Cancer News and Discussions

[firestar464]

Literally me irl

[raklian]

About the only thing you can drink is coffee and water...Otherwise you're fucked.

Don't forget teas.

[weatheriscool]

Researcher reach milestone in the treatment of anemia in chronic lymphocytic leukemia
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07- ... cytic.html
by Leipzig University

In people with myelodysplastic neoplasms (MDS), a usually benign form of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the body produces too few functional blood cells. Affected individuals suffer from anemia—a lack of red blood cells or hemoglobin—which can be a precursor to acute leukemia.

Compared to the standard treatment, luspatercept can increase hemoglobin levels in MDS patients and help them to avoid blood transfusions. These are the findings of an international clinical trial led by Professor Uwe Platzbecker from Leipzig University and the University of Leipzig Medical Center in collaboration with a large international research team.

Every year, around 4,000 people in Germany alone are diagnosed with myelodysplastic neoplasms (MDS). In these patients, the healthy maturation of blood cells is disrupted, which can lead to anemia, infections and an increased risk of bleeding. High-risk MDS is characterized by rapid progression, severe symptoms and often a transition to acute leukemia that results in a short life expectancy.

Patients who fall into the low-risk category of MDS are not initially in an acutely life-threatening situation, but often suffer from mild to moderate anemia as a result of a lack of mature and functional red blood cells.

[weatheriscool]

mRNA Trojan Horse tricks cancer into making toxins to kill itself
By Michael Irving
July 04, 2023

Scientists have developed and tested a new potential treatment for cancer that works in a similar way to the COVID-19 vaccines. The technique involves delivering mRNA molecules to cancer cells and tricking them into producing toxic proteins that kill the tumors.

Inside all living cells are ribosomes, which are essentially tiny factories that produce proteins. Exactly which proteins they make depends on the 'blueprints' they receive, and these come from messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules.

Over the past few decades, scientists have found that they can hijack this mechanism to make beneficial proteins on demand. This mRNA technology was greatly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as BioNTech and Moderna developed vaccines that worked by coaxing our cells to produce spike proteins similar to the virus, triggering an immune response that trained our body to fight off subsequent infections.

Since then, scientists have turned their sights onto cancer, experimenting with using mRNA to produce proteins that mimic those made by tumors, helping to launch an immune response against the cancer. This could be particularly promising when paired with other treatments like immunotherapy.

https://newatlas.com/medical/mrna-troja ... er-toxins/

[weatheriscool]

Eliminating extra chromosomes in cancer cells prevents tumor growth, new study reveals
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07- ... tumor.html
by Yale University

Cancer cells with extra chromosomes depend on those chromosomes for tumor growth, a new Yale study reveals, and eliminating them prevents the cells from forming tumors. The findings, said the researchers, suggest that selectively targeting extra chromosomes may offer a new route for treating cancer.

The study was published July 6 in the journal Science.

Human cells typically have 23 pairs of chromosomes; extra chromosomes are an anomaly known as aneuploidy.

"If you look at normal skin or normal lung tissue, for example, 99.9% of the cells will have the right number of chromosomes," said Jason Sheltzer, assistant professor of surgery at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study. "But we've known for over 100 years that nearly all cancers are aneuploid."

[weatheriscool]

AI tool helps evaluate brain tumors in real time during surgery
By Michael Franco
July 07, 2023
https://newatlas.com/medical/ai-brain-tumors-surgery/

Researchers at Harvard Medical School have developed a new AI-powered tool to help brain surgeons combat cancer. CHARM rapidly evaluates tumorous tissue during surgery to help professionals make on-the-spot decisions about how to proceed.

Traditionally, during brain cancer surgery, doctors remove a sample of tissue, freeze it, and analyze it to determine the type and aggressiveness of tumor. However, this process tends to warp the way the cells look. It also relies on human observation which, even with high-powered microscopes, is not sharp enough to detect the minute genomic variations that can identify how aggressive or passive different tumors are.

