For patients undergoing surgery for spinal stenosis, the risk of complications is higher when the surgeon performs very few such procedures
Development of new therapies for a range of medical conditions
The humble aspirin may soon have a new role. Scientists from The City College of New York have developed a new aspirin compound that has great promise to be not only an extremely potent cancer-fighter, but even safer than the classic medicine cabinet staple.
The new designer aspirin curbed the growth of 11 different types of human cancer cells in culture without harming normal cells, reported a team from the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education of The City College of New York in a paper published this month in the journal ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. The cancers controlled included colon, pancreatic, lung, prostate, breast, and leukaemia. ‘The key components of this new compound are that it is very, very potent and yet it has minimal toxicity to the cells,’ said Associate Professor Khosrow Kashfi, the principal investigator.
The aspirin compound also shrank human colon cancer tumours by 85 percent in live animals, again without adverse effects, according to a second paper in press by the City College researchers and colleague Kenneth Olson of Indiana University School of Medicine, South Bend. ‘If what we have seen in animals can be translated to humans,’ said Professor Kashfi, ‘it could be used in conjunction with other drugs to shrink tumours before chemotherapy or surgery.’
Long the go-to drug for minor aches and pains, aspirin and other so-called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen and naproxen, are known primarily for their ability to calm inflammation. Studies in the 1980
Early detection of melanoma, the most aggressive skin cancer, is critical because melanoma will spread rapidly throughout the body. Now, University of Missouri researchers are one step closer to melanoma cancer detection at the cellular level, long before tumours have a chance to form. Commercial production of a device that measures melanoma using photoacoustics, or laser-induced ultrasound, will soon be available to scientists and academia for cancer studies. The commercial device also will be tested in clinical trials to provide the data required to obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for early diagnosis of metastatic melanoma and other cancers.
‘Using a small blood sample, our device and method will provide an earlier diagnosis for aggressive melanoma cancers,’ said John Viator, associate professor of biomedical engineering and dermatology in the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center. ‘We compare the detection method to watching an eight-lane highway full of white compact cars. In our tests, the cancer cells look like a black 18-wheeler.’
Currently, physicians use CT or MRI scans for melanoma cancer detection, costing thousands of dollars. Viator
When surgeons operate to remove a tumour, determining exactly where to cut can be tricky. Ideally, the entire tumour should be removed while leaving a continuous layer of healthy tissue, but current techniques for locating the tumours during surgery are imprecise. Now a multidisciplinary team from the University of California, San Diego, is developing an alternate means of precisely tagging breast cancer tumours for removal or targeted destruction.
Breast cancer is the most common female cancer in the U.S., and the main cause of death in women ages 40-59, according to UptoDate, an information service for clinical physicians. Over a lifetime, 1 in 8 women in the U.S. is expected to develop breast cancer. Despite great strides in survival, there is trauma associated not only with the disease, but also with its treatment. Many women want to avoid a full mastectomy, but conventional breast-conserving approaches, such as lumpectomy, can be arduous. Up to 25 % of lumpectomies require a second surgery to excise the entire tumour.
The UCSD team is working on a better method for tagging tumours that should reduce the need for follow-up surgeries. The researchers developed iron-doped
A study by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center
A new study suggests that echocardiography be included as part of screenings to help identify student athletes with heart problems that could lead to sudden death.
The Cincinnati Children
A new ground-breaking technology was recently used at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) where two cardiologists, Dr. David Birnie and Dr. Pablo Nery, implanted anew innovative leadless defibrillator, the subcutaneous implantable cardioverter defibrillator (S-ICD), to a 18year-old patient. Under Health Canada
Jonathan Friedberg, M.D.A University of Rochester Medical Center study challenges treatment guidelines for early stage follicular lymphoma, concluding that six different therapies can bring a remission, particularly if the patient is carefully examined and staged at diagnosis.
The research underlines the fact that when cancer strikes, modern patients and their oncologists across the United States are taking many diverse treatment paths when there is scant data to support one method over another. This study suggests that the old standard approach
New research shows that boosting a protein pathway in the body
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