Author: Ian Nicholson

Mannose sugar, a nutritional supplement, can both slow tumour growth and enhance the effects of chemotherapy in mice with multiple types of cancer, a new study shows. The findings are a step towards understanding how mannose could be used to help treat cancer. Tumours use more glucose than normal, healthy tissues. However, it is very…

The enzyme Prolyl 4-hydroxylase subunit alpha-1 (P4HA1) is a potential therapeutic target for triple negative breast cancer, a study led by University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center researchers suggests. Collagen prolyl 4-hydroxylase (P4H) expression and collagen hydroxylation in cancer cells are necessary for breast cancer progression. Performed in the lab of UK College of Medicine…

A potential new class of immunotherapy drugs to treat some of the most common cancers is reported in a new paper authored by 44 scientists. The study shows how these molecules work and what they might mean for the future of cancer treatment. The immune system is a complex network of cells that work together…

Additional evidence of the connection between the intake of antioxidant supplements and increased tumor growth has been found. Experiments on animals and human cancer tissue confirm that addition of some antioxidants increases the growth of the severe malignant melanoma type of skin cancer. The idea that antioxidants protect against cancer because they neutralize so-called free…

A mathematical relationship that sheds new light on the rate at which cancer cells mutate and why some survive and rapidly multiply, yet others do not, has been revealed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health. The finding has implications for decision-making for precision-medicine tumor boards, the selection and design of clinical trials,…

We humans are top of the evolutionary tree, the most complex organisms that have ever lived on Earth in five billion years. Right? One way we might actually prove our biological complexity is to look at the number of different proteins that our bodies can produce for building all our different types of cells and…

An ultra-personalized immunotherapy approach could help immune cells improve their abilities to recognize melanoma cells and kill them, a study led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science showed. Today’s immunotherapies involve administering antibodies to unlock the natural immune T cells that recognize and kill cancer cells; or else growing and reactivating these T cells…

Combination immunotherapy shrank melanoma that has spread to the brain in more than half of the patients in a clinical trial led by an investigator at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Of 94 patients in the single-arm study combining checkpoint inhibitors ipilimumab and nivolumab, at a minimum follow-up of nine months and…

An extreme low carbohydrate, high-fat regimen called the ketogenic diet may improve the effectiveness of an emerging class of cancer drugs, finds a study in mice by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian. In the work, scientists provide a possible explanation for why the drugs, which target the insulin-activated…