Grape compounds can kill colon cancer cells: Research
The compounds could be used in a pill to help prevent colon cancer and lessen the recurrence of the disease in colon cancer survivors and the researchers also found that grape compounds can kill colon cancer stem cells both in a petri dish and in mice.
Compounds found in grape skins and seeds can kill colon cancer cells and may eventually lead to treatments to help prevent the condition, say researchers including one of Indian origin.
“The combination of resveratrol (found largely in grape skins) and grape seed extract is very effective at killing colon cancer cells,” said Jairam K.P. Vanamala, Associate Professor of Food Sciences at Pennsylvania State University in the US.
“And what we’re learning is the combination of these compounds is not toxic to healthy cells,” Vanamala, who is also a faculty member at the Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute, said. The findings, published in the journal BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, could pave the way for clinical testing of the compounds in human colon cancer, which is the second most common cancer in women and the third in men.
If successful, the compounds could then be used in a pill to help prevent colon cancer and lessen the recurrence of the disease in colon cancer survivors. The researchers found that grape compounds can kill colon cancer stem cells both in a petri dish and in mice.
“We are particularly interested in targeting stem cells because, according to cancer stem-cell theory, cancerous tumours are driven by cancer stem cells,” said Vanamala.
For the animal study, the researchers separated 52 mice with colon cancer tumours into three groups, including a control group and groups that were fed either the grape compounds or sulindac, an anti-inflammatory drug, which was chosen because a previous study showed it significantly reduced the number of tumours in humans. The incidence of tumours was suppressed in the mice consuming the grape compounds alone by 50 per cent, similar to the rate in the group consuming the diet with sulindac.
When taken separately in low doses, resveratrol and grape seed extract are not as effective against cancer stem-cell suppression as when they are combined together, according to the researchers. If successful in human trials, the compounds could be taken in low doses using currently available supplements for grape seed extract and resveratrol, which are also found in wine, according to the researchers.
Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/health/grape-compounds-can-kill-colon-cancer-cells-4714731/
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Rare form of skin cancer cured at Cytecare Hospital Bangalore
Amina, who was suffering from skin cancer, was misdiagnosed in Nigeria
Thirty seven-year old Amina Abubakar was not sure that she will survive after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Amina, who hails from Nigeria is a final year medical student, who was wrongly diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 in Nigeria while she was actually suffering from skin cancer. After struggling for more than three years, Amina can now breathe easy. Thanks to the treatment that cured her at a city hospital.
She was bed-ridden for more than three years under heavy antibiotics and other cancer treatments. But the last 20 days made her recover miraculously. That is after the doctors removed a 5 kg tumour from her breast. Talking about her condition, Amina said, “I found a lump on the left breast in November 2014 and then was diagnosed as chronic mastitis in local hospital in Nigeria. I have suffered wongdiagnosis and lack of treatment for years. I was physically and mentally broken and was unable to deal with the pain and the foul smell that comes with cancer.”
Unable to find any cure in Nigeria, Amina, whose father was also once treated in a city hospital, decided to travel to Bengaluru.
She adds, “My family and I got very anxious about this situation and on the recommendation of a local doctor decided to visit Dr Anthony Pais at Cytecare for treatment.
” But it wasn’t easy for the city doctors to cure her as the disease was rare. “Skin cancer on the breast and infiltrating it is the rarest of the rare cancers in the world. This was the first treatment for a rare form of skin cancer – Syringocystadeno carcinoma paplliferum, which was diagnosed and treated in the world. It is one such case where the right diagnosis was the game-changer in the treatment of the disease,”claimed Dr Anthony Pais.
He said, “There are two types of skin cancer – melanoma and non-melanoma, most of them being non-melanoma. Among all the non-melanoma skin cancers, 75% of them are basal cell cancers; 20% of them are squamous cell cancers and about 2% of them being adnexal skin tumours. Most of these adnexal tumours are benign. The rarity of this adnexal skin cancer involving the breast is the rarest of the rare cancer. In this case, the problem started with the wart and with a birthmark close by, which is technically called a nevus. This grew over a period of time.”
