Scientists get closer to making personalized blood cells by using patients’ own stem cells – Los Angeles Times

New research has nudged scientists closer to one of regenerative medicines holy grails: the ability to create customized human stem cells capable of forming blood that would be safe for patients.

Advances reported Wednesday in the journal Nature could not only give scientists a window on what goes wrong in such blood cancers as leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. They could also improve the treatment of those cancers, which affect some 1.2 million Americans.

The stem cells that give rise to our blood are a mysterious wellspring of life. In principle, just one of these primitive cells can create much of a human beings immune system, not to mention the complex slurry of cells that courses through a persons arteries, veins and organs.

While the use of blood-making stem cells in medicine has been common since the 1950s, it remains pretty crude. After patients with blood cancers have undergone powerful radiation and chemotherapy treatments to kill their cancer cells, they often need a bone-marrow transplant to rebuild their white blood cells, which are destroyed by that treatment.

The blood-making stem cells that reside in a donors bone marrow and in umbilical cord blood that is sometimes harvested after a babys birth are called hematopoietic, and they can be life-saving. But even these stem cells can bear the distinctive immune system signatures of the person from whom they were harvested. As a result, they can provoke an attack if the transplant recipients body registers the cells as foreign.

This response, called graft-versus-host disease, affects as many as 70% of bone-marrow transplant recipients in the months following the treatment, and 40% develop a chronic version of the affliction later. It can overwhelm the benefit of a stem cell transplant. And it kills many patients.

Rather than hunt for a donor whos a perfect match for a patient in need of a transplant a process that can be lengthy, ethically fraught and ultimately unsuccessful doctors would like to use a patients own cells to engineer the hematopoietic stem cells.

The patients mature cells would be reprogrammed to their most primitive form: stem cells capable of becoming virtually any kind of human cell. Then factors in their environment would coax them to become the specific type of stem cells capable of giving rise to blood.

Once reintroduced into the patient, the cells would take up residence without prompting rejection and set up a lifelong factory of healthy new blood cells.

If the risk of deadly rejection episodes could be eliminated, physicians might also feel more confident treating blood diseases that are painful and difficult but not immediately deadly diseases such as sickle cell disease and immunological disorders with stem cell transplants.

The two studies published Wednesday demonstrate that scientists may soon be capable of pulling off the sequence of operations necessary for such treatments to move ahead.

One of two research teams, led by stem-cell pioneer Dr. George Q. Daley of Harvard Medical School and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, started their experiment with human pluripotent stem cells primitive cells capable of becoming virtually any type of mature cell in the body. Some of them were embryonic stem cells and others were induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, which are made by converting mature cells back to a flexible state.

The scientists then programmed those pluripotent stem cells to become endothelial cells, which line the inside of certain blood vessels. Past research had established that those cells are where blood-making stem cells are born.

Here, the process needed a nudge. Using suppositions gleaned from experiments with mice, Daley said his team confected a special sauce of proteins that sit on a cells DNA and program its function. When they incubated the endothelial cells in the sauce, they began producing hematopioetic stem cells in their earliest form.

Daleys team then transferred the resulting blood-making stem cells into the bone marrow of mice to see if they would take. In two out of five mice who got the most promising cell types, they did. Not only did the stem cells establish themselves, they continued to renew themselves while giving rise to a wide range of blood cells.

A second research team, led by researchers from Weill Cornell Medicines Ansary Stem Cell Institute in New York, achieved a similar result using stem cells from the blood-vessel lining of adult mice. After programming those cells to revert to a more primitive form, the scientists also incubated those stem cells in a concoction of specialized proteins.

When the team, led by Raphael Lis and Dr. Shahin Rafii, transferred the resulting stem cells back into the tissue lining the blood vessels of the mice from which they came, that graft also took. For at least 40 weeks after the incubated stem cells were returned to their mouse owners, the stem cells continued to regenerate themselves and give rise to many blood-cell types without provoking immune reactions.

