By Stephen Smith The Boston GlobePublished: July 3, 2008

BOSTON: Researchers have developed a test that can identify minute amounts of tumor cells floating in the blood of cancer patients, a discovery that could lead to better treatments with fewer side effects.

The technology, developed at Massachusetts General Hospital, uses a microchip scanner no bigger than a business card to analyze a patient's blood, hunting for stray cells shed by tumors. The device is so powerful that it can detect a single cancer cell among one billion healthy blood cells.

Once those cells are captured, their genetic fingerprints can help determine the most effective drug for a patient whose cancer has already begun spreading and also can show whether medication has lost its effectiveness.

The technology is being tried in patients whose cancer has already spread, but scientists hope in the future that the chip will be able to detect the spread of cancer before secondary tumors have become established.


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Adopting just a couple of elements of the Mediterranean diet could cut the risk of cancer by 12%, say scientists.


A study of 26,000 Greek people found just using more olive oil alone cut the risk by 9%.

EGP News Service

Researchers at UCLA say a drug already used to help transplant recipients accept new tissue may also reverse a brain malfunction caused by a genetic defect, scientists announced June 22.

Rapamycin, a drug already approved and in use for organ transplant recipients, targets enzymes that are produced by the same cells that cause mental retardation in persons afflicted with a disease called tuberous sclerosis complex, UCLA officials said.

Nanotechnology and a fungus that inadvertantly contaminated a lab experiment may be broadly effective against a range of cancers including breast cancer, neuroblastoma, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors known as glioblastomas and uterine tumors.

The full story can be found here: »www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdes···1547.htm

By Jo Anne Way - Jun 22, 2008

A 52-year-old man from Oregon with Stage 4 melanoma has responded to an experimental treatment with amazing results. The man was given less than a year to live, but had a complete remission of his advanced deadly skin cancer after an experimental treatment that revved up his immune system to fight the tumors.

He is now tumor-free two years after being treated by 'immunotherapy.' "Immunotherapy has become the most promising approach" to late-stage, death-sentence skin cancers, said Dr. Darrell Rigel, a dermatology researcher at the New York University Cancer Institute in New York who had no role in the research.

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AUSTIN, Texas (KXAN)
The World Community Grid uses idle computers to help treat, cure and diagnose diseases.

Students in a lab at Austin Community College are putting the school's computers to work, but when the typing stops, the machines become "superhero computers," so to speak, quietly calculating possible cures for cancer and drug treatments for malaria and AIDS.

ScienceDaily (Jun. 6, 2008) — When Sammie Bush mentioned to his doctor that he sometimes felt something in the back of his throat, he didn't expect to learn that he had cancer or that he would be the first patient at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago to undergo photodynamic therapy -- a new procedure that uses light to destroy cancer.

Last Updated: Monday, May 26, 2008 | 12:28 PM ET CBC News

A protein found on immune cells in the body may one day be recruited to attack cancerous tumours, say researchers in Britain and Toronto.

The scientists at the London Research Institute, the University of London and the University of Toronto believe a vaccine hitched to the protein could signal to a person's immune system to attack cancer cells.

Friday, May 16, 2008; 12:00 AM

FRIDAY, May 16 (HealthDay News) A treatment that uses natural killer (NK) immune system cells from umbilical cord blood effectively destroys human leukemia cells in mice, researchers say.

The NK cells reduced by 60 percent to 85 percent human acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) and acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) cells in test mice with aggressive human leukemias, according to the study.

INDIANAPOLIS — Eli Lilly & Co. said giving advanced lung cancer patients its Alimta drug after chemotherapy increased patients' survival without tumor recurrence or progression.

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE

A combination of two new-generation cancer drugs modestly delayed the time it took for cancer to worsen in a study of 300 women with very advanced disease who had stopped responding to other treatments.

It was the first test of these two highly targeted drugs, Herceptin and Tykerb.

By Steven Reinberg -HealthDay Reporter

SUNDAY, May 18 (HealthDay News) -- A therapeutic vaccine to treat prostate cancer appears safe and may be effective, according to the results of an early trial

The vaccine could give hope to men with metastatic prostate cancer by activating their immune systems to fight the disease. The vaccine was developed to enable a patient's immune system to produce anti-antigens and attack cancer cells, which can improve quality of life and extend survival.

It looks like there is another good reason to take aspirin.

»www.reuters.com/article/domestic···20080430

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - Poniard Pharmaceuticals Inc.

By Steven Reinberg

WEDNESDAY, April 23 (HealthDay News) -- A protein that stops the spread of breast cancer tumors in mice can predict which malignancies might spread, a new study suggests.

The gene, called bromodomain protein (Brd4), when added to breast cancer cells in mice, produced a unique gene signature, which was also detected in human breast cancer patients.

Research grid could lead to improved drug research and safer clinical trials for cancer patients -- and soon for other diseases

By Heather Havenstein


March 26, 2008 (Computerworld) In June 2000, President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair unveiled what amounted to a "rough draft" of the deciphered human genome, a milestone in the effort to crack the complex genetic code that shapes human development.

The work of the mapping of the human genome, whose completion was announced in April 2003, was heavily dependent on advanced computing for the data-intensive task of mapping the sequence of 3 billion base gene pairs.

Ironically, getting that genetic data into the hands of biomedical researchers has created another major computer quandary: the need for even more advanced systems that can keep up with an increasing number of disease subcategories being discovered through genetic research.


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ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2008) — Current medications for seizures are comparable to over-the-counter cold and flu remedies: They block symptoms, but don't significantly affect the underlying illnesses that cause them.

PARMA HEIGHTS -- It's called Lymphangioleiomyomatosis, a long word with 24 letters to describe a disease that may affect more women than previously thought.
Sally Nagel's been battling the disease, LAM for short, for more than 30 years.

MICHELLE L. START Florida Weekly Correspondent

Southwest Florida patients diagnosed with cancer will be some of the first people in the world to have access to technology that may obliterate the diseased cells within seconds - but they will have to wait a little longer until the Food Drug Administration approves human testing.

February 06, 2008: 05:19 PM EST

Avantogen Oncology, Inc. reports that SciClone Pharmaceuticals, Inc.