tumor cells

(Scripps Research Institute) A team led by scientists at the Scripps Research Institute has discovered key elements of a strategy commonly used by tumor cells to survive when they spread to distant organs.

The finding could lead to drugs that could inhibit this metastasis in patients with tumors.

(Georgetown University Medical Center) In a major step that could revolutionize biomedical research, scientists have discovered a way to keep normal cells as well as tumor cells taken from an individual cancer patient alive in the laboratory -- which previously had not been possible.

Normal cells usually die in the lab after dividing only a few times, and many common cancers will not grow, unaltered, outside of the body.

(Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona)) A study by researchers Raul Méndez, ICREA research professor at the IRB Barcelona and Pilar Navarro at the IMIM describes a new reprogramming mechanism for the expression of genes responsible for turning a healthy cell into a tumor cell.

In the study, published in this week's edition of Nature Medicine, the scientists have identified the protein CPEB4 as a "cellular orchestra conductor" that "activates" hundreds of genes associated with tumor growth.

(University of Illinois at Chicago) The removal of rare tumor cells circulating in the blood might be possible with the use of biomolecules bound to dendrimers, highly branched synthetic polymers, which could efficiently sift and capture the diseased cells, according to new research at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

(American Association for Cancer Research) Protein S100A10 is essential for metastatic growth. Macrophages rely upon S100A10 to power movement of tumor cells to new sites.

(Penn State) Adult stem cells from mice converted to antigen-specific T cells -- the immune cells that fight cancer tumor cells -- show promise in cancer immunotherapy and may lead to a simpler, more efficient way to use the body's immune system to fight cancer, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

(IDIBELL-Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute) Like snakes, tumor cells shed their skin. Cancer is not a static disease but during its development the disease accumulates changes to evade natural defenses adapting to new environmental circumstances, protecting against chemotherapy and radiotherapy and invading neighboring organs, eventually causing metastasis.

Giving a combination of the targeted drugs Herceptin and Tykerb before breast cancer surgery wipes out tumor cells in about twice as many women as either drug alone.

(Penn State) Tumors that do not respond to chemotherapy are the target of a cancer therapy that prevents the function of two enzymes in mouse tumor cells, according to Pennsylvania medical researchers.

(University of Southern California) Oncogenes are generally thought to be genes that, when mutated, change healthy cells into cancerous tumor cells.

Scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California have proven that those genes also can change normal cells into stem-like cells, paving the way to a safer and more practical approach to treating diseases like multiple sclerosis and cancer with stem cell therapy.