tumors

(Cell Press) Primary tumors can encourage the growth of stray cancer cells lurking elsewhere in the body that otherwise may not have amounted to much.

As people age, most may have such indolent cancer cells given the sheer number of cells in the body, although their rarity makes them impossible to detect, the researchers said.

(Journal of Experimental Medicine) Tumors escape destruction by immune cells by turning off their tumor killing functions.

A team of scientists in the UK have now found a way to retrain the impotent cells into potent tumor destroyers.

Their study will be published online May 19 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

(Journal of Clinical Investigation) Doctors treating individuals with cancer would find a noninvasive method to determine the amount of oxygen in a tumor very useful, because low levels of oxygen in a tumor have been linked to a poor outcome.

A new method to do this and to image the surrounding organs and tissues at the same time has now been developed and used to image tumors in mice.

Anyone facing chemotherapy would welcome an advance promising to dramatically reduce their dose of these often harsh drugs.

Using nanotechnology, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have taken a step closer to that goal.