cancer tagged posts

Researchers in the Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science have developed a material – a new kind of shape memory polymer (SMP) – that could have major implications for health care.

SMPs are soft, rubbery, “smart” materials that can change shape in response to external stimuli like temperature changes or exposure to light. They can hold each shape indefinitely and turn back when triggered to do so.

SMPs have many potential biomedical applications...

A new compound based on Iridium, a rare metal which landed in the Gulf of Mexico 66 M years ago, hooked onto albumin, a protein in blood, can attack the nucleus of cancerous cells when switched on by light, University of Warwick researchers have found...

Scientists have discovered how a mutated gene can affect the three-dimensional interactions of genes in the cell, leading to various forms of cancer. Inside the cell, DNA is tightly wrapped around proteins and packed in a complex, 3D structure that we call “chromatin.” Chromatin not only protects our genetic material from damage, but also organizes the entire genome by regulating the expression of genes in three dimensions, unwinding them to be presented to the cell’s gene-expression machinery and then winding them back in.

Inside the 3D chromatin structure there are certain regions called “topologically associating domains” or TADs...

A tumor cell that has acquired high metastatic potential during chemotherapy lights up with high FRET biosensor readout, whereas the cells that are sensitive to chemotherapy (and hence, low potential) stays dark.

Researchers engineered sensors to detect and measure the metastatic potential of single cancer cells. Metastasis is attributed as the leading cause of death in people with cancer.
Cancer would not be so devastating if it did not metastasize,” said Pradipta Ghosh, MD, professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine departments of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine, director of the Center for Network Medicine and senior study author.

“Although there are many ways to detect metastasis once it has occurred, there has been nothing available to ‘see’ or ‘measure’ the potentia...