In addition to making a workhorse treatment for blood cancers safer, the new advances may afford scientists a unique window on the mechanisms by which blood diseases take hold and progress, said Lee Greenberger, chief scientific officer for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

From a research point of view you could now actually begin to model diseases, said Greenberger. If you were to take the cell thats defective and make it revert to a stem cell, you could effectively reproduce the disease and watch its progression from the earliest stages.

That, in turn, would make it easier to narrow the search for drugs that could disrupt that disease process early. And it would speed the process of discovering which genes are implicated in causing diseases. With gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9, those offending genes could one day be snipped out of hematopoietic stem cells, then be returned to their owners to generate new lines of disease-free blood cells.

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Scientists get closer to making personalized blood cells by using patients' own stem cells - Los Angeles Times

Encouraging results after Jonathan Pitre’s transplant, mother says – CTV News

Nick Wells, CTVNews.ca Published Wednesday, May 17, 2017 7:04AM EDT Last Updated Wednesday, May 17, 2017 12:28PM EDT

An Ottawa-area boy who suffers from a rare and painful blistering skin disease is recovering in a Minneapolis hospital, after undergoing a second potentially life-changing transplant.

Jonathan Pitre, known as the "Butterfly Boy" because of his delicate, blistering skin, received a second transfusion of his mother Tina Boileaus stem cells in April.

In a Facebook post Tuesday, Boileau said the donor study tests are showing that her son is officially growing her cells.

Pitre was born with a severe form of epidermolysis bullosa (EB), an incurable genetic collagen disorder. The condition causes a never-ending series of raw and painful blisters -- some of which hes had for years.

His mother told CTV News on Wednesday that the positive turn in Pitres long and painful treatment was exactly what we needed.

Boileau said her son has had infections on top of infections and endured much pain over the past year. The second stem cell transplant has been really hard on his body, she said, but there now seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.

Yesterday was just the greatest day. We were speechless. Jonathan hugged me and we were like, We did it, she said in an interview from the hospital.

Boileau said that even some of the nurses were crying when Pitre received the good news.

Its finally now feeling like its all been worth it.

However, she pointed out that if Pitre is unable to grow his own cells, he could be diagnosed with Graft vs. Host disease a condition where the donor's cells take over the host's organs and bodily functions, leading to complications.

We still have a long road ahead of us, but you know what, this is definitely what weve been waiting for, Boileau said.

The $1.5-million transplant procedure Pitre is undergoing is currently only performed as a University of Minnesota clinical trial.

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Encouraging results after Jonathan Pitre's transplant, mother says - CTV News

Researchers Are Using Stem Cell Tech to End Neurological Disorders – Futurism

In Brief

The human body is a melding of different systems designed to function well together. In some cases, however, a mechanism that protects the body can also cause it harm, like with the specializedshield of endothelial cells called the blood-brain barrier that keeps toxins in the blood from entering the brain.

Due to a genetic defect, the blood-brain barrier could prevent essential biomolecules needed for normal brain development from passing through. An example is the Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome (AHDS), which is a psychomotor disease resulting from a defective gene that controls the influx of thyroid hormones to the brain. This rare but severe disorder is also unique to humans, making it very difficult to develop treatments that could be lab tested on animals.

So, to study this unique disorder, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles used the cells of AHDS patients to recreate the patients blood-brain barriers via induced pluripotent steam (iPS) cellstechnology. What they learned using the model gave the researchers some leads on potential therapies for the disease. They published their study in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

The researchers managed to make a laboratory model for AHDS. This is the first demonstration of using a patients cells to model a blood-brain barrier defect, senior author, Eric Shusta, explained in a press release. If we had just the (compromised) neural cells available, we wouldnt have been able to identify this key characteristic of AHDS.

Thanks so their innovation, theres now a framework to develop new treatmentsthat could prevent or mitigate the debilitating effects of AHDS, according to senior author Clive Svendsen from Cedars-Sinai.

Furthermore, the research could also apply to other neurological disorders that may also have roots in a dysfunctional blood-brain barrier, like Alzheimers disease and Huntingtons disease. The significance of this study expands beyond the limits of AHDS research, to the possibility of stem cell modeling the blood-brain barrier component in many other neurological diseases, said Gad Vatine, lead author for the study, in the press release.

