[Anydayhybeall]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...in-cancer.html

Gene fusion is behind deadly brain cancer

• 19:00 26 July 2012 by Hannah Krakauer
• For similar stories, visit the Cancer and Genetics Topic Guides

Treatment for a lethal form of brain cancer could be on the horizon after the discovery that the cancer can be formed by two genes fusing together.
People with the disease could potentially benefit from drugs that block the activity of a protein produced by this wayward fusion.


Cancers can be sparked by a number of genetic mutations, including disruptions to single parts of a gene that either over-stimulate or castrate an important protein.

But some cancers arise when two entire genes are accidently fused together during natural cell replication.

The protein that the fused genes code for performs some of the functions you would expect of it but does so in new locations or contexts.

"They do their thing, but incorrectly," says Anna Lasorella at the Institute for Cancer Genetics at Columbia University, New York.



Lasorella and her colleagues studied the genes involved in a lethal form of brain cancer called glioblastoma.
About 3 per cent of the glioblastoma tumours they looked at were caused by the fusing of two genes.

On its own, each gene has an important but benign function.
When fused together the two wreak havoc during cell division.

The protein that the fused genes code for latches onto the spindles that pull freshly replicated chromosomes into two new cells during cell division.
The interference means that instead of an even division, the cells end up with different numbers of chromosomes: a phenomenon known as aneuploidy.

"It's a well-known hallmark of cancer," says Antonio Iavarone, also at Columbia.


Having identified this mechanism, the team wanted to check that the fused genes actually cause this form of cancer.
So they injected the newly formed protein into the brains of healthy mice.
Ninety per cent of the mice went on to develop the expected glioblastomas.



The team then administered a drug that blocked the activity of the new protein.

In doing so, they were able to double the mice's survival time.



Because the protein is specific to the cancer cells, the team predicts that drugs to target it would cause minimal damage to healthy cells.
Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1220834

[Overlord]

Now, we need something like that for DIPG. (Through contact with a local family, I have drifted into the world of childhood brain cancer and too many of these cancers are inoperable and untreatable.)

[Tainlyferfara]

http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/news/archive/cancernews/2012-07-30-Single-HPV-test-predicts-cancer-risk-for-up-to-18-years

Cancer News

Single HPV test 'predicts cancer risk for up to 18 years'

Monday 30 July 2012

Testing women's smear test samples for the human papillomavirus (HPV) can predict who will develop early signs of cervical cancer up to 18 years later, US researchers have found.
The results show the long-term benefits of first-line testing for HPV, compared with the current cytology test, which looks for abnormal cells.
Senior author of the study, Dr Philip E Castle, of the American Society for Clinical Pathology, said: "While we knew that testing for high-risk HPV can predict cervical cancer risk for a few years, it's remarkable that this predictive effect lasts for almost two decades.
"Our findings strongly reinforce the value of HPV testing as a routine part of care."
Commenting on the research, Jessica Harris, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: "This study adds to the evidence showing that HPV testing is likely to be more effective for cervical screening than cytology.
"It shows that the risk of developing cervical cancer after a negative HPV test remains low, even after several years, which would give added reassurance to women with a negative result and could help determine how often women should be screened."
She pointed out that HPV testing has already been added to the national cervical screening programme as a secondary test to help reduce unnecessary and invasive repeat tests.
"The screening programme has committed to running a pilot of HPV testing as the main cervical screening test and we eagerly await the results," she added.
It has long been known that the HPV virus is necessary for women to develop cervical cancer. But the infection is common, especially in younger women, and often clears up of its own accord.
As a result, only a small proportion of infected women go on to develop signs of the disease.
"It takes on average five to 10 years for an HPV infection to persist and progress to cervical precancer, and 20 to 25 years to go from an HPV infection to invasive cancer," said Dr Castle.
"This means that women who test HPV-negative are very unlikely to develop cervical precancer or cancer before their next screening appointment."
4,000 women who were receiving routine screening took part in the study, which ran for 18 years.
Among study participants older than 30 years, 8.7 percent initially tested HPV-positive and 4.3 per cent had an abnormal cytology result at initial testing.
More cases of precancerous changes, and of cervical cancer, occurred after a baseline HPV-positive result versus abnormal cytology over the study period (112 versus 65).
Furthermore, HPV-positive women were more likely to have precancerous changes after 10 to 18 years than HPV-negative women, regardless of the result of their initial cytology test.
The study indicated that lengthening the time between screening from three years to five years did not increase the risk of cancer and precancer of the cervix.
Dr Castle said: "Adding HPV testing to cervical screening has two benefits for patients - it increases cervical precancer and cancer detection, and it can also extend the length of time between screenings safely."
He noted that more reliable screening which was carried out less often can help cut any harms relating to unnecessary diagnostic treatments and tests.
Dr Maurie Markman, from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, also welcomed the research. "This is an excellent and important study," he said.
"While we will need more research than this study alone to change the standard-of-care for cervical cancer screening, the data provide very solid support for a strategy of baseline HPV testing to help define an individual woman's subsequent screening strategy."
Copyright Press Association 2012""

