(Posted: 04/10/2013) - The most recent in a series of studies from a team at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center has shown that a single molecule is at the heart of one of the most basic survival tactics of prostate cancer cells. A paper published by the Public Library of Science identifies a microRNA called miR-125b as a potential target for treatments designed to stop the proliferation of prostate cancer cells, particularly in patients who have developed a late-stage form of the disease resistant to androgen deprivation therapy.

(Posted: 04/09/2013) - A Phase 2 clinical trial testing a new protocol for treating a relatively rare form of brain cancer, primary CNS lymphoma, may change the standard of care for this disease, according to doctors at UC San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, who led the research. Described this week in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the trial involved 44 patients who were given a combination of high-dose chemotherapy with immune therapy, rather than the standard combination of chemotherapy with a technique known as whole-brain radiotherapy.

(Posted: 04/09/2013) - A multidisciplinary team of researchers at Mayo Clinic has developed a new software tool to noninvasively characterize pulmonary adenocarcinoma, a common type of cancerous nodule in the lungs. Results from a pilot study of the computer-aided nodule assessment and risk yield (CANARY) are published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.

(Posted: 04/08/2013) - The American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting draws thousands of attendees to five days of science presentations and educational sessions. The institutions that comprise the network of NCI-designated Cancer Centers are strong presences.

(Posted: 04/04/2013) - A new system for isolating rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) – living solid tumor cells found at low levels in the bloodstream – shows significant improvement over previously developed devices and does not require prior identification of tumor-specific target molecules. Developed at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Engineering in Medicine and the MGH Cancer Center (an affiliate of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute), the device rapidly delivers a population of unlabeled tumor cells that can be analyzed with both standard clinical diagnostic cytopathology and advanced genetic and molecular technology. The MGH team's report has been published in Science Translational Medicine.

(Posted: 04/03/2013) - The antidepressant drug duloxetine, known commercially as Cymbalta, helped relieve painful numbness and tingling feelings caused by chemotherapy in 59 percent of patients, a new study led by University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers finds. This is the first clinical trial to find an effective treatment for this pain. Other NCI-designated Cancer Centers or host universities involved in the study were: Duke University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and Ohio State University.

(Posted: 04/03/2013) - Porous polymer scaffolds fabricated to support the growth of biological tissue for implantation may hold the potential to greatly accelerate the development of cancer therapeutics. Researchers at Rice University, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York reported this week that three-dimensional scaffolds used to culture Ewing’s sarcoma cells were effective at mimicking the environment in which such tumors develop.

(Posted: 04/03/2013) - The enzyme PKCζ acts as a tumor suppressor by keeping the pro-tumor c-Myc gene in check, in both mice and humans. Researchers from the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have identified how an enzyme called PKCζ suppresses prostate tumor formation. The finding, which also describes a molecular chain of events that controls cell growth and metastasis, could lead to novel ways to control disease progression.

(Posted: 04/02/2013) - A research team jointly led by scientists from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of California, Los Angeles (home of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center), have enhanced a device they developed to identify and “grab” circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, that break away from cancers and enter the blood, often leading to the spread of cancer to other parts of the body. If more studies confirm the technology’s effectiveness, the NanoVelcro Chip device could enable doctors to access and identify cancerous cells in the bloodstream, which would provide the diagnostic information needed to create individually tailored treatments for patients with prostate cancer.

(Posted: 04/01/2013) - Estrogen plus progestin use is linked with increased breast cancer incidence. In addition, prognosis is similar for both users and nonusers of combined hormone therapy, suggesting that mortality from breast cancer may be higher for hormone therapy users as well, according to a study published March 29 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Authors on this report included scientists from UCLA, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, University of Pittsburgh, Stanford University, State University of New York, Stony Brook; University of Tennessee, University at Buffalo, University of California at Davis, University of California, Sacramento.