The study is another proof of how stem cells can revolutionize the future of medicine.

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Researchers Are Using Stem Cell Tech to End Neurological Disorders - Futurism

Lab-grown blood stem cells produced at last – Nature.com

Rio Sugimura

Researchers made these blood stem cells and progenitor cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells.

After 20 years of trying, scientists have transformed mature cells into primordial blood cells that regenerate themselves and the components of blood. The work, described today in Nature1, 2, offers hope to people with leukaemia and other blood disorders who need bone-marrow transplants but cant find a compatible donor. If the findings translate into the clinic, these patients could receive lab-grown versions of their own healthy cells.

One team, led by stem-cell biologist George Daley of Boston Childrens Hospital in Massachusetts, created human cells that act like blood stem cells, although they are not identical to those found in nature1. A second team, led by stem-cell biologist Shahin Rafii of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, turned mature cells from mice into fully fledged blood stem cells2.

For many years, people have figured out parts of this recipe, but theyve never quite gotten there, says Mick Bhatia, a stem-cell researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who was not involved with either study. This is the first time researchers have checked all the boxes and made blood stem cells.

Daleys team chose skin cells and other cells taken from adults as their starting material. Using a standard method, they reprogrammed the cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are capable of producing many other cell types. Until now, however, iPS cells have not been morphed into cells that create blood.

The next step was the novel one: Daley and his colleagues inserted seven transcription factors genes that control other genes into the genomes of the iPS cells. Then they injected these modified human cells into mice to develop. Twelve weeks later, the iPS cells had transformed into progenitor cells capable of making the range of cells found in human blood, including immune cells. The progenitor cells are tantalizingly close to naturally occurring haemopoetic blood stem cells, says Daley.

Bhatia agrees. Its pretty convincing that George has figured out how to cook up human haemopoetic stem cells, he says. That is the holy grail.

By contrast, Rafiis team generated true blood stem cells from mice without the intermediate step of creating iPS cells. The researchers began by extracting cells from the lining of blood vessels in mature mice. They then inserted four transcription factors into the genomes of these cells, and kept them in Petri dishes designed to mimic the environment inside human blood vessels. There, the cells morphed into blood stem cells and multiplied.

When the researchers injected these stem cells into mice that had been treated with radiation to kill most of their blood and immune cells, the animals recovered. The stem cells regenerated the blood, including immune cells, and the mice went on to live a full life more than 1.5 years in the lab.

Because he bypassed the iPS-cell stage, Rafii compares his approach to a direct aeroplane flight, and Daleys procedure to a flight that takes a detour to the Moon before reaching its final destination. Using the most efficient method to generate stem cells matters, he adds, because every time a gene is added to a batch of cells, a large portion of the batch fails to incorporate it and must be thrown out. There is also a risk that some cells will mutate after they are modified in the lab, and could form tumours if they are implanted into people.

But Daley and other researchers are confident that the method he used can be made more efficient, and less likely to spur tumour growth and other abnormalities in modified cells. One possibility is to temporarily alter gene expression in iPS cells, rather than permanently insert genes that encode transcription factors, says Jeanne Loring, a stem-cell researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. She notes that iPS cells can be generated from skin and other tissue that is easy to access, whereas Rafiis method begins with cells that line blood vessels, which are more difficult to gather and to keep alive in the lab.

Time will determine which approach succeeds. But the latest advances have buoyed the spirits of researchers who have been frustrated by their inability to generate blood stem cells from iPS cells. A lot of people have become jaded, saying that these cells dont exist in nature and you cant just push them into becoming anything else, Bhatia says. I hoped the critics were wrong, and now I know they were.

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Lab-grown blood stem cells produced at last - Nature.com

Route to cancer stem cell death ironed out – Chemical & Engineering News

Cancer stem cells are bad actors. They enable cancers to metastasize, or spread, and help revive cancers after the malignancies go dormant. One of the few agents that can effectively attack them is a small molecule called salinomycin. But scientists havent understood how the compound kills the cells.