Amina, who got a new lease of life, will head for Nigeria this Saturday. She will continue a follow-up at a local hospital for a couple of months more.
Curious case of cancer
According to Dr Pais, it is very difficult to know about the disease or diagnose it at an early stage. So, there is no precaution and can’t be prevented. Moreover, it is not genetic. Excessive exposure to sunlight can be one of the reasons. People living near the Equator are more prone this type of cancer as they are exposed to direct ultraviolet rays. One might diagnose this case to be that of a breast cancer which can be followed by unnecessary chemotherapy. The treatment is for the skin cancer arising on the breast infiltrating into it. So, proper surgery and radiotherapy is the answer. People should consider screening if they have any ulcer for more than three months. They should do that in case of moles or itching that appears for a months.
Source: http://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/others/nigerian-woman-cured-of-rare-cancer-in-city-hospital/articleshow/59276487.cms
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First-line immunotherapy treatment can improve survival for subset of lung cancer patients
Results of phase III global clinical trial show that 75 percent of stage IV lung cancer patients with both complex tumor mutations and PDL-1 positive status respond to nivolumab.
Findings from a phase III clinical trial for advanced lung cancer patients could help oncologists better predict which patients are likely to receive the most benefit from immunotherapy as a first-line treatment based on the unique molecular characteristics of their tumor, according to a new study reported by a global team led by David Carbone, MD, PhD, of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC — James).
In this study, researchers compared the effectiveness of the immunotherapy drug nivolumab (pronounced “nye VOL ue mab,” marketed at Opdivo), with standard-of-care chemotherapy in 541 patients with previously untreated or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that expressed PDL-1 antibodies.
Nivolumab is part of a class of immunotherapy drugs known as PD-1 blocking antibodies. These drugs work by targeting the PDL-1 receptor — a known immunotherapy biomarker for lung and other cancers — to boost immune responses to the cancer.
Patients were randomized to receive either immunotherapy or standard-of-care chemotherapy. About 60 percent of patients treated on the trial ultimately crossed over to the immunotherapy treatment arm due to disease progression.
Results from this new study showed that nivolumab did not result in longer progression-free survival compared with chemotherapy in the overall population. The response rate for patients receiving nivolumab was 26.1 percent, with a 12.1 month median duration of response before disease progression. The response rate for patients treated on the chemotherapy arm was 33.5 percent, but median duration of response was just 5.7 months before disease progression.
“The good news is that we discovered that a subset of patients who had both high tumor mutation burden and high PDL-1 positive status did experience a significant benefit from immunotherapy,” says Carbone.
Patients with both high tumor mutation burden and high PDL-1 positive status had a 75 percent response rate compared with a 16 percent response rate to immunotherapy among patients with low mutation burden and low PDL-1. These same two groups had 25 percent and 23 percent response rates, respectively, when treated with chemotherapy, showing that these markers were selective for immunotherapy.
Understanding a patient’s overall tumor burden through genomic testing, says Carbone, could help identify patients most likely to benefit from immunotherapy before therapy ever begins.
“This study is an important step toward understanding the impact of tumor mutation burden and PDL-1 in immunotherapy response. This data shows we should evaluate these two factors independently to most accurately define who will benefit from immunotherapy,” says Carbone.
The findings are reported in the June 22, 2017, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621190037.htm
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Suffering from diabetes? Eating broccoli can help keep it in check
When the researchers gave concentrated broccoli sprout extracts to 97 human type 2 diabetes patients in a 12-week randomised placebo-controlled trial, obese participants who entered the study with dysregulated disease demonstrated significantly decreased fasting blood glucose levels compared to controls.
Eating broccoli sprouts may help diabetes patients manage their blood sugar, according to a new study which offers a much needed alternative to address the worldwide epidemic.Eating broccoli sprouts may help diabetes patients manage their blood sugar, according to a new study which offers a much needed alternative to address the worldwide epidemic.
