Researchers Use a Molecular Trojan Horse to Deliver Chemotherapeutic Drug to Cancer Cells

Riverside: A research team at the University of California, Riverside has discovered a way for chemotherapy drug paclitaxel to target migrating, or circulating, cancer cells, which are responsible for the development of tumor metastases. Until now, paclitaxel has only been used to target rapidly dividing cancer cells. The team was successful in getting the drug to piggyback on 123B9, an agent they devised to target an oncogene called EphA2 (ephrin type-A receptor 2). EphA2 spreads cancer by allowing malignant cells to migrate from the primary tumor into circulation and eventually to adhere to other tissues.

Gene Mapping Lays Groundwork for Precision Chemotherapy

UCSF: Despite the great successes of targeted cancer drugs and the promise of novel immunotherapies, the vast majority of people diagnosed with cancer are still first treated with chemotherapy. Now a new study by UCSF researchers using techniques drawn from computational biology could make it much easier for physicians to use the genetic profile of a patient’s tumor to pick the chemotherapy treatment with the fewest side effects and best chance of success. “Since 95 percent of cancer patients still get chemo, we realized we could make a major impact on cancer treatment by helping clinicians prescribe the right chemotherapy drug,” said Sourav Bandyopadhyay, PhD, a professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences in UCSF’s Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine and senior author on the new study.

New test could tell doctors whether patients will respond to chemotherapy

Purdue: Less than half the patients diagnosed with cancer respond favorably to chemotherapy, but a new method for testing how patients will respond to various drugs could pave the way for more personalized treatment. Using Doppler light scattering, like a weather radar, researchers can determine how a patient will respond to chemotherapy even before they begin treatment. “Doppler weather radar sends electromagnetic waves into clouds, and while you don’t see individual rain droplets, you pick up the overall motion of the raindrops. What you create with this is a 3-D map of cloud motion,” said David Nolte, the Edward M. Purcell Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University. “We’re looking at the motion inside living tissue rather than rain droplets, and we’re using infrared light instead of radar. It’s like watching the weather inside living tissue as the tissue is affected by cancer drugs.”

Scalp Cooling Can Help Some Breast Cancer Patients Retain Hair

Cornell: Scalp cooling can lessen some chemotherapy-induced hair loss – one of the most devastating hallmarks of cancer – in certain breast cancer patients, according to a new multicenter study from UC San Francisco, Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian and three other medical centers. A majority of the study’s patients, all women with stage 1 or 2 breast cancer who underwent scalp cooling, retained more than half of their hair after completing chemotherapy, the investigators learned. The study, published which tracks patients over five years, used standardized photographs to grade hair loss. The study was published Feb. 14 in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Scientists create scorecard index for heart-damaging chemo drugs

Stanford: Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine used heart muscle cells made from stem cells to rank commonly used chemotherapy drugs based on their likelihood of causing lasting heart damage in patients. Drugs known as tyrosine kinase inhibitors can be an effective treatment for many types of cancers, but they also have severe and sometimes fatal side effects. Using lab-grown heart cells, Stanford researchers were able to assess the drugs’ various effects on heart muscle cells, including whether the cells survived, were able to beat rhythmically and effectively, responded appropriately to electrophysiological signals and communicated with one another.

Harmful effects of a commonly used cancer drug can be alleviated by using gene therapy

Helsinki: Doxorubicin treatment, which is commonly used in a variety of cancers, leads to cardiac atrophy and body wasting. Researchers from the Wihuri Research Institute and the University of Helsinki found that in mouse heart, doxorubicin leads to blood vessel rarefaction, which was prevented by treatment with gene therapy using the VEGF-B growth factor.

New discovery in understanding chemotherapy resistance could prevent cancer cells fighting back

Sheffield: Scientists have made an important breakthrough in understanding why some cancer cells become resistant to chemotherapy. Researchers from the University of Sheffield have identified a specific modification to proteins that wrap around the DNA of cancer cells, protecting them from chemotherapy treatment. Most types of chemotherapy and radiotherapy kill cancer cells by causing many breaks in the DNA – the blueprint that carries the information needed to make proteins, and for cells to survive.

The gut microbiota to the rescue of chemotherapies

INSERM: Two species of bacteria present in the gut boost the efficacy of cyclophosphamide-based chemotherapies by optimising the antitumour immunity induced by this drug. This is reported by researchers from Inserm, Gustave Roussy, CNRS, Institut Pasteur Lille, and the Universities of Paris Sud and of Lille in an article published on 4 October in the journal Immunity.Recent studies have shown that certain gut microbes encourage tumours to grow, whereas others contribute to making cancer treatments more effective. It remained necessary to identify the nature and mode of action of the bacterial species capable of optimising the antitumour response induced by chemotherapy.

