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Scientists devised a pinpointed immunotherapy regimen that eradicated tumors throughout the body in mice. Credit: Sagiv-Barfi et al., Science Translational Medicine (2018) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

MIT biologists have designed a new peptide that can disrupt a key protein that many types of cancers, including some forms of lymphoma, leukemia, and breast cancer, need to survive. The new peptide targets a protein called Mcl-1, which helps cancer cells avoid the cellular suicide that is usually induced by DNA damage. By blocking Mcl-1, the peptide can force cancer cells to undergo programmed cell death. "Some cancer cells are very dependent on Mcl-1, which is the last line of defense keeping the cell from dying. It's a very attractive target," says Amy Keating, an MIT professor of biology...

American regulators granted approval on Wednesday to a gene-altering treatment for patients suffering from lymphoma, the second-ever approval for a gene therapy procedure and one that could revolutionize how we fight cancer. The drug, named Yescarta, was developed by Israeli-founded Kite Pharma and it is expected to cost some $373,000, likely generating hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Kite was purchased by Gilead Sciences in August to the tune of $11.9 billion, and today’s breakthrough may have helped with the sale. The price of Yescarta is set below that of comparable treatments, according to Reuters, as Novartis AG’s gene...

This image depicts the structure of the BAX protein (purple). The activator compound BTSA1 (orange) has bound to the active site of BAX (green), changing the shape of the BAX molecule at several points (shown in yellow, magenta and cyan). BAX, once in its final activated form, can home in on mitochondria and puncture their outer membranes, triggering apoptosis (cell death). Credit: Albert Einstein College of Medicine ******************************************************************************** Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have discovered the first compound that directly makes cancer cells commit suicide while sparing healthy cells. The new treatment approach, described in today's issue of...

In the rich world, cancer therapy is expensive. In the developing world, it may not be available at all. Not only is cutting-edge technology in short supply, but so are things like electricity and medical personnel. The lack of necessary resources for basic healthcare is made obvious by the fact that, if diagnosed with cancer, a person in the developing world is more likely to die from it than a person in the developed world. To help alleviate this problem, cheap, uncomplicated, portable, and preferably non-surgical treatments that do not require electricity are needed. Now, a team of researchers from...

Share this video with anyone and everyone   EBC-46 is an experimental drug candidate being studied pre-clinically by the Australian company Ecobiotics (specifically its drug discovery subsidiary Qbiotics). It was discovered through an automated screening process of natural products by selecting increasingly purified fractions of plant extracts, based on their ability to produce the desired activity profile. This is then followed by artificial synthesis of the isolated compound to confirm its chemical structure. EBC-46 is a phorbol ester which, along with other related compounds, acts as a protein kinase C regulator.   The initial lead came from observation that...

The war on cancer has created more treatments, but could do more on prevention.In his final State of the Union address one year ago, President Obama announced a “moonshot” initiative to “cure cancer once and for all.” Though the moonshot will be one of Obama’s few health programs to continue under President Donald Trump — its $1.8 billion budget is secure — today, on World Cancer Day, it remains more difficult than ever to imagine a real cure. Take the 50-year-old man diagnosed with prostate cancer in my clinic at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He received a novel...

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...

A man with deadly brain cancer that had spread to his spine saw his tumors shrink and, for a time, completely vanish after a novel treatment to help his immune system attack his disease — another first in this promising field. The type of immunotherapy that 50-year-old Richard Grady received already has helped some people with blood cancers such as leukemia. But the way he was given it is new, and may allow its use not just for brain tumors but also other cancers that can spread, such as breast and lung. Grady was the first person to get the...

Former president Jimmy Carter announced Sunday that he’s stopping treatment for his brain cancer at the ripe age of 91. Inspiring as his story is, it’s hard not to wonder: how’d he do it? Turns out Carter was being treated with Keytruda, a new and highly promising immunotherapy drug that was approved not long after Carter was diagnosed. In August 2015, Carter announced that his aggressive melanoma — a deadly form of skin cancer — had spread to his brain, and it seemed pretty clear that he had only a few weeks left to live. Still, he underwent treatment at...

