatin, cause damage to DNA and kill cancer cells by interfering with DNA replication and cell division. The damage activates cellular DNA repair mechanisms but, if the damage is too extensive, the cell undergoes apoptosis. Unfortunately,…
FSH Receptors Outline Tumours
Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) have discovered a biomarker that could be applicable to a range of different cancers. In a study of more than 1300 patients, the…
Blocking Cancer Networks
The emergence of drug resistance is one of the main causes of failure in cancer treatment and is one reason that cancer drugs are often used in combination. Resistance can also arise during the use of combinations of cytotoxic agents…
The BMK1 Pathway in Oncology – a Road Less Travelled
Of the four mammalian MAP kinase pathways (ERK1/2, JNK, p38 and BMK1), BMK1 is the least studied. BMK1 and ERK1/2 pathways are both activated by mitogens and oncogenic signals and are therefore implicated in tumorigenesis. Indeed, the ERK1/2 pathway has…
Decoy Receptor Reverses Cancer Cachexia, Improves Survival in Mice
Debilitating muscle wasting or cachexia affects the majority of patients with advanced cancer but although the condition is believed to contribute to cancer-related deaths, the precise mechanisms by which cancer causes cachexia and those by which cachexia contributes to a…
Mouse T-cells Could Help in Fight Against Human Cancer
T-cell receptors are integral membrane proteins that recognise foreign antigens and initiate a series of intracellular signalling cascades that allow the immune system to fight infection. To avoid autoimmune diseases, T-cells must be able to discriminate between ‘self’ and ‘foreign’…
Arsenic Gets Nanotechnology Treatment
Despite its reputation as a poison, arsenic has long been used in Chinese medicine and, more recently, arsenic trioxide has been successfully used to treat acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL). The drug has poor activity against solid tumours, however, probably because…
Mild Stress Could Reduce Cancer
Whilst the effects of social and environmental factors on many aspects of health are relatively well understood, their influence on the progression of systemic cancer is much less well defined. A team of investigators led by scientists at The Ohio…