Ginger for chemotherapy-induced nausea: Does it work?

Mayo Clinic: Can taking ginger for nausea reduce or eliminate nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy? There is evidence that when taken with standard anti-nausea medications, ginger may be helpful in further reducing or eliminating nausea and vomiting during and after chemotherapy treatments. Results from two studies of adults who took ginger for nausea showed that various doses of ginger before starting chemotherapy treatments helped to reduce the severity of nausea. In these studies, participants began taking ginger orally three days prior to starting chemotherapy. The ginger was taken in addition to a standard medication prescribed to reduce nausea and vomiting. A small number of participants reported side effects including heartburn, bruising, flushing and rash.

How to identify drugs that work best for each patient

MIT: Implantable device could allow doctors to test cancer drugs in patients before prescribing chemotherapy. More than 100 drugs have been approved to treat cancer, but predicting which ones will help a particular patient is an inexact science at best. A new device developed at MIT may change that. The implantable device, about the size of the grain of rice, can carry small doses of up to 30 different drugs. After implanting it in a tumor and letting the drugs diffuse into the tissue, researchers can measure how effectively each one kills the patient’s cancer cells. Such a device could eliminate much of the guesswork now involved in choosing cancer treatments, says Oliver Jonas, a postdoc at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and lead author of a paper describing the device in the April 22 online edition of Science Translational Medicine.

Fish oil could counteract chemo

Scimex: Dutch and Japanese scientists have found that people consuming herring and mackerel fish, as well as three kinds of fish oils, actually raised their blood levels of a certain chemo-counteracting fatty acid, indicating that chemotherapy patients should avoid them during treatment. Previous studies in mice have indicated that certain fatty acids in fish oils may actually counteract the tumour-fighting effects of chemotherapy, a finding which has implications for the growing use of supplements by cancer patients during their treatments.

Potential resistance to Chemotherapy after Consuming Fatty Acid in Fish, Fish Oil

JAMA: Researchers found that consuming the fish herring and mackerel, as well as three kinds of fish oils, raised blood levels of the fatty acid 16:4(n-3), which experiments in mice suggest may induce resistance to chemotherapy used to treat cancer, according to a study published online by JAMA Oncology.

Oral Chemotherapy: Managing Symptoms and Side Effects. Dana Farber

Oral Chemoterapy: Remembering to Take It. Dana farber

Oral chemotherapy: handling safely at home (video)

Dana Farber

Blood test could help bowel cancer patients avoid drug side-effects

Manchester: Colorectal, or bowel, cancer is the second biggest cancer killer in Europe. It is most commonly treated with a combination of chemotherapy agents, and outcome can be improved by using additional drugs. However, this multi-drug approach can increase side-effects such as hair loss, low white blood cell count, diarrhoea and damage to the peripheral nervous system. The team from Manchester counted tumour cells in a patient’s blood sample as a way of predicting who might benefit most.

New nanodevice defeats drug resistance

MIT: Tiny particles embedded in gel can turn off drug-resistance genes, then release cancer drugs. Chemotherapy often shrinks tumors at first, but as cancer cells become resistant to drug treatment, tumors can grow back. A new nanodevice developed by MIT researchers can help overcome that by first blocking the gene that confers drug resistance, then launching a new chemotherapy attack against the disarmed tumors.

Step closer to predicting cancer patients' drug toxicity

Adelaide University. Australia: Being able to predict that a patient will adversely react to a drug that's meant to be treating them is a key aim of personalised medicine, and could help to improve the patient's overall treatment. Researchers at the University of Adelaide are now one step closer to accurately predicting which cancer patients will experience severe toxicity from chemotherapy.

Gemzar

Gemcitabine is used to treat pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and lung cancer, and may be used for other cancers as well.
Gemcitabine is a member of a group of chemotherapy drugs known as anti-metabolites. It prevents cells from making DNA, which stops cell growth and causes the cells to die.

Abseamed

Abseamed is a solution for injection. It is available in pre-filled syringes that contain between 1,000 and 40,000 international units (IU) of the active substance, epoetin alfa.
Abseamed is a ‘biosimilar medicine'. This means that Abseamed is similar to and contains the same active substance as a biological medicine that is already authorised in the European Union (EU), which is known as the ‘reference medicine’. The reference medicine for Abseamed is Eprex/Erypo.
Abseamed is used to treat anemia.