Type 2 diabetes affects more than 300 million people globally, and as many as 15 per cent of those patients cannot take the first-line therapy metformin because of kidney damage risks. Seeking a more viable path forward, researchers identified compounds that might counter the disease — associated gene expression changes associated with type 2 diabetes. The researchers, including Annika Axelsson of Lund University in Sweden, constructed a signature for type 2 diabetes based on 50 genes, then used data sets to screen 3,852 compounds for drugs that potentially reverse disease.
The most promising chemical — sulforaphane, a naturally occurring compound found in cruciferous vegetables — tamped down glucose production by liver cells growing in culture, and shifted liver gene expression away from a diseased state in diabetic rats.
When the researchers gave concentrated broccoli sprout extracts to 97 human type 2 diabetes patients in a 12-week randomised placebo-controlled trial, obese participants who entered the study with dysregulated disease demonstrated significantly decreased fasting blood glucose levels compared to controls. The researchers said that developing gene signatures to investigate large public repositories of gene expression data could be a valuable strategy to rapidly identify clinically relevant compounds.
Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/health/suffering-from-diabetes-eating-broccoli-can-help-keep-it-in-check/
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Prolonged Sitting May Lead to Premature Death
Sedentary lifestyle is one of the biggest perpetrators of lifestyle ailments in today’s world. With more and more hours spent glued to our workstations, most of us are leading an alarmingly inactive life. The ill effects of prolonged sitting have long been highlighted by experts from all over. While some link it with obesity, others have tied it with risks of developing hypertension, heart ailments and even premature death.
The World Health Organisation recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-rigorous level of physical activity for an average adult. Many experts also consider walking at least 10000 steps a day as the benchmark of keeping fit in general. Unfortunately, most of us fail to reach up to that level of fitness and become a feeding ground of a host of ailments.A recently published study has gone a step further and linked prolonged sitting with the risk of premature death. After examining and studying close to 40 different studies, experts concluded that sitting for long significantly increases a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and premature death. Although regular exercising is more than recommended too ensure a healthy lifestyle, experts also suggest that regular physical activity cannot do much to offset and undo the damage done by the day-long sitting.
“The ill-effects of high levels of sitting may prove to be especially damaging given that so many people sit for long periods,” added professor Stuart Biddle from Victoria University in Australia.
The idea is not to make up for the prolonged state of activity by adding a burst of exercise somewhere in the day, the ideal approach is to cut down this state of physical activity by taking regular breaks, doing basic body stretches at your workstation, taking stairs whenever possible and going for a small walk. One should always get up from the seat every 15 minutes to avoid muscles from getting damaged.
Source: http://food.ndtv.com/health/experts-link-prolonged-sitting-with-risk-of-premature-death-1717166
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A new Microscope can scan tumors during surgery and examine cancer biopsies in 3-D
A new microscope could provide accurate real-time results during cancer-removal surgeries, potentially eliminating the 20 to 40 percent of women who have to undergo multiple lumpectomy surgeries because cancerous breast tissue is missed the first time around.
When women undergo lumpectomies to remove breast cancer, doctors try to remove all the cancerous tissue while conserving as much of the healthy breast tissue as possible.
But currently there’s no reliable way to determine during surgery whether the excised tissue is completely cancer-free at its margins — the proof that doctors need to be confident that they removed all of the tumor. It can take several days for pathologists using conventional methods to process and analyze the tissue.
That’s why between 20 and 40 percent of women have to undergo second, third or even fourth breast-conserving surgeries to remove cancerous cells that were missed during the initial procedure, according to studies.
A new microscope invented by a team of University of Washington mechanical engineers and pathologists could help solve this, and other, problems. It can rapidly and non-destructively image the margins of large fresh tissue specimens with the same level of detail as traditional pathology — in no more than 30 minutes.
