Tag: oncology
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Nation & World
Dual signals may drive early breast cancer
Researchers from the lab of Joan Brugge, Harvard Medical School professor of cell biology, may have uncovered one of the central mechanisms of breast cancer. They found that dual signals…
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Nation & World
Researchers isolate key part of cells’ ‘death’ signals
In the cover article of the September 2002 issue of the journal Cancer Cell, researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported that peptide subunits of cell-signaling “BH3” proteins could out-maneuver opposing…
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Nation & World
Studies find milk consumption, use of HRT, and pregnancy may influence hormone levels associated with cancer risk in women
IGF-1 is a hormone important to the growth and function of many organs. Higher levels of IGF-1 have been associated independently with an increased risk of a number of cancers,…
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Nation & World
Experimental drug shows promise in treating severe, often-lethal complication of stem cell transplants
An experimental drug called defibrotide reversed severe veno-occlusive disease (VOD) of the liver in more than one third of the stem cell transplant recipients enrolled in a study. VOD is…
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Nation & World
Resistance mutation found for Gleevec
The drug Gleevec was stunningly successful in treating patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) at early stages of disease, but quickly stopped working in most patients with more advanced forms…
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Nation & World
Researchers identify protein linked to tumor invasion
Metastasis occurs when cancer cells penetrate the boundaries of the tumor’s tissue and infiltrate the walls of blood vessels or lymph vessels, gaining a means of transport to other parts…
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Nation & World
Six new breast cancer-susceptibility genes found
The discovery of six new cancer-susceptibility genes grew out of more than 10 years of research by Alan D’Andrea into Fanconi anemia, a condition known to affect only 500 families…
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Nation & World
Sea squirt cancer drug under test
In the United States, researchers at three Harvard University-affiliated hospitals — Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital — have been testing a powerful drug on…
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Nation & World
Endostatin shows no toxicity and some clinical activity in latest report on phase I trial
Discovered in the Children’s Hospital Boston laboratory of Judah Folkman, Endostatin is a natural substance that blocks the formation of new blood vessels around and in tumors, thereby disrupting their…
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Nation & World
Your community may be harmful to your health
In 1996 the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention reported that 50 percent of all cancer risk could be eliminated though a modified diet, increased exercise, limited alcohol intake and cessation…
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Nation & World
Nanowire used to sense cancer marker
Professor Charles Lieber and his students have made wires whose thinness is measured in atoms instead of fractions of an inch. That allowed Lieber’s team to develop what is likely…
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Nation & World
FDA approves Gleevec as oral treatment for gastrointestinal stromal cancer
George Demetri, medical director of the Sarcoma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was the lead investigator of a clinical study that…
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Nation & World
Researchers find better way to predict childhood brain tumor outcomes
About 2,000 children a year are diagnosed with medulloblastoma, or brain tumor. In a study, researchers examined gene expression patterns from 99 patient tumor samples of three different types of…
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Nation & World
Researchers explain how protein inhibits growth of blood vessels
Thirty years ago, Judah Folkman, of Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, first developed the idea that cancerous tumors are dependent on the growth of small blood vessels. Since…
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Nation & World
Scientists using gene chips identify unique form of leukemia
Currently, physicians diagnose and treat a rare form of cancer that strikes infants as a particularly aggressive form of the more common acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The cancer may respond to…
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Nation & World
No innocent bystanders
When cancer cells begin to do their destructive work, they have accomplices — normal cells that help nourish the cancerous ones. As Jack Lawler, Harvard Medical School associate professor of…
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Nation & World
Cell protein potently blocks enzyme linked to cancer
The ends of chromosomes in normal cells eventually unravel, causing the cells to die. This does not happen in cancer cells, however. Cancer cells use an enzyme named telomerase to…
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Nation & World
Researchers discover new type of cancer
A team led by a Harvard researcher has identified a new type of cancer that primarily affects young girls. Sara Vargas, an instructor in pathology at Harvard Medical School and…
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Nation & World
Drug hits new molecular target in mice
When doctors diagnose and plan treatment for breast cancers they look for various indicators of how aggressive they are and what treatments will work best. Two-thirds of breast tumors are…
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Nation & World
Study shows obesity can increase risk of pancreatic cancer
Each year almost 30,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. About the same number of people are killed by it. Pancreatic cancer is the fifth-leading cause…
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Nation & World
Preventing cervical cancer in developing nations
Cervical cancer kills approximately 190,000 women each year, most of them in developing nations. It is the third most common cancer world wide. Women who live in more affluent nations…
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Nation & World
Never-before-seen look inside the world of cancerous tumors
Harvard researchers working at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Radiation Oncology unit have used a powerful new microscope to see inside cancerous tumors. The microscope is so powerful that it can see…
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Nation & World
New drug dissolves stomach tumors
Since July 2000, Harvard and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researcher George Demetri and his colleagues have treated 148 patients with a rare, lethal stomach cancer known as GIST (Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor).…
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Nation & World
Cancer cells’ immortality may depend on longevity protein
A team of Harvard Medical School researchers has identified a protein that 10 percent of tumor cells use to attain an immortal state. By blocking the molecule, it may be…
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Nation & World
Surgery without scalpels
Paul Simmons, a 29-year-old Maine farmer, suffered from a lung tumor. In February 2001, at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a probe containing a long needle was inserted…
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Nation & World
Surprise route found for spread of breast cancer
Cancer cells are thought to enter the lymph nodes through the lymphatic system — a multipurpose welter of vessels — but how the cells actually make their way out of…
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Nation & World
Researchers see better treatments for cancer
“Before the development of insulin, diabetes was as deadly as many cancers are today,” says Harvard researcher Joseph Paul Eder, who is testing Endostatin on patients with advanced cancers. “In…
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Nation & World
New cancer vaccine being tested
In studies at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, tumors were eliminated in 25 percent of patients with widespread kidney and lethal skin cancers who…
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Nation & World
Fighting prostate cancer with radioactive seeds
In November 1997, a team of surgeons headed by Anthoy D’Amico, an associate professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School, first used a technique that treats early stages of…
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Nation & World
Treating advanced lung cancer with light
Photodynamic, or light, therapy was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in December 1998. The FDA has also approved using lasers for treatment of advanced stages of cancer of…