Posts Tagged ‘cancer’
Cuba Announces Release of the World’s First Lung Cancer Vaccine
CimaVax-EGF isn’t a vaccine in the preventative sense--that is, it doesn’t prevent lung cancer from taking hold in new patients. It’s based on a protein related to uncontrolled cell proliferation--that is, it doesn’t prevent cancer from existing in the first place but attacks the mechanism by which it does harm.
As such it can turn aggressive later-stage lung cancer into a manageable chronic disease by creating antibodies that do battle with the proteins that cause uncontrolled cell proliferation, researchers say. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are still recommended as a primary means of destroying cancerous tissue, but for those showing no improvement the new vaccine could be a literal lifesaver.
The vaccine has already been tested in 1,000 patients in Cuba and is being distributed at hospitals there free of charge. That’s a big deal for a country where smoking is part of the national culture and a leading cause of death. If it proves as successful as researchers say it is, it should give those suffering from lung cancer reason to celebrate--just not with a Cohiba.
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DNA Analysis Catches Carcinogens in a Simple Saliva Sample
DNA adducts--as strings of DNA damaged by carcinogens are known--serve as biomarkers for doctors, letting them know what diseases a patient might be vulnerable to and helping them monitor for ailments that the patient has a higher likelihood of developing. They’re kind of like a direct measurement of what carcinogens a person is coming in contact with in his or her daily life, through conscious choices or things like a job environment, and how those things are affecting that person’s genetic material.
Our DNA has mechanisms for repairing itself when carcinogens damage our genetic material, but when it fails to do so that genetic damage can lead to cell mutations and eventually to health problems like cancer and inflammatory diseases. So being conscious of what lifestyle choices and other factors are impacting our DNA can be extremely important.
It’s also relatively science intensive, and therefore not so common (do you have any idea what carcinogens are riding on your DNA? I could make a guess, but have no idea for certain). The saliva test developed by a research team at National Chung Cheng University (NCCU) in Taiwan makes keeping track of common DNA adducts much easier. From a saliva sample it can extract white blood cells found naturally there and then use mass spectrometry to analyze for specific DNA adducts.
The test would likely cost several hundred dollars--a cost that, in terms of potential preventative benefits, might be well worth it. And it's a first step toward what might eventually become a kind of cancer screening carried out by saliva swab. In the meantime, the researchers hope the tool might be used to help influence patients’ lifestyle choice. For instance, smokers could be shown exactly how their habit is damaging their DNA via high counts of DNA adducts. Future tests could then show, in plain terms, how curbing a behavior like smoking can have a direct impact on one’s genetic health.
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Dogs Can Reliably Sniff Out Lung Cancer, German Study Shows
This is a breakthrough for lung cancer researchers who have been trying to figure out if there are specific volatile organic compounds associated with the presence of the disease. The dog study suggests that there are.
Researchers at Schillerhoehe Hospital in Germany worked with specially trained dogs who were asked to smell the breath of 220 volunteers. The group included healthy patients, as well as people with lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The dogs correctly identified 71 positive lung cancer samples out of a possible 100, the researchers write in the European Respiratory Journal. They also correctly identified 372 non-cancerous samples out of a possible 400.
What’s interesting about this is that the dogs were able to detect cancer even in the presence of other factors, like tobacco smoke and COPD. Current lab tests for lung cancer can't do this. This suggests that there is indeed a VOC associated directly with lung cancer, which can be detected — at least by a dog — even in the presence of other compounds.
VOCs are emitted from the surface of cells as they undergo tumor-induced gene and protein changes. Identifying the VOCs that certain cells make can go a long way toward early diagnosis, when a scan might not be able to detect anything.
Other researchers have been working on lab chips that can make the same diagnosis, without using dogs. Israeli researchers reported last year that their could differentiate among lung, breast, prostate and colon cancer — by differentiating among the VOCs.
But as we’ve seen before, sometimes dogs are simply the best sniffing technology out there. The after spending billions of dollars on research. This new study suggests that doctors may be learning the same thing.
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Cancers Are Newly Evolved Parasitic Species, Biologist Argues
Just as parasites do, cancer depends on its host for sustenance, which is why treatments that can be so effective. Thanks to this parasite-host relationship, cancer can grow however it wants, wherever it wants. Cancerous cells do not depend on other cells for survival, and they develop chromosome patterns that are distinct from their human hosts, according to , a molecular and cell biology professor at the University of California-Berkeley. As such, they’re novel species.
He argues that the prevailing theories of carcinogenesis, or cancer formation, are wrong. Rather than springing from a few genetic mutations that spur cells to grow at an uncontrolled pace, cancerous tumors grow from a disruption of entire chromosomes, he says. Chromosomes contain many genes, so mis-copies, breaks and omissions lead to tens of thousands of genetic changes. The result is a cell with completely new traits: A new phenotype.
Cancer as evolution in action, which represents a fundamental re-thinking of the disease, has been proposed before — evolutionary biologist Julian S. Huxley first described autonomously growing tumors as a new species back in 1956, according to a . But the prevailing view has long been that cancer is the result of genetic mutations.
Oncologists and pharmaceutical researchers are studying ways to find and block those mutations, aiming to turn off the switch that sparks carcinogenesis. But gene therapy has largely many meaningful results.
