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cell study from Brown University has found that the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), helps cancer cells survive and resist chemotherapy. According to the study, led by Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, the director of Brown’s Legorreta Cancer Center, spike protein may promote cancer survival and growth through interference with anti-cancer activities, blocking the function of a crucial cancer suppressor gene known as p53. El-Deiry and his colleagues observed that when cancer cells encountered spike protein subunits, it reduced the activity of p53, a protein that helps defend the body against tumors. This allowed the...

Researchers have found a way to stop active cancer cells in their tracks – meaning they can then be eliminated by new drug treatments. A collaborative research project between the University of Dundee’s Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) and Queen Mary University of London, has identified chemical compounds, called tool molecules, that can halt active cancer cells. Advancing Cancer Therapy Through Collaboration.. Using these tool molecules forces tumor cells from a specific type of breast cancer into a pro-senescence state – similar to a sleep-like state in which they can no longer divide or cause tumor growth. This condition makes the...

Technocrats appear keen to preclude the masses from eating real meat in hopes of combatting the specter of climate change and making more money. While there is a significant push under way for people to surrender steaks, burgers, and hot dogs and instead eat bugs and algae, climate alarmists and elites alike are also hyping so-called synthetic "meat." snip A recent Bloomberg report noted that for decades, "companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson have cultured large volumes of cells to produce vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and other biotherapeutics. Now the idea is that we might as well eat...

Obesity is a known risk factor for at least 13 types of cancer. Dr. Elda Grabocka found that stress granules are much more abundant in obesity-related pancreatic cancer compared to non-obese patients, and importantly, blocking their formation stopped cancer growth in animals. "Stress granule research is exploding right now, but there's still a lot we don't know regarding what they're made of and how they work," says Dr. Grabocka. "This work is the first to show that an overload of stress granules enables the tumor-growth in the pancreas. Our experiments in mice also showed a complete reversal of cancer growth...

Recently, a tiny group of people with rectal cancer saw their disease vanish after experimental treatment. Now, in another breakthrough, a new compound synthesized by Dr. Jung-Mo Ahn, a University of Texas at Dallas researcher, has been found to kill a broad spectrum of hard-to-treat cancers, including triple-negative breast cancer, leaving healthy cells unscathed. He exploited a weakness in cells that were hitherto not targeted by the other drugs. The study, which was carried out in isolated cells, both in human cancer tissue and in human cancers grown in mice, was published in the journal Nature Cancer. Only a few...

An emerging nanomedicine cancer treatment involving the injection of tiny nanoparticles carrying compounds that can poison cancerous cells has many benefits. This so-called photodynamic therapy (PDT) is non-toxic and it doesn't involve invasive surgery. A team led by Jan van Hest from Eindhoven University of Technology in collaboration with researchers from China and the UK have designed a new PDT nanoparticle that attack cancerous cells in a novel way: they enter cells and shut down their power stations—their mitochondria—making the therapy much more effective. This new research has been published in Angewandte Chemie. Imagine a city powered by a group...

Chillies could help fight breast cancer after scientists revealed the spicy ingredient causes diseased cells to self destruct. Capsaicin, the active component that gives chillies their trademark kick, can switch on specialised channels surrounding cancer cells causing them to die. Other cancers including colon, bone and pancreatic could also be killed off by the compound. However, capsaicin isn't effective if it's eaten, inhaled or injected, and researchers think it will only be effective as a pill attached to another drug that targets cancer cells. Scientists from Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany, treated human samples of breast cancer cells with the hot...

Capsaicin, a compound found in peppers of the genus Capsicum, inhibits the growth of breast cancer cells, according to a team of researchers in Germany.The team’s experiments were carried out with the SUM149PT cell culture, a model system for a particularly aggressive type of breast cancer, i.e. the triple-negative type. In the cultivated cells, the researchers detected a number of typical olfactory receptors. “One receptor occurred very frequently; it is usually found in the fifth cranial nerve. It belongs to the so-called transient receptor potential channels and is named TRPV1 (transient receptor potential vanilloid receptor),” they explained. “That receptor is...

Mammograms showing a normal breast (left) and a breast with cancer (right). Credit: Public Domain ============================================================================================================== Cancer cells often devise ways to survive even in the presence of toxic chemotherapy. Now, a research team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has found a way to attack a process that tumor cells use to escape the effects of standard cancer drugs. The discovery is published online today in the journal Nature Cell Biology. Cancer drugs are no longer limited to toxic chemicals that can cause significant side effects. Many are specially designed targeted therapies that seek out...

Cancer Cells Can't Proliferate and Invade at the Same Time The new findings could inform cancer treatments, which typically target only cells that are dividing By Viviane Callier on January 1, 2016 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit Email Print Share via Google+Stumble Upon Lumps and hairlike projections are characteristic of cancer cells, such as the cervical cancer cell shown here.STEVE GSCHMEISSNER Science Source Advertisement The worst cancer cells don't sit still. Instead they metastasize—migrate from their original sites and establish new tumors in other parts of the body. Once a cancer spreads, it is harder to...

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have discovered a mutant form of the gene, Chk1, that when expressed in cancer cells, permanently stopped their proliferation and caused cell death without the addition of any chemotherapeutic drugs. This study illustrates an unprecedented finding, that artificially activating Chk1 alone is sufficient to kill cancer cells. "We have identified a new direction for cancer therapy and the new direction is leading us to a reduction in toxicity in cancer therapy, compared with chemotherapy or radiation therapy," said Dr. Zhang, assistant professor, Department of Pharmacology at the School of Medicine, and...

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that many cancer cells carry the seeds of their own destruction — a protein on the cell surface that signals circulating immune cells to engulf and digest them. On cancer cells, this "eat me" signal is counteracted by a separate "don't eat me" signal that was described in an earlier study. The two discoveries may lead to better cancer therapies, and also solve a mystery about why a previously reported cancer therapy is not more toxic. In the study to be published Dec. 22 in Science Translational...

INSTEAD of killing off cancer cells with toxic drugs, scientists have discovered a molecular pathway that forces them to grow old and die. Cancer cells spread and grow because they can divide indefinitely. But a study in mice showed that blocking a cancer-causing gene called Skp2 forced cancer cells to go through an aging process known as senescence - the same process involved in ridding the body of cells damaged by sunlight. If you block Skp2 in cancer cells, this process is triggered, Pier Paolo Pandolfi of Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues reported in the journal Nature.

A dark side of stem cells--their potential to turn malignant--is at the root of a handful of cancers and may be the cause of many more. Eliminating the disease could depend on tracking down and destroying these elusive killer cellsAfter more than 30 years of declared war on cancer, a few important victories can be claimed, such as 85 percent survival rates for some childhood cancers whose diagnoses once represented a death sentence. In other malignancies, new drugs are able to at least hold the disease at bay, making it a condition with which a patient can live. In 2001,...

Cancer cell 'executioner' found Cancer cells keep dividing because the cell suicide process fails Scientists have developed a way of "executing" cancer cells.Healthy cells have a built-in process which means they commit suicide if something is wrong, a process which fails in cancer cells. The University of Illinois team created a synthetic molecule which caused cancer cells to self-destruct. Cancer experts said the study, in Nature Chemical Biology, offered "exciting possibilities" for new ways of treating the disease. These findings present an exciting new therapeutic strategy for the treatment of some cancers Dr Michael Olsen, Cancer Research UK One...