A recent study featured in MIT Technology Review, a team of scientists at Johns Hopkins could this close to achieving a breakthrough in the treatment of cancer. The research results show that bacteria may help destroy cancer cells in patients with liver cancer, lung or pancreas. 

Many doctors and researchers trying to treat cancer without resorting to radio and chemo therapy as both weaken the patient. But even new treatments such as the “magic bullet” that directly target specific cancer cells have serious side effects.

In clinical experiments, scientists at Johns Hopkins injected animals with a cancerous tumor with bacteria that reproduce rapidly in the centers of solid tumors that lack oxygen and die healthy tissue oxygen. The researchers got the bacteria destroy tumors from the inside out, leaving an outer ring easily treatable cancer cells to conventional treatments.

But in addition to achieving this, the researchers noted that in many cases, bacterial infection “trained” the immune system of animals to recognize and attack cancer. In 23 of the 70 animals used, the actual responsiveness of their immune system destroyed the remnants of the tumor, without resorting to another type of therapy. Even when the animals were injected with cancer cells from the same new type of cancer, your immune system was able to identify attack and destroy them, this time without receiving further injections of bacteria.

The scientists then experimented with mice and rats, observing the same type of results, which could be a future treatment applicable to humans.

According to a BBC article; a new vaccine against skin cancer has been developed by scientists in Argentina. The results of animal tests have been positive, so the vaccine has entered phase human trials and is being applied to patients with melanoma, one of the most aggressive skin cancers.

Over the next 4 years will be held the last stage of testing on patients, a dendritic cell vaccine that have the characteristic of phagocytosis of tumor cells, said Dr. Jose Mordoh, director of the research team of the National Council of Scientific and Technical and Leloir Institute Foundation in Argentina. Scientists hope in the near future to implement this new melanoma vaccine to other cancers.

In the words of the director of the Foundation Executive Director Sales, the results of tests on animals have been “spectacular.” 80% of vaccinated mice were cured, while in 100% of diseased mice that were not vaccinated melanoma caught.

The results of this new development in medicine have been published in The Journal of Immunology.

A team of researchers from the University of Michigan has created the nanotechnology equivalent of a Trojan Horse to carry a powerful chemotherapy in tumor cells, thereby increasing the drug’s ability to kill cancer cells and reducing side effects toxic.

According to a press release released yesterday by the University, previous studies in cell cultures show that the use of nanoparticles to transport anti-cancer treatments directly to the target, ie, tumor cells may increase the therapeutic response. Now scientists at Michigan have shown that this treatment based on nanotechnology, is effective in living animals.

According to the study director, Professor James Baker, “This is the first study that has shown how a drug transported by a nanoparticle can leave the bloodstream to reach cancer cells and have a biological impact on the animal’s tumor. “

Baker stresses the optimism of his team before this achievement because in his opinion shows that nanotechnology can markedly improve current cancer therapies. “Send treatments directly to cancer cells reduces the amount reaching normal cells, increases the impact of anti-cancer drug and reduce toxicity. By improving the therapeutic index of anticancer drugs, our goal is to turn cancer into a chronic but manageable disease.

The study results were published in the June 15, 2005 in the journal Cancer Research.

The vehicle to take the medication applied by scientists at Michigan is a polymer molecule called a dendrimer whose diameter is less than five nanometers. These dendrimers are small enough to pass through tiny openings in cell membranes.

This image of a dendrimer provided by the University of Michigan shows its structure as a tree with many branches on which scientists can attach a variety of molecules including drugs.

In experiments conducted by the team of Prof. Baker, the investigators adhered methotrexate, a potent anticancer drug, to branches of the dendrimer. In other branches, fluorescent imaging agents joined and a secret ingredient folic acid.

Folic acid is an important vitamin required for healthy functioning of all cells. But it seems that cancer cells need more folic acid than normal. By leveraging its appetite for this material, scientists can prevent cancer cells develop resistance to chemotherapeutic drug treatment.

In laboratory tests, this new therapy with nanoparticles made in mice that received injections of human cancer cells was 10 times more effective and less toxic than traditional treatment administration.

The sooner a cancer is detected, the greater the chances of effective treatment. A team of scientists from different specialties at the University of Missouri-Colombia is investigating the application of nanoparticles to detect and treat cancer at the molecular level. Their main motivation is the early detection of all cancers and as one of the scientists involved in research, early results are very promising.

They are manufactured custom-made nanoparticles for medical applications through a process patented by the University. The research focuses on the use of nanoparticles to detect cancer, even in the pre-cancer through medical imaging techniques.

The idea that doctors would administer millions of nanoparticles programmed to find cancerous tumors. Once the nanoparticles localize the tumor, doctors used X-rays to see it even if they consist of only a single cancer cell, which is now impossible. With current technology, to see the cancer tumor has to be a set of hundreds of cells in a more advanced stage.

In addition, this team of scientists believes that nanoparticles also enhance the effectiveness of current cancer treatments. The soft tissues have limited capacity to absorb the radiation given to treat cancer. If you increase the effective density of the tumor with metallic nanoparticles, a higher dose of radiation reaches the tumor without damaging normal tissue and minimizing side effects.

According to an article published today in the journal Nature, members of the Research Group in Biomedical Informatics in Barcelona have participated in a project that has managed to decipher the chicken genome, the first to sequence a bird. This is a scientific breakthrough in the study of viruses and cancer, the evolution of vertebrates and also has great implications for the food industry. 

The research group consists of scientists from the Municipal Institute of Medical Research (IMIM) Barcelona, ​​University Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG). Spanish is the only group of researchers who participated in this scientific project.

