Specialists warn that single number average survival estimates for advanced stage breast cancer are unhelpful and usually inaccurate. Instead, they advise doctors to provide several case-specific survival estimates to help people plan with realism and hope. Breast cancer is the form of cancer that affects women the most often — about 2.1 million women worldwide receive…...
Findings could identify aggressive breast cancers that will respond to immunotherapy
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved a treatment that combines an immunotherapy drug and chemotherapy for triple negative breast cancer, but not all cases of this aggressive form of breast cancer responded in clinical studies. UNC Lineberger researchers discovered biological clues that could help identify which tumors might…...
Blocking a survival mechanism could tackle melanoma treatment resistance
The effectiveness of current treatments for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, could be improved by using approaches that wipe out the ‘survival system’ of cancer cells according to a study published in Nature Communications. Researchers from the Babraham Institute, AstraZeneca and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre have demonstrated an approach, used in parallel with existing…...
Liver cancer deaths climb by around 50% in the last decade
Liver cancer death rates have increased by around 50% in the last decade and have tripled since records began, according to the latest calculations by Cancer Research UK. New mortality data shows that there were around 5,700 deaths from liver cancer in 2017 in the UK, which is the highest ever yearly…...
Imaging tumor stiffness could help enhance treatment for breast and pancreatic cancer
Using a non-invasive imaging technique that measures the stiffness of tissues gives crucial new information about cancer architecture and could aid the delivery of treatment to the most challenging tumours, new research shows. Magnetic resonance elastography was able to visualise and measure how stiff and dense tumours are in mice.…...
Quest for new cancer treatment crosses milestone
A cancer therapy invented at Rice University has crossed a milestone in clinical trials, a major development in a decades long quest to develop a treatment that destroys tumors without the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy, invasive surgery and radiation. According to the study, thirteen of the first 15 prostate cancer…...
Tasmanian devil research could help tackle immunotherapy resistance
A cluster of interacting proteins that are active in both human cancers and Tasmanian devil facial tumours, may give clues to how cancers evade the immune system. This early work in cells could one day guide us towards new drug combinations that improve the effectiveness of immunotherapy treatments. Researchers at…...
Scientists evaluate cancer risk of US drinking water
Researchers from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) in Washington, DC, used a new approach to analyze cumulative cancer risk due to carcinogens in tap water across the U.S. This study is the first to apply a “cumulative cancer risk framework” to the analysis of tap water contaminants for the whole of the U.S.…...
Breakthrough in understanding enzymes that make antibiotic for drug-resistant pathogen
Acinetobacter baumannii is a pathogen that causes hospital-acquired infections that are very difficult to treat, because they are resistant to most currently available antibiotics. As one of the World Health Organization’s three critical priority pathogens, new antibiotics for Acinetobacter baumannii are urgently needed, and is now one step closer to being tackled, as…...
Disparities in toxic heavy metal exposures correlated with increased risk of breast cancer among minority populations
Among women in Chicago, African Americans and Hispanics were exposed to higher levels of ambient toxic heavy metals compared with non-Hispanic whites, and this increased exposure correlated with increased incidence of breast cancer. Garth Rauscher, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public…...