Now, the Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers have enlisted the help of an AI model to assist them with this subtle evaluation. Called Cryosection Histopathology Assessment and Review Machine, or CHARM, the tool was trained on 2,334 brain tumor samples from 1,524 people with glioma, the most common – and most deadly – form of brain cancer. In tests, the system was able to decode a tumor's genetic makeup and find mutations at the molecular level in both the tumors and surrounding tissue with an accuracy rate of 93%.

[weatheriscool]

Cancer breakthrough uses CRISPR to target extra chromosomes
By Michael Irving
July 09, 2023
https://newatlas.com/medical/cancer-cri ... neuploidy/

Yale scientists have discovered a new potential treatment avenue to fight cancer. Using CRISPR gene-editing, the team eliminated extra chromosomes from cancer cells and found that they could no longer grow out of control.

Healthy human cells have 23 pairs of chromosomes, but it’s been observed for over a century that the majority of cancer cells have extras. This condition is known as aneuploidy, but its exact role in cancer remained a mystery – was it a root cause of cancer or just a symptom of it? In a new study, scientists at Yale investigated that role.

“For a long time, we could observe aneuploidy but not manipulate it,” said Jason Sheltzer, senior author of the study. “We just didn’t have the right tools. But in this study, we used the gene-engineering technique CRISPR to develop a new approach to eliminate entire chromosomes from cancer cells, which is an important technical advance. Being able to manipulate aneuploid chromosomes in this way will lead to a greater understanding of how they function.”

To start with, the team focused on a type of aneuploidy where a cell gains a third copy of a structure called the “q arm” on chromosome 1. This mistake is found in multiple cancer types from an early stage and is linked to disease progression.

[weatheriscool]

Study discovers tumor monocyte content predicts immunochemotherapy outcomes for esophageal cancer
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07- ... comes.html
by Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research

A Ludwig Cancer Research study has discovered that the presence of relatively high numbers of immune cells known as monocytes in tumors is linked to better outcomes in esophageal cancer patients treated with a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy, or immunochemotherapy.

Esophageal cancer is the sixth leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide, and the incidence of esophageal adenocarcinoma has been climbing at a relatively swift clip over the past 40 years. Survival times for inoperable or metastatic forms of the cancer range from 6 to 12 months.

[weatheriscool]

Discovery in T-cell research could lead to improved treatment of solid tumors
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07- ... umors.html

A local study led by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) discovered that by inhibiting the function of two proteins, G9a and GLP, during the cell therapy production process, immune cells could become more effective in combatting cancer. These findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, can help advance the development of innovative therapies that could benefit cancer patients, bringing us closer to more effective targeted treatments for solid tumor cancers.

Solid tumors are a major cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Traditional treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery are available, but they have differing efficacy against solid tumors, particularly in advanced stages of the cancer. T-cell therapy has been very successful in targeting liquid tumors such as blood cancers, but the same efficiency has not been observed in solid tumors such as breast, liver or brain cancer.

[weatheriscool]

New tumor-selective light treatment could kill breast cancer cells with greater accuracy and improve tumor control
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07- ... cells.html
by National University of Singapore

Breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women in Singapore. Treatment is multimodal and often involves surgery to remove the cancer and lymph nodes involved.

Adjuvant therapy, given after the initial treatment, is used to irradiate and destroy micrometastases, which are cancer cells in the blood stream or lymphatics, to decrease recurrence. This form of therapy is subdivided into local (radiotherapy) and systemic therapy (endocrine therapy, chemotherapy and targeted therapy).

Studies have shown that patient satisfaction has increased with breast conserving therapy (BCT) where only the tumor and a margin is removed from the body post mastectomy, compared to full mastectomy alone, which removes all parts of the breast. For BCT, radiotherapy has to be administered after lumpectomy, which removes other abnormal tissue from the breast and some normal tissue around it.