[casinobonusfrees]

From
33m Michael Short Michael Short ‏@shortmsgs

Teenage Girl Develops Artificial ‘Brain’ That Diagnoses Breast Cancer With 99% Accuracy - PSFK http://www.psfk.com/2012/08/diagnose...er-online.html @psfk #health #cancer


"Seventeen-year-old Brittany Wenger’s ‘Cloud 4 Cancer’ uses an artificial neural network to detect patterns across the nine indicators that signal a malignant mass.
By Allie Walker on August 11, 2012. @NYC_Allie



Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers diagnosed in women- and one of the most deadly.

One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime, with 85% of those diagnosed having no family history of breast cancer.

In 2011, nearly 300,000 women were diagnosed with invasive and non-invasive breast cancer, 14% of which were expected to die from the cancer.

The stats, as staggering as they are, aren’t all bleak- death rates from breast cancer have been steadily decreasing since 1990 thanks to earlier detection from screenings. And a new screening tool developed by a 17 year old high-school junior shows promise for helping doctors diagnose more women earlier, so they can get the treatment they need to beat the cancer.

Brittany Wenger’s ‘Cloud 4 Cancer‘ app can detect early stages of breast cancer with 99.1% sensitivity, better than any existing commercial product. The app is a minimally invasive, accurate solution to diagnosing breast cancer–currently, the less invasive the procedure, the more prone to error, with accuracy of diagnosis improving with more invasive tools.

Wenger designed ‘Cloud 4 Cancer’ to work with findings from Fine Needle Aspirates (FNA), the least invasive way to determine if a mass is malignant or benign, using a computerized ‘brain,’ aka an artificial neural network:

Artificial neural networks detect patterns too complex to be recognized by humans and can be applied to breast mass malignancy classification when evaluating Fine Needle Aspirates (FNAs). This project teaches the cloud how to diagnose breast cancer by implementing a custom-crafted neural network that consumes FNA data collected by the University of Wisconsin to answer the question – is a mass malignant or benign?

Information regarding potential indicators of breast cancer is quantified in the dataset; specifically, clump thickness, single epithelial cell size, bare nuclei, mitoses, and five other attributes.

Just like a human brain that learns by repetition, the artificial neural network ‘learned’ to diagnosis breast cancer through repeated trials; Wagner tested 681 public FNA samples over 6,800 trials to determine the patterns across the nine cancer indicators that signal a malignant mass. Over the trials, the network found 222 instances malignant breast cancer with 93.67% accuracy and 417 instances of benign breast cancer with 99.52% accuracy. Only 2 samples that were actually malignant were categorized as benign, a false negative. Only 15 of the samples that were actually benign were categorized as malignant, and 42 total samples were ‘inconclusive.’

Personalizing the data, the 681 samples represent 681 women, of which only 42 would have to be tested again with a more invasive procedure. But because the neural network’s accuracy rate improves with the number of samples, this data, already with 99.1% sensitivity to correctly identifying malignant tumors, will be the ‘worst’ data set:

Neural networks learn just like humans. Therefore, at first the programs act like elementary school kids trying to diagnose breast cancer—they get almost all of the detections incorrect. As the neural networks run through training examples, they begin to detect patterns. By the end of training, the neural network is a seasoned physician and usually diagnoses over 90% of the tumors correctly.

Like the name suggests, Wagner has opened Cloud 4 Cancer to the cloud, hoping doctors around the world will enter their data sets– improving the accuracy of the network and more importantly, the accuracy of breast cancer diagnosis. Wagner hopes that neural networks could also be used to help diagnosis other diseases, like ovarian or prostate cancer.

Watch a video of Brittany explain Cloud 4 Cancer and visit her site here for more information:

via PSFK: http://www.psfk.com/2012/08/diagnose...#ixzz23UAzvukq

[SkHukV3N]

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-0...tem-cells.html

"Researchers prove that leukemias arise from changes that accumulate in blood stem cells August 30, 2012 by Christopher Vaughan in Cancer

Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-0...cells.html#jCp
...
The research, published Aug. 29 in Science Translational Medicine, also sets the stage for the discovery of more effective therapies for defeating deadly cancers. People with acute leukemias—cancers of the blood—are especially difficult to cure. Although doctors can drive leukemias into remission with chemotherapy, most of these cancers eventually come roaring back. About 60 percent of those who get acute myelogenous leukemia will ultimately die from it, a statistic that has improved little in the past 30 years. Cancer is caused in part by genetic mutations, but cancer cells are often full of these mutations, some of which are important and some not. "Each cancer-causing mutation is potentially a therapeutic target ...


Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-0...cells.html#jCp ...