Science Today

Source: University of Leeds. Medical researchers at the University of Leeds have come a step closer to understanding how to stop breast cancers from coming back. Their findings, published in the International Journal of Cancer, suggest that some novel drugs that are being developed to tackle other cancers should be considered as a future treatment for breast cancer too. Hormone therapies, such as tamoxifen, that target a protein responsible for tumour growth, have dramatically improved the treatment of breast cancer. Survival rates have improved considerably for patients whose breast cancer is spotted at an early stage and many patients with advanced disease can now have a much better quality of life. But hormone therapies do not work in all patients and the tumours continue to grow and spread. In other patients, the hormone therapies work well at first but then their cancer often develops resistance and the tumour starts to grow again. Leeds researchers have now pointed the finger...

Could some women who naturally produce excess aromatase in their breasts have an increased risk of developing breast cancer? Results of a new animal study suggests that may be the case, say researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, a part of Georgetown University Medical Center. In the issue of August 15 Cancer Research, the investigators say their mice study shows that overproduction of aromatase, which converts testosterone into estrogen, in breast tissue is even more important in pushing breast cancer development than excess production of the estrogen receptor that the hormone uses to activate mammary cells. In addition, the researchers found that aromatase over-expressing mice also expressed more estrogen receptors on the breast cells. While current breast cancer therapies target both of those processes -- inhibition of aromatase and inactivation of the estrogen receptor -- the researchers say this study suggests that aromatase inhibitors may prove to be a mo...

Some of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer are more vulnerable to chemotherapy when it is combined with a new class of anti-cancer agent, researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have shown. ABT-737 is one of a new class of anti-cancer agents called BH3 mimetics that target and neutralise the so-called Bcl-2 proteins in cancer cells. Bcl-2 proteins act to 'protect' the cells after they have been damaged by chemotherapy drugs, and prevent the cancer cells from dying. Professors Geoff Lindeman and Jane Visvader, who led the research with colleagues Dr Samantha Oakes and Dr François Vaillant from the institute's Stem Cells and Cancer division, said that the BH3 mimetics showed promise for treating breast cancers, including 'triple negative' cancers. Their research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Professors Jane Visvader (left) and Geoff Lindeman from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australi...

Using the latest gene sequencing tools to examine so-called epigenetic influences on the DNA makeup of colon cancer, a Johns Hopkins team says its results suggest cancer treatment might eventually be more tolerable and successful if therapies could focus on helping cancer cells get back to normal in addition to strategies for killing them. In a report published June 26 in Nature Genetics, the investigators focused on a particular epigenetic biochemical signature known as methylation, which silences genes. Although not part of a gene's central DNA sequence, it is copied when a cell divides, perpetuating its activity. By comparing the epigenomes of eight human tissue samples -- three from noncancerous colon tissue, three from colon tumors and two from polyps (early-stage colon cancer) -- the team found that in all the colon tumors the defining characteristic was a universally "chaotic" pattern of methylation. In noncancerous tissue, they found methylation occurring in wel...

Imagine dropping dish soap into a sink full of greasy water. What happens? As soon as the soap hits the water, the grease recoils -- and retreats to the edges of the sink. Now, what if the sink was a cancer cell, the globs of grease were cancer-promoting proteins and the dish soap was a potential drug? According to new research from the University of Toronto Mississauga, such a drug could force the proteins to the cell's membrane (a.k.a., the edge of the sink) -- and make the cancer cell more vulnerable to chemotherapy. "This is a totally new approach to cancer therapy," says Professor Patrick Gunning of the Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences. "Everything prior to this has targeted functionally relevant binding sites. Our approach inhibits the mobility of cancer-promoting proteins within cells -- essentially, it's like molecularly targeted glue." The "glue" is shaped like a dumbbell: at one end is an anchor that sticks to the membrane,...

A group of volunteers ate half a kilo of strawberries every day for two weeks to demonstrate that eating this fruit improves the antioxidant capacity of blood. The study, carried out by Italian and Spanish researchers, showed that strawberries boost red blood cells' response to oxidative stress, an imbalance that is associated with various diseases. Scientists have previously tried to confirm the antioxidant capacity of strawberries using in vitro laboratory experiments. Now, a team of researchers from the Marche Polytechnic University (UNIVPM, in Italy) and the University of Granada (UGR, in Spain) have demonstrated this effect in vivo, in a study on human volunteers published in the journal Food Chemistry. Each day, the scientists fed 12 healthy volunteers 500 grams of strawberries (of the 'Sveva' variety) over the course of the day. They took blood samples from them after four, eight, 12 and 16 days, and also a month later. The results show that regular consumption of ...

Women with a healthy body weight before and after diagnosis of breast cancer are more likely to survive the disease long term, a new study finds. The results were presented at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston. The study, conducted in nearly 4,000 breast cancer survivors, found that obesity is strongly linked to death due to breast cancer. In particular, overweight or obese women with a history of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, but not those with estrogen receptor-negative cancer, had a higher risk of dying of their disease, said the study's lead author, Christina Dieli-Conwright, PhD. "This relationship between dying and being obese or overweight may depend on whether the type of breast cancer is hormonally dependent," said Dieli-Conwright, assistant research professor at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif. The research involved participants of the large California Teachers Study who, between 1995 and 2006, receiv...