Now, researchers have discovered salinomycins mechanism (Nat. Chem. 2017, DOI: 10.1038/nchem.2778). The findings reveal a key weakness of cancer stem cells that could lead to the design of other drugs to help fight the cells.

To discover the mechanism, Raphal Rodriguez of Institut Curie and Frances National Center for Scientific Research, Maryam Mehrpour of Institut Necker Enfants Malades and INSERM, and coworkers first tried to create a more potent version of salinomycin by modifying it with groups of varying polarity and charge. The most potent was ironomycin, in which one of salinomycins hydroxyl groups was replaced by a short amine-alkyne chain. Ironomycin has an order of magnitude greater potency than salinomycin at killing breast cancer stem cells, both in culture and in mice.

They then used in vivo click chemistry on ironomycins alkyne group to label the compound with a fluorescent dye, enabling them to track where the compound goes when in cancer stem cells. They had expected it to distribute evenly throughout the cells and were surprised when it instead localized in lysosomes, which are cellular compartments with enzymes that break down certain molecules.

This led them to the mechanism: Salinomycin, or ironomycin, binds cellular iron and sequesters it in lysosomes. The high concentration of lysosomal iron then triggers a process called ferroptosisin which iron catalyzes the so-called Fenton reaction, producing reactive oxygen species that break lysosomal membranes, oxidize cell lipids, and cause cell death. The mechanism is not specific to cancer stem cells, Rodriguez says, but these cells are more susceptible to salinomycins or ironomycins activity because they are more dependent on iron and may be less efficient at scavenging free radicals than conventional cells.

The study is the first to characterize salinomycins mechanism of action at a molecular level, which is in itself a major step forward and an impressive feat, given the structural complexity of this compound, says Piyush Gupta of the Whitehead Institute and MIT, who discovered salinomycins activity against cancer stem cells. It is also the first to convincingly show that iron plays an unusually important role in regulating the malignant properties of cancer stem cells. These are both important contributions that will guide the development of new therapies targeting the most malignant of cancer cells.

Selective mechanisms for killing cancer stem cells have been a long-standing goal of cancer drug discovery, but few mechanisms have been identified, says Brent R. Stockwell of Columbia University, who discovered ferroptosis. This paper suggests that iron sequestration in lysosomes could be one such effective mechanism for targeting cancer stem cells.

One possible drawback to a cancer-stem-cell-targeting compound is that other cells in the tumor might still survive, he adds. So you would likely need a combination of drugs targeting cancer stem cells and non-stem-cell tumor cells. And there might be toxicity to normal stem cells, so this would need to be evaluated as research on stem-cell-targeted agents progresses.

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Route to cancer stem cell death ironed out - Chemical & Engineering News

Spatiotemporal Control of 3D-Cultured Stem Cells Using Light – Technology Networks

Nothing beats nature. The diverse and wonderful varieties of cells and tissues that comprise the human body are evidence of that.

Each one of us starts out as a mass of identical, undifferentiated cells, and thanks to a combination of signals and forces, each cell responds by choosing a developmental pathway and multiplying into the tissues that become our hearts, brains, hair, bones or blood. A major promise of studying human embryonic stem cells is to understand these processes and apply the knowledge toward tissue engineering.

Researchers in UC Santa Barbaras departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology have gotten a step closer to unlocking the secrets of tissue morphology with a method of three-dimensional culturing of embryonic stem cells using light.

The important development with our method is that we have good spatiotemporal control over which cell or even part of a cell is being excited to differentiate along a particular gene pathway, said lead author Xiao Huang, who conducted this study as a doctoral student at UCSB and is now a postdoctoral scholar in the Desai Lab at UC San Francisco. The research, titled Light-Patterned RNA Interference of 3D-Cultured Human Embryonic Stem Cells, appears in volume 28, issue 48 of the journal Advanced Materials.

Similar to other work in the field of optogenetics which largely focuses neurological disorders and activity in living organisms, leading to insights into diseases and conditions such as Parkinsons and drug addiction this new method relies on light to control gene expression.

