News by Subject Medicine & Health

MD Anderson researchers discovered that a combination of immunotherapy and targeted therapies that block normal DNA damage repair, such as PARP inhibitors, achieved dramatic tumor reduction in mouse models of small cell lung cancer.

Melanoma patients with a history of smoking cigarettes are 40 percent less likely to survive their skin cancer than people who have never smoked, according to a new report funded by Cancer Research UK.

Children living in homes with all vinyl flooring or flame-retardant chemicals in the sofa have significantly higher concentrations of potentially harmful semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) in their blood or urine than children from homes where these materials are not present, according to new Duke University-led research. The researchers presented their findings Feb. 17 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

Fewer than 1 in 10 patients with glioblastoma -- the most common type of brain cancer -- respond to immunotherapy; a new study reveals how to detect patients who may respond.

Results from the NRG Oncology clinical study NRG-RTOG 0415 determined that a hypofractionated radiotherapy schedule (H-RT), a treatment schedule that delivers a total dose of radiotherapy over a shorter period of time, is not worse than the conventional radiotherapy schedule (C-RT) in terms of bowel, bladder, sexual, and general quality of life (QOL) as well as anxiety and depression for men with low risk prostate cancer.

Researchers have created new machine learning software that can forecast the survival rates and response to treatments of patients with ovarian cancer.

A cutting-edge technique called cellular barcoding has been used to tag, track and pinpoint cells responsible for the spread of breast cancer from the main tumour into the blood and other organs. Dr Delphine Merino, Dr Tom Weber, Professor Jane Visvader, Professor Geoffrey Lindeman and Dr Shalin Naik led the highly collaborative research that involved breast cancer biologists, clinician scientists, biotechnologists and computational experts at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

An immune checkpoint molecule developed for cancer immunotherapy also protects against future development of multiple types of cancer when administered by itself. The recombinant protein molecule SA-4-1BBL has been used to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of cancer vaccines with success in pre-clinical animal models. Surprisingly, when the researchers treated normal, healthy mice with SA-4-1BBL alone, the mice were protected when the researchers later exposed them to different types of tumor cells.