Two New Compounds Show Promise for Eliminating Breast Cancer Tumors

piggy submitted, created time 17 hours 25 minutes (www.sciencedaily.com)

Two new compounds created by a University of Central Florida professor show early promise for destroying breast cancer tumors. The compounds disrupt bonding of a cancer-related protein.

Associate Professor James Turkson's compounds disrupt the formation and spread of breast cancer tumors in tests on mice. The compounds, S3I-201 and S3I-M2001, break up a cancer-causing protein called STAT3, and researchers have observed no negative side effects so far.

"The compounds are very promising," Turkson said

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Industry shifts focus to immunology and cancer

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 week 4 days (www.nature.com)

Economic factors, including competition from generic drugs, is hitting even the big pharmaceutical companies hard, reports Nature. In 2010, Pfizer's Lipitor enters the public domain. For these reasons, the larger companies are narrowing the focus of their research, hitting fewer diseases. They're also working on fewer primary care drugs and more drugs that would be prescribed by specialists, such as cancer drugs.

"When Wyeth Pharmaceuticals announced last week that it would cut some of its research and development (R&D) programs in women's health, the decision seemed counterintuitive

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Scientists turbo-charge immune cells to fight cancer

piggy submitted, created time 2 weeks 3 days (news.yahoo.com)

Scientists in the United States have created super-charged immune cells that helped beat back cancer tumors in half of a small group of patients tested, according to a study released Sunday.

Adding an artificial receptor to T-lymphocyte immune cells boosted their ability to fight a deadly form of cancer called neuroblastoma, the researchers reported.

Neuroblastoma attacks the nervous system. While fairly rare, it accounts for seven percent of all childhood cancers, and fifteen percent of non-adult cancer deaths

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Biogen, Genentech to codevelop cancer drug

piggy submitted, created time 2 weeks 6 days (finance.yahoo.com)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- Biogen Idec Inc. said Thursday it will pay Genentech Inc. $31.5 million upfront under a deal to co-develop a potential cancer treatment.

The companies will develop GA101, now in early-to-midstage studies as a possible treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Both conditions are blood cancers.

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Genetically engineered tobacco plants used to grow anti-lymphoma vaccine

Darkfrog submitted, created time 3 months 4 weeks (www.sciam.com)

Reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences report that an experimental vaccines has triggered the immune systems of eleven (out of sixteen) patients to attack their tumors. The patients are afflicted with what is called follicular B-cell lymphoma. Dangerous side effects? None.

The interesting part? The vaccine was grown courtesy of some genetically engineered tobacco plants.

Of course, all of the patients were also receiving chemotherapy at the time, so it may be difficult to tell which results may be attributed to the vaccine itself

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Natural substance Argyrin shows promise for new cancer therapies

sea-maid submitted, created time 4 months 1 week (www.news-medical.net)

The effective treatment of many forms of cancer continues to pose a major problem for medicine. Many tumours fail to respond to standard forms of chemotherapy or become resistant to the medication.

Now scientists have discovered the chemical mechanism by which a natural substance--argyrin--destroys tumours.

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Melanoma Cured 100% through Blood Cell Therapy