If you are a cancer patient scheduled to have a biopsy, blood test or surgery, you may want to watch this new video from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The informative 15-minute presentation answers common questions about tissue banking, a process where the patient can voluntarily donate a portion of their tumor or blood sample so [...]

A team at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has developed a highly sensitive technology which enables scientists to rapidly analyze single cells, tissue, and biofluids such as blood and urine with little or no advance sample preparation. The new nanotechnology is called Nanostructure-Initiator Mass Spectrometry, or NIMS for short. Mass Spectrometers are used to determine [...]

Results of a Swedish study published in the November 2007 issue of The Lancet Oncology show children of parents who survived certain cancers are more likely to survive the disease if it strikes them too. To arrive at their conclusion, researchers from the Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm Söder Hospital, studied data on over three million [...]

If you’ve been reading our journal and other health-related publications, you already know that heredity plays a big role in assessing your own risk of cancer. But what if you don’t know much about your family history? Two new web sites might be able to help you fill in the blanks. GeneTree and Ancestry.com are [...]

Two Arizona-based philanthropic organizations are contributing $45 million to create a partnership promoting prevention and earlier detection of cancer and other diseases. The Partnership for Personalized Medicine at Arizona State University will receive $35 million from the Virginia G. Piper Trust and $10 million from the Flinn Foundation to bring together resources to advance a [...]

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is establishing two new centers to study the important ethical, legal and social implications faced by individuals involved in human genetics and genomics research. The multi-million dollar centers will be launched at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The [...]

Experts are concerned Australia’s Tasmanian Devil could soon be extinct due to a contagious form of facial cancer that is wiping out entire populations of the marsupial. Because Devil groups lack genetic diversity, their bodies don’t launch an immune response to combat tumors. The disease progresses rapidly, resulting in disfiguring growths on the animal’s face [...]