Cancer Awareness Month

With a broken heart 💔 and tears 😢 in my eyes, nothing is more painful than trying to smile and remain positive, but after many tests, being poked and prodded, chemo and radiation, the person physically changes and they suffer with sadness. I know many of you do not give a hoot about this message because, of course, the cancer has not affected you. You do not know what it's like to have fought the fight, or have a loved one who leads or has led a battle against cancer. 💜

For all the men and women I know, I ask you a small favor- I know only some of you will do it. If you know someone who has led a battle against cancer, still struggling, or who passed, please add this to your status for one hour as a mark of support, respect, and remembrance. 💚 ❤️

Copy and paste to support those affected by cancer. Do Not Share. From your phone or tablet, hold your finger on the message to copy and paste.

Source: Facebook

#CancerAwarenessMonth

#screwcancer

Swarms of Magnetic Bacteria Could be Used to Deliver Drugs to Tumors

One of the biggest challenges in cancer therapy is being able to sufficiently deliver chemotherapy drugs to tumors without exposing healthy tissues to their toxic effects.

Researchers funded in part by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) have recently shown that magnetic bacteria are a promising vehicle for more efficiently delivering tumor-fighting drugs. They reported their results in the August 2016 issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

Read more: Swarms of Magnetic Bacteria Could be Used to Deliver Drugs to Tumors

Illustration showing magnetic bacteria delivering drugs to a tumor.

Source: LabManager

Cancer: Four-Stranded DNA Could Help Develop Targeted Treatments

By taking a closer look at four-stranded versions of DNA inside the genome of human cells, scientists have discovered some potential new avenues for targeted cancer treatments. They found that the quadruple helix structures occur in DNA regions that control genes, especially cancer genes.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, report their findings in the journal Nature Genetics.

Targeted cancer therapies are currently the focus of much research and development into new anticancer treatments.

They are an important area of precision medicine - where information about an individual patient's genes and proteins are used to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease.

Read more: Cancer: Four-Stranded DNA Could Help Develop Targeted Treatments

The aim of targeted therapy is to attack cancer cells without affecting healthy cells.

Source: MedicalNewsToday

New 'Mutation-Tracking' Blood Test Could Predict Breast Cancer Relapse Months in Advance

Scientists have developed a blood test for breast cancer able to identify which patients will suffer a relapse after treatment, months before tumours are visible on hospital scans.

The test can uncover small numbers of residual cancer cells that have resisted therapy by detecting cancer DNA in the bloodstream.

Researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust were able to track key mutations that cancer accumulates as it develops and spreads, without the need for invasive biopsy procedures.

They hope that by deciphering the DNA code found in blood samples, it should be possible to identify the particularly mutations likely to prove lethal to that patient - and tailor treatment accordingly.

Read more: New 'Mutation-Tracking' Blood Test Could Predict Breast Cancer Relapse Months in Advance

Source: medicalxpress

Cancer Breakthrough? Novel Insight into Metastasis Could Offer New Treatments

Researchers from the United Kingdom may have made a breakthrough in cancer treatment, after discovering an unusual mechanism by which cancer cells spread and survive in the body.

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers reveal how two molecules join forces to help cancer cells survive as they metastasize.

Metastasis is the process by which cancer cells break away from the primary tumor and spread to other parts of the body through the bloodstream or lymph system.

Once cancer has spread, the disease becomes much more challenging to treat Chemotherapy, hormone therapy, radiotherapy, and other treatments can yield success for some metastatic cancers, but for most, the prognosis is poor.

Read more: Cancer Breakthrough? Novel Insight into Metastasis Could Offer New Treatments

Source: medicalnewstoday

Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs)

Your doctor may order a test for circulating tumor cells (CTCs) to help guide your cancer care.

One of the major challenges in treating cancer is getting “all” of the cancer, including the parts we cannot see. Even if surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation removes all traces of known cancer, there is still a risk of the cancer returning, often in a distant location in the body. This may occur as a result of CTCs.

Circulating tumor cells were first found in the blood under the microscope nearly 150 years ago. They are cancer cells from the primary tumor that escaped into the bloodstream to circulate around the body. As a result, these cells can serve as seeds for new areas of cancer to grow in distant organs. This is known asmetastasis.

Not all CTCs have the ability to land and establish a new metastasis in a distant organ; some may remain dormant (inactive) or be controlled by the immune system for years, sometimes forever.

Read more: Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs)

Source: jamanetwork

New nanoparticle 'cluster bombs' could make chemotherapy less toxic.

Chemotherapy is one of the key weapons in our fight against cancer, but it comes with a whole host of unwanted side effects and damage to the surrounding, healthy areas of the body. So an international team of researchers has come up with what they think could be a much less toxic way of delivering the treatment, and it's based around 'cluster bombs' of nanoparticles.

The new procedure is designed to improve the delivery of the chemotherapy drug cisplatin. It works using tiny nanoparticles, just 100 nanometres wide, which are loaded with drugs and transported to the tumor site through blood vessels. Once they reach their destination, the acidic environment around the cancer cells causes them to break up into 5-nanometre-wide particles, which can then move inside the tumor cells.

At this point, the cisplatin can do its work from inside the tumor cells, damaging the cancerous DNA to effectively kill them off. To give you some idea of the scale, you can fit a million nanometres inside a millimetre.

In tests on lab mice, the teams from Emory University in the US and the University of Science and Technology of China found that the concentration of cisplatin that reached the tumors was seven times higher than normal. And if more of the drug is reaching its intended target, that means less of it is leaking out into the rest of the body, so unwanted side effects are reduced.

Video source: New nanoparticle 'cluster bombs' could make chemotherapy less toxic.

Source: Jovan Vitanovski/Shutterstock