Duesberg argues, controversially, that it's misguided. Chromosomal mutation, called aneuploidy, is the cause instead, and it destabilizes chromosomal patterns. Some of the disrupted chromosomes are able to divide, seeding cancer. The result is a new chromosomal pattern that is distinct from our own. The Cal news office explains this in much greater detail.
Duesberg said he hopes this theory will spark new types of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Chromosomal tests could potentially pick out aneuploidy very early, before the damaged chromosomes have had a chance to divide, for instance. And new treatments could target the chromosomal disruptions, rather than knocking out or switching off genes.
Building a Rodent-Sized, Wearable Brain-Imaging Device
In the scanner, gamma rays collide with solid particles. This gives off light that is then detected by photo sensors. For a scan to work in conventional PET devices, the rats can’t move, so the animals are anesthetized. But anesthesia affects neurochemistry and skews the test results. We miniaturized the scanner so that an awake rat could wear it.
Commercial PET scanners, even for small animals, are several feet tall and weigh hundreds of pounds. We got ours down to under eight ounces; the outer diameter is a little over three inches. We call it RatCAP, for Rat Conscious Animal PET. We were able to make it so small using two new components: a thinner photo sensor called an avalanche photodiode, and a custom microchip that reads the signal from the sensor. The scanner has a single data line, so the animal can move pretty freely. The device hangs from the ceiling on a long, stretched spring, which takes the scanner’s weight off the rat.
RatCAP is the only tool that allows us to measure what’s going on in the brain while we’re studying behavior, and the rats don’t seem to be bothered. We’ve actually seen a rat in a RatCAP fall asleep.
Paul Vaska is a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Nanodrug Swarms Use The Human Body’s Biocommunications System to Coordinate Their Attack
Specifically, researchers have developed nanoparticles that can guide each other to a destination, resulting in a much more effective onslaught against a tumor.
Nanoparticles could be a boon for cancer treatment because they can travel through the body unimpeded, delivering drugs directly into tumors and lessening the side effects of chemotherapy. But they quickly disperse when they’re released into the body — even in the best cases, only about 1 percent of them reach their intended target, .
To improve this outcome, researchers from MIT, the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute and the University of California-San Diego designed nanoparticles that can work in teams. One wave of nanoparticles homes in on a tumor, and when they arrive, they can communicate their location to the other nanoparticles still circulating in the body, helping them find the tumor too.
To do this, the nanoparticles take advantage of the body’s blood coagulation process, according to formal MIT doctoral student Geoffrey von Maltzahn, who is the lead author on a paper in Nature Materials describing this new work. At the site of an injury, blood clotting factors and other proteins interact in a chain of steps to form fibrin, which seals the wound and prevents further blood loss, as an MIT news release explains. The proteins not only bind to the area of an injury, but recruit other proteins to the area, von Maltzahn said.
“We’re trying to emulate that on the scale of synthetic particles, such that when one particle gets to the site of disease, it can communicate that event to expedite the subsequent arrival of other synthetic nanoparticles,” he explains in a video posted by MIT’s David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. (Watch it below.)
The researchers used two types of nanoparticles, which could either signal a message or receive it. The signaling particles flow through the bloodstream and arrive at the tumor site, where they trick the body into believing an injury has occurred (either by emitting heat or binding to certain proteins). This stimulates the natural fibrin-building process. Then the receiving nanoparticles, which carry a payload of cancer drugs, are outfitted with proteins that bind to fibrin. The fibrin acts as a homing beacon, helping the nanoparticles travel to the tumor site. They release the drugs once they get there, delivering a targeted blow to the cancer cells.
The researchers studied this method using mice and found that the communicating nanoparticles delivered 40 times more doxorubicin, a common chemotherapeutic, than a system that could not communicate.
MIT researchers are exploring how to test this system with existing clinical studies using nanoparticles.
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Human Vaccine Cures Prostate Cancer in Mice
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The findings are preliminary but promising. Geneticists basically assembled a complementary DNA library from healthy prostate tissue and inserted snippets of that genetic code into a swarm of viruses that were introduced to the mice intravenously. This cDNA causes the viruses to produce prostate antigens, basically sending the immune system a distress signal with the prostate’s unique signature on it.
One of the reasons the body often can’t beat cancerous growths on its own is because it can’t see the tumor cells very well, so the immune system doesn’t know where to fight its battles even as the cancer takes more ground. But those engineered viruses expressing those prostate antigens--antigens are like molecular tags indicative of a specific infection, allergen, pathogen, etc. basically raise the visibility of the problem at the prostate but can treat it too.
This causes the mice’s own body to mount a serious T-cell assault on the prostate and anything foreign that might be hiding out there. So the body basically thinks it’s being invaded by viruses expressing these cancer related antigens, but it doesn’t really matter what the immune system thinks. When the dust settles, the immune system has pounded the prostate with defensive measures, eradicating the tumor cells there.
That’s big news for men, and could be big news for anyone affected by a variety of cancers, including lung, pancreatic, and even brain cancers. Immunologists have long sought (with limited success) to isolate and catalog all the various antigens in tumor cells, but by using viruses and cDNA treatments can be less precise and still raise the alarm within the immune system, triggering a cancer-killing response.