What's New in Cancer Research?

The torrents of data flowing out of cancer research and treatment are yielding fresh insight into the disease

Clinical studies that group patients according to their molecular profile can make for better and faster drug approval decisions

In the past couple of months, three people have told me that they or someone they love has cancer. Fortunately in each case, the tumors were caught early and some combination of surgery and radiation was all the treatment that was likely to be needed.

A new drug combination jump-starts the body’s ability to fight cancer

By releasing the brakes that tumor cells place on the immune system, researchers are developing a new generation of more powerful treatments against malignancy

Cells and a stiff material called the matrix can squeeze blood vessels in tumors and thus block delivery of cancer-fighting drugs to malignant cells. Now researchers may have a way to reopen vessels and restore the drugs' power

Such squeezing can close blood vessels and impair the effectiveness of anticancer drugs

Rakesh K. Jain, director of the Edwin L. Steele Laboratory for Tumor Biology in the radiation oncology department of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, talks about his article in the February issue of Scientific American about interfering with extracellular matrix as a way to increase the efficacy of cancer therapy 

 

Researchers have uncovered processes that make cancer even more complicated than they thought it was

In 2000, Robert Weinberg and Douglas Hanahan published a review article in the journal Cell titled “The Hallmarks of Cancer“. It was a seminal paper in every sense of the word; downloaded 20,000 times a year between 2004 and 2007, with over 15,000 citations in other research papers.

The FDA recently okayed the first therapeutic cancer vaccine, and other drugs that enlist the immune system against tumors are under study

A presidential panel warns about human exposure to carcinogens

Pinpointing the genes involved in cancer will help chart a new course across the complex landscape of human malignancies

Studies of pet dogs with cancer can offer unique help in the fight against human malignancies while also improving care for man's best friend

A dark side of stem cells--their potential to turn malignant--is at the root of a handful of cancers and may be the cause of many more. Eliminating the disease could depend on tracking down and destroying these elusive killer cells

They are genes that cause cancer. They were first found in viruses, but their evolutionary history implies that normal vertebrate cells have genes whose abnormal expression can lead to cancerous growth