Cancer Research Journal » Stomach Cancer

UCLA Kills Cancer Cells With Light-Activated Nanoimpeller

Lisa — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:18:32 +0000

Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed a new light-activated nanomachine which can store anticancer drugs and release them into cancer cells.

Researchers from the California NanoSystems Institute and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA created the tiny cargo-carrying nanoparticles as a mechanism to deliver targeted chemotherapy drugs or dyes inside living cancer cells, where they can then be released by photoactivation.

To make this controlled release possible, Jeffrey Zink and Fuyu Tamanoi, co-directors of UCLA’s Nano Machine Center for Targeted Delivery and On-Demand Release, coated molecule-sized pores with azobenzene and loaded them with anticancer drugs. Once these engineered nanoparticles had their cargo, they were given to human cancer cells in vitro in the dark.

After the nanoparticles, known as nanoimpellers, were taken up by the cancer cells, the drug delivery mechanism was remote-activated by exposing the particles to light.

Zink and Tamanoi’s team tested the nanoimpellers on a variety of malignant cells including human colon and pancreatic cancers and found they were successful in causing cell death. They believe the discovery has strong implications for the future of cancer treatment. As they explained,

“This system has potential applications for precise drug delivery and might be the next generation for novel platforms for the treatment of cancers such as colon and stomach cancer. The fact that one can operate the mechanism by remote control means that one can administer repeated small-dosage releases to achieve greater control of the drug’s effect.”

Fuyu Tamanoi, PhD and Jeffrey Zink, PhD
California NanoSystems Institute, UCLA

If you’d like to read more about the nanoimpeller, UCLA’s findings have been published in the March 31, 2008, advance online edition of the nanoscience journal Small.

Source: UCLA News

Europe OKs Oral Chemo for Advanced Colorectal Cancer

Lisa — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:25:03 +0000

Patients being treated for metastatic colorectal cancer in Europe just got a new treatment option.

Capecitabine, which is marketed by Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company Roche under the trade name Xeloda, has been approved by the European Commission for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer.

European health officials approved the oral tablets for use in combination with any chemotherapy in all lines of treatment, with or without Avastin®, based on studies showing it produced approximately the same survival rates and level of safety as standard intravenous 5FU chemotherapies currently in use.

Oncologists are optimistic the drug will provide a valuable treatment alternative for thousands of patients in Europe who are diagnosed with metastatic colorectal cancer every year. As one explained,

“Until now, Xeloda has been available to only a few colorectal cancer patients. But several studies have now shown that almost all patients with colorectal cancer that has spread can benefit from Xeloda at any time and in combination with any chemotherapy treatment. It is a highly effective oral chemotherapy that reduces hospital treatment time by 160 hours compared to the old standard chemotherapy, allowing patients to live as normal a life as possible.”

Professor Jim Cassidy
Cancer Research UK and Chair of Medical Oncology
Beatson Oncology Centre, University of Glasgow

The most commonly reported side effects of Xeloda are diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea, stomatitis and hand-foot syndrome.

This latest action adds to growing list of Xeloda-related approvals impacting cancer patients and professionals in more than 100 countries. South Korea has already licensed the drug as a first-line treatment for stomach cancer and for metastatic pancreatic cancer in combination with gemcitabine. In Japan, the treatment is licensed for advanced breast cancer. The US Food and Drug Administration approved capecitabine for adjuvant (post-surgery) treatment of colon cancer in June 2005.

If you’d like to learn more about treatment options available to colorectal cancer patients in the US, you can visit the National Cancer Institute’s Colon and Rectal Cancer page.

Sources: Reuters and Medical News Today

Technorati Tags: XELOX; palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia; pharmacodynamics; Centre for Oncology and Applied Pharmacology

Triptolide Could Help Treat Pancreatic Cancer

Lisa — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:30:08 +0000

Research conducted at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center has found that a natural compound helps break down treatment-resistant pancreatic cancer.

The compound, known as triptolide, is a toxic agent which has been used as a natural medicine in China for hundreds of years.

In the Minnesota study, Ashok Saluja, PhD, discovered triptolide had the ability to invade heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) which serves as a survival mechanism for cancer cells. Results of experiments with mice showed those who received triptolide experienced decreased cancer growth and significantly fewer invasions into the spleen, liver, kidney and small intestine.

Other reports have indicated triptolide may also be an effective therapy for breast cancer, bladder cancer, melanoma and stomach cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is usually well advanced when it is detected and difficult to treat. Approximately half of the 37,000 people diagnosed annually in the United States die within four months of discovering they have the disease.

Dr Saluja and his team hope to refine the compound so clinical trials on patients with cancer of the pancreas can begin.

Findings from the study are published in the October issue of Cancer Research, a journal from the American Association for Cancer Research.

Source: University of Minnesota Cancer Center News Releases

Tags: Selwyn M. Vickers MD; University of Minnesota Academic Health Center; William E Grizzle; University of Alabama, Birmingham; tripterygiuym wilfordii; Rajinda K Dawra, PhD; biochemistry

Italian Scientists Tie Trop-2 Gene to Tumor Growth

Lisa — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:05:27 +0000

Scientists from the University of Chieti in Italy have found that a gene which normally functions in the placenta during the early stages of pregnancy is also expressed in most human cancers.

Professor Saverio Alberti and his team discovered that the Trop-2 gene was involved in the formation of invasive cells needed during the stage between when the egg is fertilized and the embryo is formed. That finding led them to wonder if Trop-2 might also play a part in another invasive function – tumor growth.

To find out, Alberti’s group studied 1,755 tumors using immunohistochemical analysis. Their research showed that Trop-2 was over-expressed 65% to 90% of the time (with a 74% average occurrence) in different categories of tumors. Additionally, the gene was present in the vast majority of human cancers including breast, colon, stomach, lung, prostate, ovarian, endometrial, cervical, and pancreatic cancers.

In comparison, most other known markers appear much less frequently and are only linked to smaller subgroups, such as PSA for prostate cancer.

Unraveling the secrets of two sequence elements present in the Trop-2 cytoplasmic tail has been one of the most intriguing parts of the study, say the researchers. They are hopeful their work will help identify the specific molecules responsible for the formation of metastases. As Professor Alberti stated,

“If we can identify such molecules we will be approaching a situation where we could influence their activity and hence either encourage or prevent it.”

The team presented their findings at the 14th European Cancer Conference held September 23-27, 2007, in Barcelona, Spain.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Tags: receptor; The Origin-of-Life Prize®; Chieti; blastocyst