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Warfarin, a widely used blood thinner, appears to have potent anti-cancer properties, according to a study. "Our findings suggest that warfarin, which is already approved by the FDA, could be repurposed to treat a variety of cancers, including pancreatic cancer," says Wei Gu, Ph.D. Cancer researchers are excited by the idea of harnessing ferroptosis—so-named because it requires iron to work—to kill cancer cells. Drugs that induce ferroptosis may be particularly useful for cancers that elude current treatments. Gu, Stockwell, and their colleagues performed genetic screens on human melanoma cells to identify genes that contribute to ferroptosis. As expected, the screens...

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...

A recent Phase 1 clinical trial has administered a dose of an experimental anticancer drug called CF33-hNIS, or Vaxinia, to the study’s first participant. This novel therapy involves using an oncolytic virus, a type of virus that can infect and kill cancer cells without harming healthy tissue. Vaxinia, a genetically modified smallpox virus, has been previously shown to be effective against a broad range of cancers in laboratory and animal models. This clinical trial conducted by City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment institute in the United States, in collaboration with Imugene, a biotech company in Australia, will test...

Woman with breast cancer had metastatic lesions in chest wall (top, left) and liver (bottom, left). After receiving the immunotherapy, tumors shrank completely. Recent scans (R) show she is cancer free more than 5 years later. Credit: The National Cancer Institute (NCI) ========================================================================================== An experimental form of immunotherapy that uses an individual’s own tumor-fighting immune cells could potentially be used to treat people with metastatic breast cancer, according to results from an ongoing clinical trial led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Center for Cancer Research, part of the National Institutes of Health. Many people with metastatic breast...

Vaccines could be coming for issues we traditionally could not vaccinate against.’ HOW CAN A VACCINE TREAT CANCERS OR CHRONIC INFECTIOUS DISEASES? T cell responses are very important for identifying cells infected with chronic diseases and aberrant cancer cells. They also play a big role in eliminating these cells from the body. When a cell becomes cancerous, it starts producing neoantigens. In normal cases, the immune system detects these neoantigens, recognizes that something’s wrong with the cell and eliminates it. The reason some people get tumors is that their immune system isn’t quite capable of eliminating the tumor cells, so...

new cancer treatment can wipe out tumours in terminally ill head and neck cancer patients, scientists have discovered. In a landmark trial, a cocktail of immunotherapy medications harnessed patients’ immune systems to kill their own cancer cells and prompted “a positive trend in survival”, according to researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, and the Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust. One patient, who was expected to die four years ago, told the Guardian of the “amazing” moment nurses called him weeks after he joined the study to say his tumour had “completely disappeared”. The 77-year-old grandfather is now...

India can help solve the accessibility problem of breakthrough cancer treatment CAR -T Cell therapy, according to American physician scientist Carl June. CAR-T therapies have been effective against certain types of blood cancer. However, the treatment remained inaccessible to most patients due to its cost. The CAR-T therapy costs about $1 million - $1.5 million, including administration and hospitalisation costs in US. Novartis charges Kymriah - its CAR-T therapy about $475,000 for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). ALL is type of childhood blood cancer. Novartis guarantees refund of money if the therapy doesn’t work after one month. It charges $373,000 for...

A method for fooling breast cancer cells into fat cells has been discovered by researchers from the University of Basel. The team were able to transform EMT-derived breast cancer cells into fat cells in a mouse model of the disease – preventing the formation of metastases. The proof-of-concept study was published in the journal Cancer Cell. Malignant cells can rapidly respond and adapt to changing microenvironmental conditions, by reactivating a cellular process called epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), enabling them to alter their molecular properties and transdifferentiate into a different type of cell (cellular plasticity). Senior author of the study Gerhard Christofori,...

(FOX 26) - Scientists have taken a giant step towards curing cancer, according to a new study. Stanford university researchers have found a way to clear cancer in mice with immune-system stimulating injections. The report published in the Science Translational Medicine Journal last week shows promise in terms of destroying tumors. The new approach is a form of immunotherapy, which uses the body's own disease-fighting power to battle cancer. Scientists report using compound injections to effectively eradicate cancer tumors in mice. According to the study, their approach worked startlingly well -- even in mice who had lymphoma in two different...

A Ludwig Cancer Research study has uncovered an entirely novel mechanism by which cells enter a state of dormancy as tissues starved of oxygen become increasingly acidic. The study, led by Chi Van Dang, scientific director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, has potentially significant implications for cancer therapy: Large swaths of solid tumors are often deprived of oxygen, and cells in such patches are thought to be a major source of drug resistance and disease relapses. Baking soda had previously been reported to enhance cancer immunotherapy by one of the co-authors of the new study, though the mechanism...

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...