cancer drugs

For pregnant women with cancer, chemo possible Associated Press

An experimental pill that works differently than other prostate cancer drugs extended the lives of men with spreading cancer by an average of nearly five months.

Studies: Avastin may fight early breast cancers Associated Press

(University of California - Davis Health System) A new class of nanoparticles, synthesized by a UC Davis research team to prevent premature drug release, holds promise for greater accuracy and effectiveness in delivering cancer drugs to tumors.

(University at Buffalo) Will a drug used to treat childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia and other pediatric cancers cause heart problems later in life?

UB associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences, Javier G. Blanco, Ph.D., who sees his work as a bridge between research and clinical practice, has focused recent efforts on trying to answer this question.

(Boston College) Dying cells can provide crucial clues to researchers, oncologists and patients about the effectiveness of anti-cancer drugs.

But accurately detecting apoptotic cells in a timely and consistent way has proved frustrating. A team of Boston College researcher reports it has developed a small molecule receptor capable of detecting the biological signs of dying cells.

It may be possible to extend the usefulness of cancer drugs by preventing drug resistance in tumours, say researchers.

(American Friends of Tel Aviv University) Dr. David Sprinzak of Tel Aviv University has discovered the mechanism that allows cells to switch from sender to receiver mode, inhibiting their own signals while receiving information from other cells.

With this knowledge, researchers may be able to develop new cancer drugs that specifically target these transactions, potentially stopping cancer's uncontrollable proliferation.

A bacterium found in soil is showing promise as a way of delivering effective cancer drugs into tumours.

(Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have demonstrated a molecular strategy they say could make a much larger variety of tumors treatable with PARP inhibitors, a promising new class of cancer drugs.

They report that the BRCA1 repair protein is dependent on the protein CDK1. When the scientists blocked CDK1 in cancer cell lines and in a mouse model of lung cancer, BRCA1 function was disrupted, making them susceptible to being killed by a PARP inhibitor.