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Last year, members of the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer based at Northeastern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated that acid-sensitive polymer nanoparticles could boost the delivery of anticancer drugs into the acidic interior of tumors. Now, that same group of investigators has shown that these nanoparticles are effective at suppressing tumor growth when tested in an animal model of human ovarian cancer. In addition, animals treated with this nanoparticle formulation do not appear to experience adverse side effects that often limit the ability of patients to tolerate chemotherapy. The researchers reported the results of their preclinical work...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States and China want to expand trade regulations to protect Asian yew trees, a plant that provides the compound for one of the world's top-selling chemotherapy drugs but is threatened by poaching. Chinese herbalists have used trees of the taxus species, also known as yew trees, for centuries to treat common ailments. In the late 1960s, scientists in North Carolina found that extract of yew bark fought tumors, and in the early 1990s, the U.S. government approved the use of paclitaxel, also known as taxol, by drug company Bristol-Myers Squibb for chemotherapy. Taxol, whose...