Scientists at A*STAR have discovered an enzyme, Wip1 phosphatase, as a potential target to weed out the progression of cancer. Although studies in the past have revealed that this enzyme plays a critical role in regulating the budding of tumours, scientists have for the first time unearthed a mechanism for its mode of action. The research was conducted by Dr Dmitry Bulavin and his team at A*STAR
Use of a minimally invasive endoscopic procedure to remove superficial, early stage oesophageal cancer is as effective as surgery that takes out and rebuilds the esophagus, according to a study by researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida. The research examined national outcomes from endoscopic treatment compared to esophagectomy, surgical removal of the oesophagus.
It found that endoscopic therapy offered long-term survival rates similar to those for oesophagectomy, says lead author, Michael B. Wallace, M.D., a gastroenterologist at Mayo Clinic in Florida.
‘Endoscopic resection in the oesophagus is similar to how we remove polyps in the colon, although it is much more technically complex. Oesophagectomy is a major surgical procedure that cuts out the entire oesophagus, and pulls the stomach into the neck to create a new food tube,’ Dr. Wallace says.
‘Our study on national outcomes, as well as our own experience with the procedure at Mayo Clinic in Florida, suggests that both offer the similar chances for cure and long-term survival,’ he says. ‘Patients now have the option to preserve their oesophagus when only early stage cancer is present.’
The research looked at national outcomes from the two procedures in patients with oesophageal adenocarcinoma, the most common type of oesophageal cancer in the United States. The research team examined data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database.
They identified 1,619 patients with superficial, early stage oesophageal adenocarcinoma who had endoscopic therapy (19 percent) or surgery (81 percent) from 1998 through 2009. Many of these patients were treated for cancers that arose from Barrett’s oesophagus, a condition in which the cells in the lower part of the oesophagus morph into a pre-cancerous state.
The researchers collected survival data through the end of 2009, and found that endoscopy therapy increased progressively
Second Sight Medical Products, Inc., the leading developer of retinal prostheses for the blind, is pleased to announce that its Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System (Argus II), has been recognised by Popular Science magazine as
Performing CPR for 38 minutes or longer can improve a patient
An interim study by Italian researchers showed that using a modelling programme together with IPSS and dosage measure can predict the severity of acute urinary symptoms in patients with early prostate cancer who underwent radiotherapy.
‘Quantitative models predicting the risk of acute (and late) genito-urinary (GU) toxicity in patients treated with high dose radiotherapy for prostate cancer are lacking. This work represents one of the first attempts to provide radiation oncologists with quantitative tools to reliably predict the risk of moderate-severe acute GU effects based on both clinical and dosimetric individual parameters,’ said Dr. Cesare Cozzarini of the San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Dept. of Radiation Oncology in Milan, Italy.
A prospective cohort study (DUE-01) which started in April 2010, Cozzarini and colleagues aimed to develop predictive models of genito-urinary (GU) toxicity and erectile dysfunction after high dose radiotherapy (RT) for prostate cancer.
Patients treated with conventional (1.8-2Gy/fr, CONV) or moderate hypo-fractionation (2.5-2.7Gy/fr HYPO) were included.
In their ad-interim analysis, the investigators also intended to find a link between pollakiuria (POLL), dysuria (DYS) and nicturia (NICT) as measured by IPSS at RT end and clinical/dosimetric risk factors.
IPSS questionnaire at the start and at the end of RT were prospectively collected by the researchers and planning data were recovered and analyzed with a dedicated program (Vodca, MSS GmbH, Zurich), including absolute (cc/cm2) and % bladder dose-volume/surface (DVH/DSH) parameters referred to both the whole treatment and to the weekly delivered dose (DVHw/DSHw).
In the study, relevant clinical factors were also prospectively collected including T stage, concomitant morbidities and drugs, use of hormonal therapy (HT), previous surgery, smoking, age, BMI and prostate volume. In IPSS, each item ranges from 0 to 5 with increasing score which indicates increasing toxicity severity: for each question, a score=4 at the end of the therapy was considered as the end point.
At the time of the analysis (January 2013), 339 patients have been enrolled by nine institutes. Clinical data of 212/339 patients were available (93 CONV and 119 HYPO). Of 172/212 patients both baseline and end-RT IPSS were collected. For 179/212 patients also DVH/DSH were available. Questions POLL, DYS and NICT (respectively 2, 3 and 7) showed the larger increase of the fraction of patients with scores =4 between basal and end questionnaire; consequently, the analysis focused on these symptoms.
The number of patients with scores=4 increased from 8 to 30 for POLL, from 5 to 20 for DYS and from 12 to 34 for NICT. At MVA (overall p<0.0001), the main independent predictors of acute POLL were: Smoking (OR:2.74, p=0.04) and S8.5w (OR:1.01, p=0.10); AUC=0.66. The model was confirmed also after the exclusion of patients with baseline IPSS-POLL =4 (AUC=0.69).
'This study (DUE01) is aimed at prospectively collecting an enormous number of patient-reported information concerning GU toxicity (and erectile dysfunction as well) before, during and at the end of radiotherapy and for a period of five years after its completion,' said Cozzarini.
'The study therefore has a high probability of helping to develop highly reliable models for the prediction of acute and late GU toxicity and erectile dysfunction and their impact on quality of life,' he added.