MELBOURNE, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- A tablet developed in Melbourne that "melts away" cancer cells has been approved for use in the United States. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday that venetoclax was approved for prescription outside of human trials for patients with chronic lymphotic leukemia (CLL). Venetoclax, which overwhelms the BCL-2 protein that is vital to cancer cell survival, was developed in Melbourne in the 1980s after researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) discovered the importance of BCL-2. WEHI's head of clinical translation, Professor Andrew Roberts, said that 80...

In the early 20th century, the German biochemist Otto Warburg believed that tumors could be treated by disrupting their source of energy. His idea was dismissed for decades — until now... Theodor Boveri discovered that if he fertilized sea-urchin eggs with two sperm rather than one, some of the cells would end up with the wrong number of chromosomes and fail to develop properly....Boveri was aware that cancer cells, had abnormal chromosomes; whatever caused cancer, had something to do with chromosomes. ... Otto Warburg's... research, was hailed as a major breakthrough in our understanding of cancer..... Warburg was focused on...

Hamas-loving former US President Jimmy Carter is now cancer free thanks to a cancer drug developed by a joint US-Israeli team. This is from the first link. Carter announced in August that he had been diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to his brain and laid out a treatment plan, including a round of targeted radiation at the brain tumors and doses of an immune-boosting drug every three weeks. Keytruda, the drug, was approved not long before Carter's announcement and helps his body seek out and destroy cancer cells. Carter's spokeswoman Deanna Congileo said in an email that Carter...

One in six American men will develop prostate cancer.  It is the most common cancer after skin cancer, and the second biggest cancer killer for men.  Two Israeli scientists at the Weizmann Institute in Israel promise an almost miraculous cure, now in clinical trials at New York’s Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  It is the culmination of 20 years of basic research by plant scientist Avigdor Scherz and cancer researcher Yoram Saloman. Professor Scherz took a naturally occurring form of chlorophyll from aquatic bacteria: … chemically modified by Prof. Scherz's lab at Weizmann to fit the team's pharmaceutical needs. Once...

Dr. D'Agostino is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida College Of Medicine, Molecular Pharmacology & Physiology where he develops and tests metabolic therapies, including alternative energy substrates and ketogenic agents for neurological disorders, cancer and wound healing. While studying the effects of gasses on the brains of Navy Seal divers, he developed an approach for metabolically starving cancer cells through diet and compressed oxygen, replacing chemotherapy, surgery, or radiation. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event,...

A new cancer treatment strategy is on the horizon that experts say could be a game-changer and spare patients the extreme side effects of existing options such as chemotherapy. Chemotherapy and other current cancer treatments are brutal, scorched-earth affairs that work because cancer cells are slightly - but not much - more susceptible to the havoc they wreak than the rest of the body. Their side effects are legion, and in many cases horrifying – from hair loss and internal bleeding to chronic nausea and even death. But last week the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the first time...

Two Danish researchers are behind what is being hailed as a major possible breakthrough in the search for a cure for cancer. Danish cancer survival among worst in Europe (26 Sep 15) Cancer vaccines under investigation by EU (13 Jul 15) Denmark to go on the offensive against cancer (14 Aug 14) Danish scientists Ali Salanti and Mads Daugaard were looking for an effective vaccine against malaria in pregnant women but they may have discovered something much more powerful. Salanti, a malaria researcher at the University of Copenhagen (KU), and Daugaard, a cancer researcher at the University of British Columbia...

Could a malaria protein work as a weapon against cancer?A group of Danish researchers found the potential cure while looking for a way to protect pregnant women from malaria. Malaria, a bloodborne disease caused by the Plasmodium parasite, is especially dangerous for pregnant women because the parasite may attack the placenta, putting the child's life at risk. Because of similar characteristics between tumors and placentas, they found that malaria proteins can also attack cancer.Like Us on Facebook "The placenta is an organ, which within a few months grows from only few cells into an organ weighing approximately 2 pounds, and...

At a press conference today, former President Jimmy Carter revealed the ways he is tackling the melanoma cancer that has spread to his brain and liver: He'll receive radiation, as well as another lesser-known treatment called immunotherapy. Up until now, most cancer patients only had a few options. They could get chemotherapy or radiation that kills cancerous cells and stops them from dividing, or surgery to cut out the disease. Yet the success rate of these options is far from perfect. Now a new kind of cancer treatment has come into play: immunotherapies. These treatments, which include Carter's infusion called...