Pancreatic cancer is a particularly vicious disease. Because the pancreas is nestled deep within the internal organ cavity, identifying the tumor early is a rare occurrence. In fact, over half of the diagnoses occur after the disease has spread to distant parts of the body. As a result, there is only a 9% five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer. Researchers have remained stumped on finding accurate screening and effective treatment methods as pancreatic cancer continues to rise towards the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. All hope is not lost, however. Determined researchers have adamantly been working on…
Author: Brett Johnson
Scientists have developed a noninvasive device that may not only detect melanoma cells traveling through the bloodstream, but also kill them. The device, which the investigators call Cytophone, accurately detected cancer cells in 27 out of 28 people with melanoma. It also reduced the amount of cancer cells in participants’ blood, suggesting that it may kill the cells. The device uses laser beams and sound waves to scan circulating blood for melanoma cells. It does not require any needles or blood draws and can scan a person’s entire volume of blood—about 5 liters—in a matter of hours. The NCI-funded study demonstrated the feasibility…
ELAA Technology, an Istanbul-based company, has developed a software application which is used in conjunction with a bronchoscopy unit. By providing a patient’s Computerized Tomography (CT) images and bronchoscopy camera feed, it is able to localize the target lesion and support early diagnosis of suspicious lesions with almost 100% accuracy. In order to detect and take samples from a target lesion, their software transforms CT images into virtual 3D airway and blood vessel volumes and then the system asks the operator to mark the lesion on a user interface. The system then calculates the safest route to the lesion in…
People must eat to survive. And the cells that make up the body eat too. Or more accurately, cells break down and rebuild food into the individual molecules they need to stay alive and grow. This complex network of processes is called cellular metabolism. Cancer cells can alter their metabolism to survive, so targeting cancer cell metabolism has become of great interest to researchers. Questions being asked include: Is it possible to attack a tumor’s nutritional needs as part of cancer treatment? And could this be done by tweaking a cancer patient’s diet? A new NCI-supported study suggests that the latter may…
Researchers have launched a clinical trial to test an immunotherapy drug in patients who have both cancer and an autoimmune disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, or multiple sclerosis. Immunotherapy drugs enhance the ability of the immune system to detect and kill tumor cells. In recent years, these therapies have benefited a growing number of patients, including some patients with advanced cancers. But doctors have not known whether immunotherapy is safe and effective for people who have both cancer and an autoimmune disease, because such patients have been excluded from clinical trials of immunotherapy drugs. “Having an overactive immune system is the main reason…
In April, the drug erdafitinib (Balversa) became the first therapy targeting a genetic alteration to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma, the most common type of bladder cancer. FDA granted an accelerated approval to the drug, which blocks the activity of a family of proteins called fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFR), for patients with specific FGFR gene alterations, based on preliminary data from a clinical trial. New findings from that trial have just been published. The updated results confirm that erdafitinib can benefit patients with advanced bladder cancer whose tumors have a genetic alteration in one of the four FGFR genes,…
A new study suggests that a person’s risk of progressing from a benign condition called monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) to multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, can change over time. On average, about 1% of people with MGUS go on to develop multiple myeloma each year. Doctors typically estimate a person’s risk of progressing soon after MGUS is diagnosed, using a test that measures the amounts of certain markers in the blood. That initial risk assessment guides how much follow-up care the patient receives. But according to the new findings, published July 18 in JAMA Oncology, the levels of those blood markers—and the risk of developing cancer—can…
One property of cancer cells that can help them gain and maintain a foothold in the body is their ability to evade detection and destruction by the human immune system. Some tumor cells, for example, make higher-than-normal amounts of proteins called “don’t eat me” signals, which are found on the cell surface. These “don’t eat me” proteins are a type of immune checkpoint. They are “like invisibility cloaks for the cancer,” preventing white blood cells called macrophages from detecting, engulfing, and devouring the tumor cells, explained Irving Weissman, M.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine. In a new study, Dr. Weissman and his colleagues have…