Friday, July 1, 2011
Diet and Cancer Link
Cancer prevention guidelines recommend a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, recommend limiting sugary foods and beverages, red and processed meats, sodium, and alcohol, and recommend avoiding foods contaminated with carcinogens. However, youth typically do not meet the daily recommendations for fruit, vegetable, or whole grain consumption and are over-consuming energy-dense, sugary and salty foods.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21631948
AUSTRALIAN scientists have worked out a way of weakening lung cancer, the most deadly form of the disease in the country.
Researchers at the Lowy Cancer Research Centre have found people with lung cancer are loaded with high levels of a protein that is resistant to chemotherapy.
More than 9000 Australians are diagnosed with lung cancer each year and the disease's resistance makes it tricky to treat.
But researchers at the University of NSW centre have developed a gene silencing technique that can switch off the resilient protein cells, making the cancer more sensitive to chemotherapy.
The next step is finding a way to deliver this treatment to the tumour without the body rejecting it, said Professor Maria Kavallaris.
"If you just put it into an animal it would just get excreted straight away," Prof Kavallaris told AAP.
Calcium plus vitamin D may reduce cancer Stanford study finds
Using existing data from a large clinical trial, the study zeroed in on women with a history of non-melanoma skin cancer, as people with this generally non-fatal disease are more likely to develop the more lethal illness — melanoma. The researchers found that women who once had non-melanoma and took the calcium-vitamin D combination developed 57 percent fewer melanomas than women with similar histories who were not given the supplements. Non-melanoma skin cancers, such as basal cell or squamous cell cancers, are the most common forms of skin cancer.
"In preventive medicine, we want to target people most at risk for the disease," said dermatologist Jean Tang, MD, PhD, lead author of the study. "If you previously had a non-melanoma skin cancer, calcium plus vitamin D might reduce your risk of the more deadly melanoma."
Tang added a note of caution. The study found that a daily dose of 1,000 mg calcium plus 400 IU of vitamin D doesn't provide skin cancer protection for everybody. Women without a history of non-melanoma skin cancer who took the supplements did not see any reduction of risk compared with their placebo-group counterparts, according to the research.
The study will be published online on June 27 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Vitamin D is well-known for its role in bone growth, but it also affects non-skeletal cells. In many parts of the body, including the skin, vitamin D controls how quickly cells replicate, a process that often goes awry in cancer. Reports from various institutions have suggested that vitamin D is associated with lower risks of colon, breast, prostate and other cancers. Nonetheless, the Institute of Medicine published a report last November saying that more research was needed on vitamin D and calcium, as the evidence was insufficient to prove their having a benefit for conditions other than bone health.
This study is the second to look at the effect of vitamin D supplementation on cancer risk with a randomized, controlled trial.
American Association for Cancer Research
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| Cancer Discovery provides a unique forum for paradigm-changing, broad-interest original research, reviews, Research Watch journal summaries, and insightful perspectives in addition to rapid, noteworthy, cancer-specific news. Currently, these types of features appear in disparate publications. This journal is the first source scientists will go to for critical information in cancer science and medicine — in a compact format. |
Novel analysis method organizes genomic cancer data
The technology that allows scientists to profile the entire genome of individual tumors offers new hope for discovering ways to select the best treatment for each patient's particular type of cancer. However, these profiles produce huge amounts of data, and the volume alone creates unique analytical problems. In a new study, researchers describe a new analytical approach based on a concept called multiplicity, that can organize large amounts of varied genetic data.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110630131832.htm
New mechanism used by cells to reverse silenced genes
Scientists have discovered a new mechanism used by cells in the body to turn on silenced genes. This process is critical in preventing the development of cancer -- suggesting the possibility of new therapies that might target the specific changes underlying the disease.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110630122001.htm
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