Featured series 
Tag: Cancer
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Health
Double trouble: Cells with duplicate genomes can trigger tumors
So-called “double-value” cells are produced by random errors in cell division that occur with unknown frequency. The generation of these genetically unstable cells appears to be a “pathway for generating a tumor,” says David Pellman, MD, a pediatric oncologist at Dana-Farber and at Children’s Hospital Boston and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. He…
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Subtle changes in normal genes implicated in breast cancer
Scientists found that benign cells surrounding breast cancers undergo epigenetic modifications. The altered gene function causes the microenvironment cells to signal proliferation and increased aggression in the breast tumor cells. Kornelia Polyak, M.D., Ph.D., is senior author of the paper, which was posted as an advance online publication on the Nature Genetics Web site. Min…
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Blood vessel drugs halt cancer growth
After decades of surviving peer rejection of his theory of cancer treatment by blocking tiny blood vessels, Judah Folkman has gone on to develop drugs that did what he predicted they would do. Folkman’s endostatin, the drug Fortune magazine called a failure, was used to treat 486 patients with lung cancer in China. At Dana-Farber…
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Health
Women’s health study: Long-awaited findings of low-dose aspirin and vitamin E in preventing disease
The WHS trial was led by BWH researchers Nancy Cook, Sc.D., and Julie Buring, Sc.D. Its results are published in the July 6, 2005 Journal of the American Medical Association. It monitored 39,876 healthy females 45 years of age and older for cancer and cardiovascular events including heart attack, stroke, and death from cardiovascular causes.…
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Scientists identify normal gene driving the growth and survival of melanoma cells
Dana-Farber’s Levi Garraway, M.D., Ph.D., and William Sellers, M.D., the paper’s first and senior authors, and their colleagues reported their findings in the July 7, 2005 issue of the journal Nature. The researchers used single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array technology, which focuses on the building blocks of individual genes, to identify regions of chromosomes where…
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Health
DNA-scanning technology finds possible sites of cancer genes in chromosomes of lung cancer cell
In a study in the July 1, 2005 issue of the journal Cancer Research, the researchers used single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array technology to identify regions of chromosomes where genes were either left out or multiplied over and over – mistakes that are often associated with cancer. In this effort, SNP arrays have been used…
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Campus & Community
A new way to identify cancers is found
Scientists are surprised and delighted that a recently discovered group of small molecules show an unexpected potential for easily distinguishing healthy cells from tumors and one type of cancer from others. These molecules, known as microRNAs (miRNAs), provide fingerprints that may enable doctors to quickly and inexpensively diagnose any type of cancer. When miRNAs are…
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Science & Tech
Judah M. Folkman, MD
In the early 1970s Folkman refined his theory that tumors have the capability to grow their own blood vessels, thereby obtaining the nourishment they need to keep growing in a body. Folkman never quit thinking about why this happens and how he might use that information to treat cancer patients.
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Health
Studies chip away at sex hormone roles in prostate and breast cancers
In recent work, Myles Brown and colleagues combined chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChiP) assays with measures of DNA structure and large-scale gene chip analyses to study where, when, and how androgen and estrogen receptors attach to DNA and control gene transcription. Their results should lead to new ways of manipulating receptor activity and shutting down cancer genes…
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Campus & Community
New delivery technology paves way for disease therapies
A new way to administer therapeutic RNA molecules that efficiently guides them to cells throughout the body is being reported by researchers at the Harvard-affiliated CBR Institute for Biomedical Research and Harvard Medical School (HMS). The technique couples the homing ability of antibodies and an avid RNA-binding protein from sperm to deploy the RNAs in…
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Health
Aspirin use may protect against colon cancer recurrence, reduce risk of death
“Our data are intriguing because they showed that aspirin use notably reduced the risk of recurrence in patients with advanced colon cancer, but more research is needed before any treatment recommendations can be made about the regular use of aspirin,” says Charles Fuchs, M.D., M.P.H., of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and lead author…
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Health
Drug combination boosts survival rate in head and neck cancers
Previous studies have shown that using combination chemotherapy of cisplatin and 5-fu yields a 25 to 50 percent rate of complete pathological responses (the tumor disappeared). Robert Haddad, M.D., and his colleagues found that adding the drug docetaxel to the cisplatin and 5-fu regimen significantly increased the complete pathological response rate to 89 percent. Using…
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Health
High cholesterol levels accelerate growth of prostate cancer
The findings, published in the April 1, 2005 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, are in keeping with population studies that have linked prostate cancer with high cholesterol levels. The researchers also present evidence that cholesterol-lowering ‘statin’ drugs, now widely used in cardiovascular disease, may inhibit cancer growth. A team led by Michael Freeman,…
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Health
Protein packages activate genes
It’s all in the packaging. How nature wraps and tags genes determines if and when they become active, according to researchers from Harvard and M.I.T. They did the largest, most detailed study to date of the protein structure that surrounds the human genome. Their findings reveal surprising and previously unknown specifics of how genes get…
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Science & Tech
Study identifies mechanism of resistance to targeted therapy in lung cancer patients
Gefitinib acts on the receptor for the epidermal growth factor protein (EGFR) to halt the spread of cancer cells by fitting into the activating pocket of the protein, blocking the growth signals, and thereby depriving the cancer cells of the stimuli they need to survive and proliferate. In 2003, it was approved by the U.S.…