“Surgeons are sort of flying blind during these breast-conserving surgeries,” said mechanical engineering professor Jonathan Liu. “Oftentimes they’ve left some tumor behind which they don’t know about until a few days later when the pathologist finds it.”
“If we can rapidly image the entire surface or margin of the excised tissue during the procedure, we can tell them if they still have tumor left in the body or not. And that would be a huge benefit to cancer patients,” Liu said.
The new light-sheet microscope — which is described in a new paper published June 26 in Nature Biomedical Engineering — offers other advantages over existing processes and microscope technologies. It conserves valuable tissue for genetic testing and diagnosis, quickly and accurately images the irregular surfaces of large clinical specimens, and allows pathologists to zoom in and “see” biopsy samples in three dimensions.
“The tools we use in pathology have changed little over the past century,” said co-author Dr. Nicholas Reder, chief resident and clinical research fellow in UW Medicine’s Department of Pathology. “This light-sheet microscope represents a major advance for pathology and cancer patients, allowing us to examine tissue in minutes rather than days and to view it in three dimensions instead of two — which will ultimately lead to improved clinical care.”
Current pathology techniques involve processing and staining tissue samples, embedding them in wax blocks, slicing them thinly, mounting them on slides, staining them, and then viewing these two-dimensional tissue sections with traditional microscopes — a process that can take days to yield results.
Another technique to provide real-time information during surgeries involves freezing and slicing the tissue for quick viewing. But the quality of those images is inconsistent, and certain fatty tissues, such as those from the breast, do not freeze well enough to reliably use the technique.
By contrast, the UW open-top light-sheet microscope uses a sheet of light to optically “slice” through and image a tissue sample without destroying any of it. All of the tissue is conserved for potential downstream molecular testing, which can yield additional valuable information about the nature of the cancer and lead to more effective treatment decisions.
“Slide-based pathology is still an analog technique, much like radiology was several decades ago when X-rays were obtained on film. By imaging tissues in 3-D without having to mount thin tissue sections on glass slides, we are trying to transform pathology much like 3-D X-ray CT has transformed radiology,” Liu said. “While it is possible to scan microscope slides for digital pathology, we digitally image the intact tissues and bypass the need to prepare slides, which is simpler, faster and potentially less expensive.”
“If we can do this without consuming any tissue, so much the better,” said co-author Dr. Larry True, professor of pathology at UW Medicine. “We want to use that valuable tissue for purposes which are becoming ever more important for treating patients — such as sequencing the tumor cells and finding genetic abnormalities that we can target with specific drugs and other precision medicine techniques.”
The light-sheet microscope also offers advantages over other non-destructive optical- sectioning microscopes on the market today, which process images slowly and have difficulty maintaining the optimal focus when dealing with clinical specimens, which always have microscopic surface irregularities.
The UW microscope can both image large tissue surfaces at high resolution and stitch together thousands of two-dimensional images per second to quickly create a 3-D image of a surgical or biopsy specimen. That additional data could one day allow pathologists to more accurately and consistently diagnose and grade tumors.
“Pathologists are currently very limited in how much they can look at on a glass slide,” said co-author Adam Glaser, a postdoctoral fellow in the UW Molecular Biophotonics Laboratory. “If we can give them three-dimensional data, we can give them more information to help improve the accuracy of a patient’s diagnosis.”
The UW team achieved these improvements by configuring various optical technologies in new ways and optimizing them for clinical use. Their open-top arrangement, which places all of the optics underneath a glass plate, allows them to image larger tissues than other microscopes.
The team is currently working on speeding up the optical-clearing process that allows light to penetrate biopsy samples more easily. Future areas of research include optimizing their 3-D immunostaining processes, as well as working with machine learning experts to develop algorithms that can process the vast amounts of 3-D pathology data that their system generates, with the ultimate goal of helping pathologists zero in on suspicious areas of tissue.
Story Source: Materials provided by University of Washington. Original written by Jennifer Langston.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170626124605.htm
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