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Red blood cells moving through a vein in the pancreas. (Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library) | |||||
Sugar could be pancreatic cancer's foeResearchers have made several chemotherapies more effective against pancreatic cancer in mice by raising their blood sugar levels — a process called 'forced hyperglycaemia'. Depriving pancreatic cancer of nutrients such as glucose triggers a stress response that makes the cancer more resistant to chemotherapy. When pancreatic cancer is flooded with glucose, it lowers its defences. In particular, mice with forced hyperglycaemia had lower expression of the enzyme GCLC, which is crucial to the metabolism of glutathione. When GCLC was blocked, this had the same effect as higher blood sugar, whereas rescuing this pathway made forced hyperglycaemia ineffective as a chemotherapy booster. Reference: Nature Communications paper (28 June) | |||||
CAR T-cells that don't kill healthy cellsTwo teenagers with an aggressive form of leukaemia have been successfully treated with T cells that were engineered to fight cancer without targeting healthy T cells. Healthy donor T cells were engineered using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to include a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) gene, which helped the immune cells to target cancer. To prevent these CAR T-cells from also harming healthy T cells, three genes were inactivated using base editing, in which a single alteration is made in the DNA code. Two of three children treated were in remission within 28 days. The third child responded to the treatment but died of a fungal infection. Nature Research Highlight | 1 min readReference: New England Journal of Medicine paper (14 June) | |||||
How to switch on cancer-fighting B cellsA cell-surface molecule called TIM-1 must be switched off before B cells will start attacking cancerous cells. B cells are white blood cells that release antibodies to fight infections. They are one of the most abundant cell types inside melanoma, but most cancer treatments have focused on manipulating T cells and natural killer cells. When the gene encoding TIM-1 was deleted in mice with melanoma, B cells increased their antigen presentation, which increased the expansion of tumour-specific effector T cells. This stalled tumour growth. Nature Research Briefing | 3 min readReference: Nature paper (21 June) | |||||
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The rate of cancer-drug approvals by the US Food and Drug Administration is 7.6 times higher than it was 20 years ago. Click here for a high-resolution image. (Nature Reviews Drug Discovery | 8 min read) (E. C. Scott et al./Nature Rev. Drug Discov.) | |||||
Conference highlightsMore than 40,000 oncology professionals attended the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting this year. Some of the big-ticket items included:
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The truth about diet drinks and cancerThe World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is poised to label aspartame as a possible carcinogen in July, but this has caused more alarm than is warranted, argues epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz. Aspartame is an artificial sugar found in diet soft drinks, cereals, chewing gum and cough drops. "Yes, there's some vague evidence that aspartame may be associated with an increased risk of cancer," writes Meyerowitz-Katz. "There's also some evidence it isn't!" Other substances classed as 2B possible carcinogens by the World Health Organization include coconut oil soaps, aloe vera, pickled vegetables, talcum powder, nickel and various dyes and solvents used in the textiles industry. The IARC classification system does not take into account the amount of a substance that can be safely consumed. Medium | 5 min read & Reuters | 7 min read | |||||
Keto diet triggers wasting disease in miceThe low-carb, high-fat Keto Diet starves cancer of glucose — and it also accelerates the onset of a deadly muscle-wasting disease called cachexia, writes biochemist Mhairi Morris. Mice with cancers that were put on a keto diet started to metabolise fats instead of sugars. This produced an overabundance of toxic byproducts that the body couldn't remove fast enough. In response, the mice produced an appetite-suppressing molecule called GDF-15, which contributed to weight loss. The keto diet also impaired the production of corticosteroids, which control inflammation. An injection of dexamethasone reversed this effect. "It's imperative that further research be carried out to see whether the keto diet has a similar effect in humans — and crucially, whether treatment with dexamethasone delays the onset of cachexia in humans, too," writes Morris. The Conversation | 5 min readReference: Cell Metabolism paper (12 June) | |||||
Quote of the week"I was supposed to live three years and I've lived almost 30."Multiple myeloma used to be a death sentence; today, it's one of the most treatable cancers, says Kathy Giusti, the founder of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, who was diagnosed with the disease in 1996. (The Washington Post | 8 min read) | |||||
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