~Cancer~

[Dabs]

I just found out a family friend has breat cancer, she is 34 years old and right now doing chemo. She has lost all her hair. I pray for her~

 

[Dabs]

I just found out a family friend has breast cancer, she is 34 years old and right now doing chemo. She has lost all her hair. I pray for her~

 

[jefflawsonn]

According to me, Cancer is horrible. The good news is that many forms of cancer can be mitigated by health maintenance. Getting the Gardisil Shot and Pap smears has dropped the incidence of cervical cancer in this country to a fraction of what it used to be. If everyone got colonoscopies at 50, we could virtually eliminate the mortality behind colon cancer. Regular mammograms and exams will reduce breast cancer. And not smoking/quitting smoking makes your odds of getting lung cancer negligible.

 

[waltky]

Drug for colo-rectal cancer expanded for use with gastro-intestinal tumors...

FDA expands approval of Bayer cancer drug
Feb 25,`13 WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Food and Drug Administration on Monday expanded approval of a Bayer cancer pill to treat tumors of the intestinal tract that don't respond to other treatments.

The drug is called Stivarga and regulators approved it to treat gastrointestinal stromal tumors that cannot be surgically removed and no longer respond to other FDA-approved drugs. The FDA previously approved Stivarga to treat colorectal cancer. It works by blocking several enzymes that promote cancer growth.

The FDA approved the drug for the new use based on a study of nearly 200 patients who were randomly assigned to take Stivarga or a placebo pill. Patients taking the drug experienced a nearly four month delay in the growth of their tumors compared to taking placebo.

The most common side effects of Stivarga in clinical trials included liver damage, severe bleeding, blistering and peeling of skin, high blood pressure, heart attacks and perforations.

Other drugs approved to treat intestinal tumors include Gleevec, from Novartis, and Sutent, made by Pfizer Inc. Bayer HealthCare is a subsidiary of Germany's Bayer AG

Source

 

[waltky]

Cancer cells highly adaptive...

Thriving cancer's 'chaos' explained
27 February 2013 - The way cancers make a chaotic mess of their genetic code in order to thrive has been explained by UK researchers.

Cancer cells can differ hugely within a tumour - it helps them develop ways to resist drugs and spread round the body. A study in the journal Nature showed cells that used up their raw materials became "stressed" and made mistakes copying their genetic code. Scientists said supplying the cancer with more fuel to grow may actually make it less dangerous. Most normal cells in the human body contain 46 chromosomes, or bundles of genetic code. However, some cancerous cells can have more than 100 chromosomes. And the pattern is inconsistent - pick a bunch of neighbouring cells and they could each have different chromosome counts. This diversity helps tumours adapt to become untreatable and colonise new parts of the body. Devising ways of preventing a cancer from becoming diverse is a growing field of research.

Chaos from order

Scientists at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute and the University College London Cancer Institute have been trying to crack how cancers become so diverse in the first place. It had been thought that when a cancer cell split to create two new cells, the chromosomes were not split evenly between the two. However, lead researcher Prof Charles Swanton's tests on bowel cancer showed "very little evidence" that was the case. Instead the study showed the problem came from making copies of the cancer's genetic code. Cancers are driven to make copies of themselves, however, if cancerous cells run out of the building blocks of their DNA they develop "DNA replication stress".

The study showed the stress led to errors and tumour diversity. Prof Swanton told the BBC: "It is like constructing a building without enough bricks or cement for the foundations. "However, if you can provide the building blocks of DNA you can reduce the replication stress to limit the diversity in tumours, which could be therapeutic." He admitted that it "just seems wrong" that providing the fuel for a cancer to grow could be therapeutic. However, he said this proved that replication stress was the problem and that new tools could be developed to tackle it. Future studies will investigate whether the same stress causes diversity in other types of tumour.

The research team identified three genes often lost in diverse bowel cancer cells, which were critical for the cancer suffering from DNA replication stress. All were located on one region of chromosome 18. Prof Nic Jones, Cancer Research UK's chief scientist, said: "This region of chromosome 18 is lost in many cancers, suggesting this process is not just seen in bowel cancers. "Scientists can now start looking for ways to prevent this happening in the first place or turning this instability against cancers."

BBC News - Thriving cancer's 'chaos' explained

 

[waltky]

Naked mole rats may hold key to cancer tumors...

The animal that doesn't get cancer
31 October 2015 - Somehow, one creature never develops tumours

Cancer is rife in the animal kingdom. For many, the mortality rate is similar to that suffered by humans. The dogs and cats we share our homes with can get various forms of cancer. Among other things, second-hand cigarette smoke increases the risk. But wild animals get cancer too. For instance, many Tasmanian devils have devastating facial tumours, which spread from devil to devil upon contact. Polluted oceans also pose a problem. One population of California sea lions is known to suffer from urogenital cancer, partly as a result of organic pollutants. It causes paralysis and then death.

Many animals get cancer just like humans do, but there are a few mysterious species that rarely develop it​

In Canada's St Lawrence estuary, intestinal cancer is the second most common cause of death for beluga whales: 27% are affected. And despite misleading myths that sharks are cancer-free, it turns out they can get a form of skin cancer called melanoma. However there are exceptions. A few animals don't seem to get cancer very often, or at all. Understanding why could help us treat it, or even prevent it. Cancer occurs when a seemingly normal cell spirals out of control. Usually, old or damaged cells are destroyed, but occasionally one will keep reproducing, creating more and more rogue cells. The eventual result is a tumour.

In theory, this ought to be a simple numbers game. The more cells an organism has and the longer it lives, the more likely it is that one of its cells will succumb to a random cancer-causing mutation. For instance, taller people are slightly more cancer-prone than shorter people. The same is true of large dogs. But it turns out not all cells are equally prone to cancer. Elephants have trillions more cells than us and live a long time, yet they have lower cancer rates. This is called "Peto's paradox", after the scientist Richard Peto, who noticed that cancer prevalence is not correlated with body size. Only about 5% of elephants die from cancer. This is staggeringly low when you consider that one in five humans will die from the disease.

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