A new study led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) suggests that an unusual experimental drug can reduce breast-cancer aggressiveness, reverse resistance to the drug fulvestrant and perhaps improve the effectiveness of other breast-cancer drugs.
When Jack Andraka was 15 years old, he didn’t know what a pancreas was. Now, this teenager has created a test for the early detection of pancreatic cancer that, while still in the preliminary stages, looks promising. So how did he become an health innovator?
Predicting the future of health care is a tricky business. At any point, there could be a big breakthrough in, say, cancer research, throwing the whole thing off. Or a new technology could come along in another sector, disrupting health care just as a side effect (much like the smartphone has already done). FutureMed, a weeklong program from Singularity University for doctors and others in the health care industry, looks at the ways that technology could change health care in the coming years. I spent a day at Singularity’s classroom (located at the NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley) to soak up some of the predictions. Here are some of the biggest takeaways.
Doctors are Addressing Big Data Challenges Using Watson
Cancer researchers have pinned down a molecule that can kick-start the body’s own tumour-destroying systems, triggering cell death in cancerous but not healthy tissue in mice.
Three years ago, 101-year-old Winnie Bazurto noticed a strange growth on her lower eyelid. She didn’t worry about it initially, but in 2012 it started getting bigger, fast — doubling in size every two weeks and growing into the orbit of her right eye, restricting her vision.
In clinical trials, a first-of-its-kind vaccine successfully prompted the immune system to respond to early indications of colon cancer in people at high risk for the disease.
A reprogrammed version of the virus that causes AIDS was used by doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to wipe out a little girl’s terminal leukemia. According to The New York Times, 6-year-old Emma Whitehead didn’t have much longer to live when the radical and untested therapy was pitched to her parents. But after two relapses, they’d exhausted all other options.
Ultrasound is often used to destroy cancerous cells. The sound waves emitted from an ultrasonic device raise the temperature of diseased cells, causing them to die. But there’s a limit to how intense the sound wave can be — too much and they’ll damage the surrounding healthy tissue.
Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum) and Heidelberg University Hospital have identified the HDAC11 enzyme as a promising target for new cancer therapies. If this molecule is turned off, cancer cells stop growing and die. Normal cells, however, are not affected by blocking HDAC11. The researchers are now looking for compounds that block selectively HDAC11.
After leukaemia and brain tumours, neuroblastoma is the most common form of cancer to affect children. A thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has studied a DNA method which is now used for all cases of neuroblastoma in Sweden, and which has led to more effective treatment at individual level.
Shawn Douglas grew up building R/C cars and planes, using skills he picked up from his repairman father. Two decades later, he’s still assembling machines—only they’re now a billionth the size, made from DNA, and designed to destroy cancer cells.
The next new treatment for breast, colon and prostate cancers, among others, may be a diabetes drug first approved in 1958.
Metformin, the most commonly used medicine to lower blood- sugar, is the subject of about 50 cancer studies globally, according to U.S. government clinical trial information compiled by Bloomberg. The research began after scientists found metformin prevented tumors in mice and that diabetics were less likely to develop a malignancy if they were taking the 5 cents- a-day pill than other diabetes medications.
You’ve maybe never heard of Bacillus Calmette–Guérin—it sounds kinda French after all, so why would you? But scratch a little deeper and you’ll find that BCG, as it’s commonly known, is one of the most overlooked wonder-drugs of our time.
A major breakthrough by scientists at Queen’s University Belfast could lead to more effective treatments for throat and cervical cancer. The discovery could see the development of new therapies, which would target the non-cancerous cells surrounding a tumour, as well as treating the tumour itself.
Researchers at Queen’s Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology have found that the non-cancerous tissue, or ‘stroma’, surrounding cancers of the throat and cervix, plays an important role in regulating the spread of cancer cells.
The discovery opens the door for the development of new treatments which, by targeting this non-cancerous tissue, could prevent it being invaded by neighbouring cancer cells.