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Health
Researchers discover why we go gray
People turn gray, Harvard scientists found, when certain adult stem cells gradually die off. The stem cells provide a continuous supply of other, pigment-producing cells that give your hair its natural color. These same types of pigment cells, called melanocytes, can become cancerous in melanoma, the lethal form of skin cancer that killed about 8,000…
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Health
Study finds women hesitant to take tamoxifen as preventive measure
“Our study underscores the need [for medical professionals] to address psychological factors that may influence decision- making, in order to help women feel confident and satisfied with their treatment choice,” says the study’s lead author, Sharon Bober, PhD, staff psychologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and clinical instructor…
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Health
Study finds that blacks are significantly less likely to undergo prostate cancer screening
In a study involving more than 67,000 men age 65 years and older, the researchers found that blacks were 35 percent less likely than whites to undergo prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing. The American Cancer Society estimates that nearly 30,000 men will die from prostate cancer this year and that 230,000 cases will be diagnosed. The…
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Health
Study yields insights into precancerous condition
Caused by a mutation that inactivates the tumor suppressor gene LKB1, PJS causes gastrointestinal polyps that have a 30 to 50 percent chance of becoming cancerous, says senior author Lewis Cantley, PhD, chief of the Division of Signal Transduction at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and a member of the Department of Systems Biology…
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Health
Quality of life continues to change long-term after treatment for prostate cancer
Researchers compared outcomes for men who had undergone surgery or radiation in the first study to look at the effects of prostate cancer treatment on quality of life beyond five years after treatment. Researchers surveyed 1,008 men with and without a history of prostate cancer about quality of life issues. The participants with prostate cancer…
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Health
Many have ‘cancer,’ but few progress to true disease
Folkman and Kalluri suggest that most tumors don’t develop a blood supply that allows them to grow and progress to cancer, because people produce natural inhibitors of blood vessel growth, or angiogenesis. They write that a better understanding of these inhibitors may yield a new generation of nontoxic anticancer drugs that could be given preventively…
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Health
Study finds no direct links between testosterone therapy, diseases
A comprehensive review of 72 studies addresses the current controversy about testosterone replacement therapy and its potential health risks to men. “We reviewed decades of research and found no compelling evidence that testosterone replacement therapy increases the incidence of prostate cancer or cardiovascular disease,” said Abraham Morgentaler, a urologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center…
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Health
Study suggests more cancer patients receiving aggressive care at end of life
Researchers reviewed the records of 28,777 Medicare-eligible patients aged 65 and older who died within one year of being diagnosed with lung, breast, colorectal, and other gastrointestinal tumors between 1993 and 1996. They found that during this four-year period, the use of chemotherapy among these patients increased from 27.9 percent to 29.5 percent. Among those,…
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Health
Idea inspires new screening test for anti-cancer agents
In a study published in the December 2003 issue of Cell, investigators from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute demonstrated that a new technique has helped them to identify a class of existing drugs able to kill certain types of cancer cells. “This is an example where one person’s work – that of Bill Sellers [of Medical Oncology]…
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Health
Scientists create lab model of human pancreatic cancer
Currently, nearly all the 30,000 cases of pancreatic cancer diagnosed annually are fatal within a matter of months because they are too advanced to remove surgically by the time they cause symptoms. The standard treatments of chemotherapy and radiation are largely ineffective. Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute recently created bioengineered mice that develop aggressive, fatal…
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Science & Tech
Minimally invasive prostate cancer treatment works as well as traditional techniques
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men and the cause of approximately 29,000 deaths a year. Currently, the most common treatments for prostate cancer include radical prostatectomy (RP) and prostate brachytherapy using transrectal ultrasonography which delivers 100 percent of the radiation dosage to the entire prostate gland, thereby potentially compromising the health…
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Health
Enzyme responsible for protein’s ‘Jekyll-and-Hyde’ personality
Normally, a protein regulates when and how body parts develop, but when mutated, it triggers a rare, often-lethal infant leukemia called mixed lineage leukemia. The newly identified protease enzyme, Taspase1, plays a key role in the MLL protein’s dual-personality. (A protease enzyme cuts protein molecules into smaller pieces). Blocking Taspase1, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers say,…
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Health
Researchers boost blood cancer fight
Working with colleagues at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Harvard researchers found that giving mice a hormone known for building bones increased their production of blood stem cells. If it works in humans as in mice, the advance could provide additional hope for patients suffering from leukemia, myeloma, or lymphoma who need bone…
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Campus & Community
Breast cancers tied to brain survival
A gene produces a protein that evidently protects cancer cells in the same way it shields brain cells from damage caused by diseases like Alzheimer’s and strokes. “The same substance can be doubly harmful to some people with invasive breast cancer because it protects the tumor cells from death,” notes Kornelia Polyak, an assistant professor…
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Health
Black lung redux
There are approximately 500,000 asphalt workers in the United States today who have significantly increased risk of lung, stomach, bladder, and nonmelanoma skin cancer – yet little is known about this particular occupational hazard, and it was rarely studied until the early 1990s. Mike McClean, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, is…