The researchers used a combination of hollow gold nanoshells attached to small molecules of synthetic RNA (siRNA) a molecule that plays a large role in gene regulation and thermoreversible hydrogel as 3D scaffolding for the stem cell culture, as well as invisible, near-infrared (NIR) light. NIR light, Huang explained, is ideal when creating a three-dimensional culture in the lab.

Near-infrared light has better tissue penetration that is useful when the sample becomes thick, he explained. In addition to enhanced penetration up to 10 cm deep the light can be focused tightly to specific areas. Irradiation with the light released the RNA molecules from the nanoshells in the sample and initiated gene-silencing activity, which knocked down green fluorescent protein genes in the cell cluster. The experiment also showed that the irradiated cells grew at the same rate as the untreated control sample; the treated cells showed unchanged viability after irradiation.

Of course, culturing tissues consisting of related but varying cell types is a far more complex process than knocking down a single gene.

Its a concert of orchestrated processes, said co-author and graduate student researcher Demosthenes Morales, describing the process by which human embryonic stem cells become specific tissues and organs. Things are being turned on and turned off. Perturbing one aspect of the system, he explained, sets off a series of actions along the cells developmental pathways, much of which is still unknown.

One reason were very interested in spatiotemporal control is because these cells, when theyre growing and developing, dont always communicate the same way, Morales said, explaining that the resulting processes occur at different speeds, and occasionally overlap. So being able to control that communication on which cell differentiates into which cell type will help us to be able to control tissue formation, he added.

The fine control over cell development provided by this method also allows for the three-dimensional culture of tissues and organs from embryonic stem cells for a variety of applications. Engineered tissues can be used for therapeutic purposes, including replacements for organs and tissues that have been destroyed due to injury or disease. They can be used to give insight into the bodys response to toxins and therapeutic agents.

Research on this study was also conducted also by Qirui Hu, a postdoctoral fellow in Dennis Cleggs lab at UCSBs Center for Stem Cell Biology and Engineering in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and Yifan Lai in the lab of Norbert Reich in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

This article has been republished frommaterialsprovided byUCSB. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

Reference:

Huang, X., Hu, Q., Lai, Y., Morales, D. P., Clegg, D. O., & Reich, N. O. (2016). Light-Patterned RNA Interference of 3D-Cultured Human Embryonic Stem Cells. Advanced Materials, 28(48), 10732-10737. doi:10.1002/adma.201603318

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Spatiotemporal Control of 3D-Cultured Stem Cells Using Light - Technology Networks

Stem Cells in Plants and Animals Behave Surprisingly Similarly – Technology Networks


Technology Networks
Stem Cells in Plants and Animals Behave Surprisingly Similarly
Technology Networks
One of the prize winners, Shinya Yamanaka, had demonstrated how to externally manipulate cells to return to an embryonic stem cell state by increasing the concentration of certain proteins. Turning back the clock this way has enormous potential in ...

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Stem Cells in Plants and Animals Behave Surprisingly Similarly - Technology Networks

Bookmarks on Stem Cell Genes Preserve Cell Identity – Cornell Chronicle

Stem cells preserve their identities after cell division by using a series of protein bookmarks on their genes, according to new research published by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine. The results may further the understanding of how certain diseases like cancer develop and could have broad clinical implications for preventing disease.

Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) are cells that have the ability to transform into any kind of cell in the body. What type of cell each stem cell becomes called cell identity is determined by a tightly-controlled system regulated by various proteins. As these cells divide by mitosis, each so-called daughter cell produced should be the same type as its cell of origin. But during mitosis the control system is briefly disrupted, creating a window in which a cell can forget its identity and transform into a different kind of cell.

Dr. Effie Apostolou

If a cell doesnt remember what its supposed to be, it can transform into something else, even a malignant cell, saysDr. Effie Apostolou, an assistant professor of molecular biology in medicine and member of theSandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Centerat Weill Cornell Medicine. Understanding how this process is controlled is fundamental to understanding how many diseases arise.

