In some ways, certain tumors resemble bee colonies, says pathologist Tan Ince. Each cancer cell in the tumor plays a specific role, and just a fraction of the cells serve as ?queens,? possessing the unique ability to maintain themselves in an unspecialized state and seed new tumors. These cells can also divide and produce the ?worker? cells that form the bulk of the tumor.
Racial differences in breast cancer survival increase according to stage of disease, a new study finds. Published in the September 15, 2007 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, a retrospective analysis of survival data demonstrates that within each stage, African American women had larger tumors and were more likely to have disease that had spread to nearby lymph nodes.
Prognostic factors commonly used by clinicians to assess men with prostate cancer do not adequately predict survival outcomes in Asian men living in America, according to the first comprehensive ethnic analysis of Asian-American men with prostate cancer.
Researchers have found that metals present in tobacco smoke mimic the effects of estrogens and activate the body?s estrogen receptor, an action that may increase the risk of breast cancer. These metals are a new class of potent environmental estrogens called metalloestrogens, and smoking is a significant route of exposure.
When a woman receives a breast cancer diagnosis her entire life may change in the blink of an eye. But the nature of that change is governed by the smallest alterations that take place within the proteins of the tumor cells, determining what treatments she can pursue with a hope of cure and those to which her cancer is resistant.
Metastasis ? when cancer cells dissociate from the original tumor and migrate via the blood stream to colonize distant organs ? is the main cause of cancer death.
Almac Diagnostics announced a major study analysing ductal carcinoma in situ tissue samples using its novel Breast Cancer DSA? microarray. DSA? research tools focus on the transcriptome of an individual disease, in this case breast cancer, and contain significant additional data, relevant to the disease of interest that is not available on other generic microarrays.
A well-known inflammatory protein spawns an enzyme that inactivates two tumor-suppressing genes, ultimately triggering production of new blood vessels to nourish breast cancer cells, researchers at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the August edition of the journal Cell.
Every three minutes, a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer . While factors like age and heredity contribute significantly to a woman?s likelihood of contracting this disease, lifestyle and nutrition choices may also play a role. One dietary choice that may help provide protection against breast cancer is a glass of 100 percent grape juice made from deep purple Concord grapes.
An in-depth understanding of the mechanisms that trigger cancer cell growth is vital to the development of more targeted treatments for the disease. An article published in the August 3 issue of Molecular Cell provides a key to these mechanisms that may prove crucial in the future.