'As a consequence, the final results of this investigation should have a significant impact on the evolution of radiotherapy of prostate cancer in the next five to 10 years leading to a significant reduction of GU toxicity and sexual dysfunction deriving from a more refined 'tailoring' of the radiation therapy,' according to Cozzarini.
EurekAlert
Advanced imaging techniques may be able to distinguish which patients’ tumours will respond to treatment with anti-angiogenic drugs and which will not. Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers studied patients newly diagnosed with the dangerous brain tumour glioblastoma and treated with the anti-angiogenic agent cediranib. They report that those patients for whom cediranib rapidly ‘normalised’ abnormal blood vessels around their tumours and increased blood flow within tumours survived significantly longer than did patients in whom cediranib did not increase blood flow.
‘Two recent phase III trials of another anti-angiogenic drug, bevacizumab, showed no improvement in overall survival for glioblastoma patients, but our study suggests that only a subset of such patients will really benefit from these drugs,’ explains Tracy Batchelor, MD, director of the Pappas Center for Neuro-Oncology at the MGH Cancer Center and co-lead and corresponding author of the current study. ‘Our results also verify that normalisation of tumour vasculature appears to be the way that anti-angiogenic drugs enhance the activity of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.’
Anti-angiogenic drugs, which block the action of factors that stimulate the growth of blood vessels, were first introduced for cancer treatment under the theory that they would act by ‘starving’ tumours of their blood supply. Since that time, however, new evidence has suggested that the drugs’ benefits come through their ability to ‘normalise’ the abnormal, leaky vessels that usually surround and penetrate tumours, improving delivery of both chemotherapy drugs and the oxygen that is required for effective radiation therapy. This hypothesis was first proposed and has subsequently been developed by Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, senior author of the current study and director of the Steele Laboratory for Tumor Biology in the MGH Department of Radiation Oncology.
A 2007 clinical study led by Batchelor found evidence suggesting that cediranib, which has not yet received FDA approval, could temporarily normalise tumour vasculature in recurrent glioblastoma, but it was not clear what role normalisation might have in patients’ survival. In the past few years, several research teams with leadership from Batchelor, Jain and other co-authors of the current paper reported evidence that cediranib alone improved blood perfusion within recurrent glioblastoma tumors in a subset of patients and improved their survival. A Nature Medicine study published earlier this year used a technique called vessel architectural imaging (VAI), developed at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH, to reveal that cediranib on its own improved the delivery of oxygen within tumours of some patients with recurrent glioblastoma.
Patients in the current study were participants in a clinical trial of cediranib plus radiation and chemotherapy for post-surgical treatment of newly diagnosed glioblastoma. Among participants in that trial, 40 also had advanced brain imaging with VAI and other MR imaging techniques. While all but one of the participants in the overall trial showed some evidence of vascular normalisation and reduced oedema
Sepsis is the leading cause of in-hospital death and there is no specific treatment for it. Now, research led by Dr. Qingping Feng of Western University suggests a protein called recombinant human annexin A5 may have therapeutic potential for the treatment of this disease
Sepsis is caused by an overwhelming immune response to an existing infection. It
Research jointly conducted by investigators at Institut Gustave Roussy, Inserm, Institut Pasteur and INRA (French National Agronomic Research Institute) has led to a rather surprising discovery on the manner in which cancer chemotherapy treatments act more effectively with the help of the intestinal flora (also known as the intestinal microbiota). Indeed, the researchers have just shown that the efficacy of one of the molecules most often used in chemotherapy relies to an extent on its capacity to mobilise certain bacteria from the intestinal flora toward the bloodstream and lymph nodes. Once inside the lymph nodes, these bacteria stimulate fresh immune defences that then enhance the body
A team of researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands have developed a prototype of a new imaging tool that may one day help to detect breast cancer early, when it is most treatable.
If effective, the new device, called a photoacoustic mammoscope, would represent an entirely new way of imaging the breast and detecting cancer. Instead of X-rays, which are used in traditional mammography, the photoacoustic breast mammoscope uses a combination of infrared light and ultrasound to create a 3-D map of the breast.
In the new technique, infrared light is delivered in billionth-of-a-second pulses to tissue, where it is scattered and absorbed. The high absorption of blood increases the temperature of blood vessels slightly, and this causes them to undergo a slight but rapid expansion. While imperceptible to the patient, this expansion generates detectable ultrasound waves that are used to form a 3-D map of the breast vasculature. Since cancer tumours have more blood vessels than the surrounding tissue, they are distinguishable in this image.
Currently the resolution of the images is not as fine as what can be obtained with existing breast imaging techniques like X-ray mammography and MRI. Future versions are expected to improve the resolution as well as add the capability to image using several different wavelengths of light at once, which is expected to improve detectability.
The Twente researchers, who belong to the Biomedical Photonic Imaging group run by Professor Wiendelt Steenbergen, have tested their prototype in the laboratory using phantoms
Nurses caring for ostomy patients will now be equipped with an essential new tool that provides them with the first comprehensive guide to optimise ostomy management and enhance patient safety.
Janice Beitz, a professor at the Rutgers School of Nursing
Beukenlaan 137
5616 VD Eindhoven
The Netherlands
+31 85064 55 82
info@interhospi.com
PanGlobal Media IS not responsible for any error or omission that might occur in the electronic display of product or company data.