This is the first bird genome sequence and its strategic position in the evolutionary tree of mammals and fish, makes it a unique source of information for the study of vertebrates. Since birds belong to the arcosauromorfos, which also includes crocodiles and dinosaurs, this is the genomic sequence analyzed us most about the dinosaurs.

According to the press release issued yesterday by the IMIM, UPF and the CRG, sequencing, analysis and decoding of the chicken genome has been performed by the International Consortium for Chicken Genome Sequencing, comprising some 50 centers and research laboratories worldwide. According to study results published in Nature, 60% of chicken genes correspond to similar human genes. It is estimated that in the evolution, the genome of the bird and humans began to diverge 310 million years ago.

This latest scientific discovery can play an important role in the study of viruses and cancer, as the first oncogenic virus was identified in chicken. Moreover, the comparative study of genomes of different species opens a line of research that may lead to discover new aspects of human biology and medicine.

A study conducted by a team of scientists and published in Cell (see summary of study here) this month, relieves important information about the development of cancer.

Scientists already know a lot about how they originate and develop tumors, but until now little has been known about how to achieve a cancer metastasize and invade other tissues and organs. Now a team of researchers from MIT and the Whitehead Institute have discovered that tumors spread achieved through its ability to reactivate and lead an inactive protein should have been removed during the embryonic stage.

“As a result, cancer cells acquire in a single step many of the skills they need to execute the complex stages of metastasis” according to Weinberg, a researcher at MIT and director of the research project.

The metastatic process is long and complex as the cancer cells first must invade a nearby tissue, then get the flow of blood or lymphatic vessel. Then they have to migrate through the bloodstream to a new area of ​​the body, leaving the flow and establish a new colony. There are many steps that scientists have always wondered how it was possible that the cells had the capacity to carry them all out.

But according to this new research, do not. Rather than cover the whole process, cancer cells hijack an existing cellular process (“Twist”) and use it to spread through the body.

Twist is a regulator of genes necessary at the stage of embryo development, when it allows the cells to move from one embryo to another site, assigning different tissues. But once developed organism, Twist has no function, and remains dormant in the tissues of the body set up for life. According to recent advances in cancer research, cancer cells fail to reactivate the Twist protein, thus acquiring the ability to move throughout the body

According to an article published this month in MIT Technology Review, and thanks to recent advances in medical research, will soon be offering a new analysis technique allows blood to diagnose cancer in the first phase of the disease. This represents a breakthrough in cancer treatment, since in most cases the disease proves fatal in the first phase because the patient has no symptoms and, in many cases, when these begin to appear is because the tumor so widespread that it is too late to treat successfully. 

If doctors were able to detect during the first phase of a malignant tumor, the patient could operate much earlier, and remove the tumor without leaving any remaining cancer cells without resorting to chemotherapy.

Until now, methods do exist to analyze the existence or not of a cancerous tumor has been criticized for not being entirely reliable. The type analysis mammograms, PSA (blood test for prostate cancer) and CA-125 (blood test for ovarian cancer) have a high margin of error. According to David Sidransky, a researcher at Johns Hopkins, the PSA system is wrong 33% of the trials and CA-125 system by 50%.

Thanks to recent research by the expert in cancer cell biology and George Wright a new method that analyzes the structure of proteins in the blood, will theoretically identify a tumor with the clarity and accuracy of a fingerprint.

It is already in the first phase of a tumor; cancer distorts the structure of proteins in the blood, so the ability to monitor the structure and detect any abnormality is a revelation. According to Technology Review, are already doing the first tests on humans of such analysis to detect ovarian cancer while developing other tests for prostate, lung, breast, kidney, liver, and lymphatic leukemia?

In the future, perhaps with a single drop of blood can be tested for all types of cancer and achieve dramatically reduce deaths caused by this disease

According to an article this week in The New York Times, for the first time in decades, doctors have made progress in treating lung cancer chemotherapy applied in sessions after surgery. 

For years, doctors have found that chemotherapy is not effective against lung cancer. But recent research seems to prove the opposite, and for some months in the United States policy is changing. In patients who are at the first stage of lung cancer and undergoing surgery to remove the tumor, were also apply subsequent sessions of chemotherapy, a common practice in other cancers such as breast or colon.

Was quoted in the article by Dr. John Minna, director of research at the Medical Center of the University of Texas Southwestern and an expert in lung cancer, the benefits of this treatment are “at least as good if not better” than other cancers.

The change is the result of two studies presented during a conference on cancer two years ago. One, led by Professor Winton University of Alberta, conducted with 482 patients in Canada and the United States showed that 69 percent of patients who received surgery plus chemotherapy were live five years after treatment compared with 54 percent of patients who received surgery alone. In this experiment, patients were treated with a combination of cisplatin and vinorelbine once a week for 16 weeks.

According to the article in the world of lung cancer research, a difference of 15 points is huge. Overall, patients who received chemotherapy after surgery lived an average of 94 months, compared with an average of 73 months who survived the other patients.

Other studies show similar results began a year ago and some doctors began offering courses of chemotherapy to patients after surgery. Prof. Winton’s study is published this month by the New England Journal of Medicine

According to an article on EurekAlert, a team of scientists from the University of Bristol is developing a new test to detect breast cancer in its early stages. In Europe, breast cancer is the leading cause of death among women between 35 and 55.

The test uses an innovative radiation permiterá make it regularly without the chance of harmful effects caused by overexposure to radiation, a problem that they do produce the current mammograms using X-ray

In addition, the new technology used by researchers in Bristol is able to create images through the dense breast tissue and therefore is more effective than X-ray mammography

According to the article, besides being a more reliable test for women under 50, is also more comfortable because there is no need to compress the breast between two plates.