http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are working with medical researchers at Loma Linda University Medical Center to develop a new imaging technology to guide proton therapy for cancer treatment. http://phys.org/news224495897.html Physics Fri, 13 May 2011 09:10:01 EST news224495897 Pharmacy researchers at Oregon State University today announced the discovery of a genetic regulator that is expressed at higher levels in the most aggressive types of head and neck cancers, in work that may help to identify them earlier or even offer a new therapy at some point in the future. http://phys.org/news160152592.html Medicine & Health Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:50:44 EST news160152592 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Moores UCSD Cancer Center have new evidence that a type of immune system cell thought to be part of the first line of defense against breast cancer may also help promote its spread. They have found that when these cells, known as lymphocytes, make an inflammatory protein called RANKL (RANK ligand), breast cancer is more likely to spread to the lungs. http://phys.org/news159644336.html Medicine & Health Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:39:32 EST news159644336 (BRONX, NY) - Recurrent and metastatic endometrial and ovarian cancers can be notoriously difficult to treat: They have spread to other organs and typically have developed resistance to chemotherapy; and patients already heavily treated with chemotherapy may not be able to endure more chemo. Now, physicians at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have shown that a combination of two chemotherapy drugs not only produced clinical benefit for such patients but were also well tolerated. The findings are published online in the journal Gynecologic Oncology. http://phys.org/news159558309.html Medicine & Health Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:46:14 EST news159558309 (PhysOrg.com) -- An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) has demonstrated a better way to deliver cancer drugs directly to tumors. The researchers used specially engineered nanoparticles that can inhibit a signaling pathway and deliver a higher concentration of medication to the specific area. http://phys.org/news159550605.html Nanotechnology Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:37:09 EST news159550605 Dr. Esther Chang describes the most recent developments in human trials of the first systemic, non-viral, tumor-targeted, nanoparticle method designed to restore normal gene function to tumor cells while completely bypassing normal tissue April 21 at an American Association of Anatomists (AAA) scientific session at Experimental Biology 2009 in New Orleans. http://phys.org/news159466748.html Nanotechnology Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:19:30 EST news159466748 Researchers at the University of Southern California have identified a new drug compound that appears to target tumor cells and surrounding blood vessels without the negative side effects typically associated with Cox-2 inhibitors. http://phys.org/news159439792.html Medicine & Health Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:50:24 EST news159439792 Researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) may have found a way to stop the often-rapid spread of deadly brain tumors. http://phys.org/news159193588.html Medicine & Health Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:26:55 EST news159193588 The more dots there are, the more accurate a picture you get when you connect them. A new imaging technology could give scientists the ability to simultaneously measure as many as 100 or more distinct features in or on a single cell. In a disease such as cancer, that capability would provide a much better picture of what's going on in individual tumor cells. http://phys.org/news158994383.html Nanotechnology Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:06:48 EST news158994383 An international team of scientists from the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, the University of North Carolina and several institutions in China have explained how a gene alteration can lead to the development of a type of brain cancer, and they have identified a compound that could staunch the cancer's growth. http://phys.org/news158928251.html Medicine & Health Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:44:55 EST news158928251 A drop of blood or a chunk of tissue smaller than the period at the end of this sentence may one day be all that is necessary to diagnose cancers and assess their response to treatment, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. http://phys.org/news158772321.html Medicine & Health Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:25:49 EST news158772321 Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have identified a compound that could be modified to treat one of the most deadly types of cancer, and discovered how a particular gene mutation contributes to tumor growth. http://phys.org/news158505848.html Medicine & Health Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:25:46 EST news158505848 If cancer cells lack a certain protein, it could be much easier for them to penetrate healthy body tissue, the first step towards forming metastases. Scientists at the Pharmacology Institute of the University of Heidelberg have discovered the previously unknown cell signal factor SCAI (suppressor of cancer cell invasion), which inhibits the movement and spread of tumor cells in laboratory tests. When the factor's functioning was disrupted, the cancer cells moved much more effectively in what are known as three-dimensional matrix systems, which imitate some of the tissue properties of the human body. http://phys.org/news158419782.html Biology Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:30:07 EST news158419782 Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered the mechanisms behind two key checkpoints in cell growth and development — factors that may ultimately allow investigators to benchmark progression of tumor cells or stop them from further development. The findings appear in the current online issue of Developmental Cell. http://phys.org/news158346281.html Medicine & Health Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:05:02 EST news158346281 Based on research that reveals new insight into mechanisms that allow invasive tumor cells to move, researchers at the Mayo Clinic campus in Florida have a new understanding about how to stop cancer from spreading. A cancer that spreads elsewhere in the body, known as metastasis, is the process that most often leads to death from the disease. http://phys.org/news157559721.html Biology Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:36:30 EST news157559721 A team of 24 researchers from the U.S., Europe, Taiwan and Japan