In a paper published May 16 in Cell Reports, Dr. Apostolou and her team found that cell identity is preserved in pluripotent stem cells through a series of small modifications in proteins known as bookmarks on the cells genes. These bookmarks do not change during mitosis. So when the cell resumes its functions, such as transcription, after mitosis, this bookmark serves as a checkpoint to make sure that this process happens properly, Dr. Apostolou said. In this way, PSCs ensure that daughter cells are the same as their mother cells.

The researchers identified some proteins that were possible candidates for bookmarks and then removed those proteins from cells during the critical window in mitosis. If indeed this time window and the presence of these proteins are critical during mitosis, then the cell identity will be challenged, Dr. Apostolou said.

They found that when these mitotic bookmarks were degraded in PSCs, the cells were unable to maintain their identities: they did not reliably divide into the same kind of cell generation after generation. This tells us that these bookmarks are an important mechanism for keeping stem cells working properly, Dr. Apostolou said.

Because pluripotent stem cells hold great promise for prevention and treatment of many diseases, this finding is key, she said. Understanding cell identity is fundamental to understanding disease, as many, including cancer and some neurological diseases, are the result of cell identity being lost.

Mitosis can be either a crisis for cell identity or an opportunity for a new identity to arise she said. If we understand more about how cells maintain their identities during this process, we will better understand tumor formation and we may even be able to push stem cells into an identity that is therapeutically relevant for a given disease.

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Bookmarks on Stem Cell Genes Preserve Cell Identity - Cornell Chronicle

Single cell focus reveals hidden cancer cells – Medical Xpress

May 16, 2017 Single cell focus reveals hidden cancer cells. Credit: Shutterstock

Researchers have found a way to identify rogue cancer cells which survive treatment after the rest of the tumour is destroyed, by using a new technique that enables them to identify and characterise individual cancer cells.

Recent breakthroughs are revolutionising cancer treatment, enabling doctors to personalise chemotherapy for each patient. However, although these new treatments are often highly effective, all too often the cancer grows back, eventually causing relapse.

An international research team, led by Professors Adam Mead and Sten Eirik Jacobsen at the University of Oxford and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, have found a way to identify rogue cancer cells which survive treatment after the rest of the tumour is destroyed, by using a new technique that enables them to identify and characterise individual cancer cells.

Professor Adam Mead of Oxford University's Radcliffe Department of Medicine, said: 'It is increasingly recognised that tumours contain a variety of different cell types, including so-called cancer stem cells, that drive the growth and relapse of a patient's cancer. These cells can be very rare and extremely difficult to find after treatment as they become hidden within the normal tissue.

'We used a new genetic technique to identify and analyse single cancer stem cells in leukaemia patients before and after treatment. We found that even in individual cases of leukaemia, there are various types of cancer stem cell that respond differently to the treatment. A small number of these cells are highly resistant to the treatment and are likely to be responsible for disease recurrence when the treatment is stopped. Our research allowed us uniquely to analyse these crucial cells that evade treatment so that we might learn how to more effectively eradicate them.

'This technique could be adapted to analyse a range of different cancers to help predict both the likely response to treatment, and the risk of the disease returning in the future. This should eventually enable treatment to be tailored to target each and every type of cancer stem cell that may be present.'

Molecularly targeted therapies for cancer frequently induce impressive remissions, however, complete disease elimination remains rare, and patients remain at risk of disease relapse. At a cellular level this is likely to reflect differences between individual cancer cells, so-called intratumoural heterogeneity, which underlies this differential response to treatment.

The researchers from the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford's Radcliffe Department of Medicine used a technique called single-cell analysis to study thousands of individual cancer cells in a type of blood cancer called chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) before and after treatment. Being able to identify each subpopulation using this single cell analysis technique will be an important step towards tailoring treatment to each patient.

Explore further: Proportion of cancer stem cells can increase over the course of cancer treatment

More information: Alice Giustacchini et al. Single-cell transcriptomics uncovers distinct molecular signatures of stem cells in chronic myeloid leukemia, Nature Medicine (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nm.4336

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Single cell focus reveals hidden cancer cells - Medical Xpress