Through a genomic screening method known as CRISPR/CAS9 screening, Massey scientists—led by Anthony Faber and Jennifer Koblinski—identified a specific enzyme called UBA1 that revealed itself as an ideal therapeutic target in triple negative breast cancer. Using a novel UBA-inhibiting drug called TAK-243, they blocked the cellular function of UBA1 and effectively killed cancer cells in patient-derived breast tumors in mice.
Researchers recently completed the first human trial of proton FLASH radiotherapy at the Cincinnati Children’s/University of Cincinnati Medical Center Proton Therapy Center. FLASH RT was shown to be as safe and appeared to be as effective as conventional radiation without causing unexpected side effects in the study in a small number of people with bone cancer.
An analysis of data on the use of radiation therapy in a large clinical trial of patients with HR+, HER2- breast cancer who had one to three involved lymph nodes and a 21-gene recurrence score of 25 or less found that rates of locoregional recurrence of the disease were low regardless of whether a patient had received regional node irradiation. The results suggest that a randomized clinical trial is required to answer the question of whether these favorable-risk patients can safely skip RNI.
ViewRay Inc. began a phase III randomized controlled trial titled “Locally Advanced Pancreatic cancer treated with ABLATivE stereotactic MRI-guided adaptive radiation therapy”—also known as LAP-ABLATE—which will compare stand-alone multi-agent chemotherapy, which is the current standard of care for patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer, to patients receiving a combination of chemotherapy and 5-fraction MRIdian stereotactic MR-guided adaptive radiotherapy.
Feng Yang’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which looked into what drives the growth of advanced tumors that have become resistant to standard castration therapy. Working with cells in the lab and animal models, they discovered an approach that suppresses the growth of therapy-resistant tumors.
Scott Verbridge, associate professor in biomedical engineering and mechanics at Virginia Tech, and Barath Udayasuryan, an alumnus from the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, have discovered a characteristic of a common oral bacterium that relocates to pancreatic cancer tumors which may help guide future therapeutic interventions for treatment.
New research indicates that among individuals with breast cancer, those with a rare subtype called inflammatory breast cancer face a higher risk that their cancer will metastasize to the brain.
Allogene Therapeutics Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company, has initiated the first phase II clinical trial of allogeneic CAR T-cell therapy.
Female cancer patients are less satisfied with the quality of their cancer care than male cancer patients, and are more likely to report that their symptoms were not taken seriously and that they had to prove their symptoms to providers.
In a research paper published in PLOS ONE, Dario C. Altieri, president and chief executive officer, director of the Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center, and the Robert and Penny Fox Distinguished Professor at The Wistar Institute, alongside national and international collaborators, distinguish a specific gene signature indicative of mitochondrial reprogramming in tumors that correlates with poor patient outcome.