and led by University of Illinois scientists has engineered a new anti-cancer agent that is about 200 times more active in killing tumor cells than similar drugs used in recent clinical trials. http://phys.org/news157212292.html Medicine & Health Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:05:23 EST news157212292 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new metal nanostructure developed by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has already shown promise in cancer therapy studies and could be used for chemical and biological sensors and other applications as well. http://phys.org/news156950496.html Nanotechnology Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:22:30 EST news156950496 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified a gene that plays a critical regulatory role in the process of converting dietary carbohydrates to fat. In a new study, they disabled this gene in mice, which consequently had lower levels of body fat than their normal counterparts, despite being fed the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat pasta buffet. http://phys.org/news156710717.html Biology Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:46:06 EST news156710717 Johns Hopkins engineers have invented a method that could be used to help figure out how cancer cells break free from neighboring tissue, an "escape" that can spread the disease to other parts of the body. The new lab-on-a-chip, described in the March issue of the journal Nature Methods, could lead to better cancer therapies. http://phys.org/news156602858.html Medicine & Health Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:48:57 EST news156602858 (PhysOrg.com) -- An innovation by Princeton researchers may lower the cost of mapping human DNA to $100 and help usher in the era of personalized medicine. http://phys.org/news156530875.html Chemistry Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:48:26 EST news156530875 In the past few years, a number of anti-cancer drugs have been developed which are directed selectively against specific key molecules of tumor cells. Among these is an antibody called cetuximab, which attaches to a protein molecule that is found in large amounts on the surface of many types of cancer cells. When this surface molecule, called epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGF-R for short, is blocked by cetuximab, the cancer cell receives less signals stimulating cell division. http://phys.org/news156521387.html Medicine & Health Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:10:20 EST news156521387 Breast cancer patients face many horrors, including those that arise when fighting the cancer itself. Medications given during chemotherapy can have wicked side effects, including vomiting, dizziness, anemia and hair loss. These side effects occur because medications released into the body target healthy cells as well as tumor cells. http://phys.org/news155940166.html Nanotechnology Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:43:00 EST news155940166 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of Michigan Technological University researchers led by Associate Professor of Chemistry Haiying Liu has discovered how to make a strain of E. coli glow under fluorescent light. The technique could eventually be used to track down all sorts of pathogens and even help in the fight against breast cancer. http://phys.org/news155494040.html Chemistry Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:48:05 EST news155494040 Long Island cancer doctors have borrowed a page from medicine's past to write a new chapter on how to address a rare malignancy by infusing heated chemotherapy directly into the abdomen using a heart-lung machine. http://phys.org/news155482238.html Medicine & Health Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:31:15 EST news155482238 Researchers from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a gene that is overexpressed in 90 percent of pancreatic cancers, the most deadly type of cancer. http://phys.org/news155228377.html Medicine & Health Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:00:20 EST news155228377 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Purdue University have precisely measured the impact of a high-fat diet on the spread of cancer, finding that excessive dietary fat caused a 300 percent increase in metastasizing tumor cells in laboratory animals. http://phys.org/news154802411.html Medicine & Health Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:41:14 EST news154802411 Tumors that are about to progress and metastasize go through a process also seen in normal embryonic development, known as the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT). Tumor cells revert to a less-differentiated state, stop adhering to each another and become more mobile and prone to invade and proliferate. Now, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston show, for the first time, that a small protein called lipocalin 2 triggers the EMT in human breast cancer - and that the same protein, when measured in tissues and urine, can predict a cancer's invasiveness. Their findings were published online February 23 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://phys.org/news154632578.html Medicine & Health Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:30:13 EST news154632578 Starting with the tiny fruit fly and then moving into mice and humans, researchers at VIB and K. U. Leuven show that expression of the same gene suppresses cancer in all three organisms. Reciprocally, switching off the gene - called Ato in flies and ATOH1 in mammals - leads to cancer. The authors show there is a good chance that the gene can be switched on again with a drug. They report their findings in two papers in the leading online open access journal PLoS Biology. http://phys.org/news154618409.html Medicine & Health Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:33:57 EST news154618409 Researchers at Uppsala University have developed a new tool that makes it possible to study the signals in the body that control the generation of blood vessels.  The researchers’ findings, published in the new issue of Lab on a Chip, enable scientists to determine what signals in the body attract or repel blood vessels, knowledge that is extremely interesting in tumor research. http://phys.org/news154274706.html Chemistry Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:06:43 EST news154274706 (PhysOrg.com) -- Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have identified a gene that plays a key role in regulating liver cancer progression, a discovery that could one day lead to new targeted therapeutic strategies to fight the highly aggressive disease. http://phys.org/news154109542.html Medicine & Health Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:12:55 EST news154109542