Understanding of complex diseases likely to improve following the unexpected discovery of the ways Cells Move

Main category: Cancer / Oncology
Also included in: respiratory / asthma;??Biology / biochemistry
Article Date: June 25, 2013 - 1:00 PDT current ratings for:
Understanding of complex diseases likely to improve following the unexpected discovery of the ways Cells Move

A new discovery about how cells move within the organization can provide scientists with crucial information about the mechanisms of diseases such as the spreading of the cancer or constriction of the Airways caused by asthma. Led by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Institute for bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), investigators found that the epithelial cells - the type that form a barrier between the inside and the outside of the body, such as skin cells - move group, powered by forces both of in and from neighbouring cells - to fill the empty spaces that they encounter.

The study appears in Nature Materials advanced online edition.

"We have tried to understand the fundamental relationship between cellular movements collective and collective forces of cell phones, which may occur during the invasion of the cancer cells, for example. But, in so doing, we are fallen on a phenomenon that was totally unexpected, "said lead author Jeffrey Fredberg, Professor of Bioengineering and physiology to the investigator HSPH Department of Environmental Health and co-Minister of HSPH molecular laboratory and integrative cellular dynamics.

Biologists, engineers and physicists at HSPH and IBEC worked together to shed light on the collective cell movement because it plays a key role in functions such as the healing of wounds, organ development and tumor growth. Using a technique called stress monolayer microscopy--which they invented themselves - they have measured the forces affecting a single layer of epithelial cells in motion. They examined cells speed and direction as traction - how certain cells either pull or push themselves and thus force the collective movement.

As they expected, the researchers found that when an obstacle was placed in the path of a layer of advanced cell - in this case, a gel that provided no traction - cells settled around him, closely hugging the sides of the gel as they passed. However, the researchers also found something amazing - cells, in addition to moving forward, continued to collectively back to frost, as if the desire to fill the space empty. Researchers have dubbed this movement "kenotaxis", Greek words "keno" (empty) and "taxi" (arrangement), because it seemed that cells are trying to fill a void.

This new discovery could help researchers to better understand the behaviour of the cell - and evaluate the potential influence that behavior - in a variety of complex diseases, such as cancer, asthma, cardiovascular diseases, developmental anomalies and glaucoma. The findings could also help with regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, which rely on cell migration.

In carcinomas, for example - who represent 90% of all cancers and involve epithelial cells - new information on cell movement could improve understanding of how cancer cells migrate through the body. Research on asthma could also get a boost, because scientists believe the migration of epithelial cells damaged in the lungs are involved in narrowing of the Airways caused by the disease.

"Kenotaxis is a property of the cell collective, not the individual cell," said Jae Hun Kim, first author of the study. "It was amazing to us that the collective cell can organize itself draw systematically in one direction while moving consistently in a quite different direction. ''

Article adapted by Medical News Today press release original. Click on "references" tab above for the source.
Visit our cancer / Oncology section for the latest news on this subject. Other authors HSPH included James Butler, senior lecturer on physiology in the Department of health environmental and investigator co-Minister of the laboratory; and researchers Dhananjay Tambe, Enhua Zhou Chan Young Park, Monirosadat Sadati, Park Jin-Ah, Bomi Gweon and Emil Millet.

Support for the study came from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (BFU2012-38146 FPU fellowship XS) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (PBEZP2-140047), the National Research Foundation of Korea (2012R1A6A3A03040450), the European Research Council (Grant Agreement 242993) Parker B. Francis (RK Fellowship), American Heart Association (13SDG14320004) and the National Institutes of Health (R01HL102373, R01HL107561).

"Propulsion and navigation within the advanced single layer sheet," Jae Hun Kim, Xavier Serra-Picamal, Dhananjay T. Tambe, Enhua H. Zhou, Chan Young Park, Monirosadat Sadati, Park Jin-Ah, Krishnan Ramaswamy, Bomi Gweon, Emil Millet, James P. Butler, Xavier Trepat, Jeffrey J. Fredberg, Nature of materials, online, June 23, 2013

Harvard School of Public Health

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Sorafenib Stops Tumor Growth And Provides The First Effective Treatment For Thyroid Cancer Patients Who Progress Following Standard Therapies

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Endocrinology;??Ear, Nose and Throat
Article Date: 04 Jun 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Sorafenib Stops Tumor Growth And Provides The First Effective Treatment For Thyroid Cancer Patients Who Progress Following Standard Therapies

The kidney and liver cancer drug sorafenib holds metastatic thyroid cancer at bay for nearly twice as long as a placebo, according to results of a randomized phase III trial, which was presented by a researcher from the Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in a plenary session during the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting (Abstract #4).

If approved for use in thyroid cancer patients by the Food and Drug Administration, sorafenib (Nexavar), a kinase inhibitor that mediates tumor cell division and growth of tumor blood vessels, would be the first effective agent for this patient population. Thyroid cancer is highly curable through surgery and radioactive iodine treatment, but about 10 percent of the 60,000 patients who are diagnosed with the disease each year fail to respond to standard therapies, with tumors eventually appearing in the lymph nodes, bones, lungs, and other sites. The only other drug for advanced thyroid cancer, doxorubicin, which was approved in 1974, is not used because it is highly toxic and is not effective.

"Until we began using sorafenib, we had no medical options for these patients who suffered due to progression of their disease," said Marcia S. Brose, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery and Hematology/Oncology, who led the study, which is known as DECISION. "Now, we can give patients hope - a breakthrough medication that can stop the progression of the disease for 5 months. This trial is the first step in a promising series of clinical trials to identify new drugs that are shifting the horizon for patients with advanced thyroid cancer."

Of the 417 metastatic thyroid cancer patients studied in the multicenter, international trial, 207 were randomized to take sorafenib, an oral drug, and 210 to a placebo arm. Twelve percent of patients experienced tumor shrinkage in the sorafenib arm, compared to 0.5 percent of patients taking a placebo. Importantly, the therapy also appeared to thwart disease progression even among many of those whose tumors did not regress: 42 patients who took sorafenib had stable disease after six months, compared to 33 percent of those in the placebo group.

Among patients taking sorafenib, median progression-free survival was 10.8 months, compared to 5.8 months among the placebo group. Patients taking the placebo were allowed to cross over into the sorafenib arm once their disease progressed; 70 percent of them did so. Overall survival data is not yet available.

The most common adverse events observed among patients taking sorafenib included hand-foot skin reaction, diarrhea, alopecia, rash, fatigue, weight loss and hypertension, all of which are consistent with findings from previous trials of the drug for its approved indications.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our cancer / oncology section for the latest news on this subject. Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals and Onyx Pharmaceuticals provided funding for the trial. Editor's note: Dr. Brose has received consulting fees and honoraria from these companies.
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Bankruptcy An Increased Risk Following Cancer Diagnosis

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Public Health;??Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 17 May 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Bankruptcy An Increased Risk Following Cancer Diagnosis

People diagnosed with cancer are more than two-and-a-half times more likely to declare bankruptcy than those without cancer, according to a new study from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Researchers also found that younger cancer patients had two- to five-fold higher bankruptcy rates compared to older patients, and that overall bankruptcy filings increased as time passed following diagnosis.

The study, led by corresponding author Scott Ramsey, M.D., Ph.D., an internist and health economist at Fred Hutch, was published online as a Web First in the journal Health Affairs. The article will also appear in the journal's June edition.

Ramsey and colleagues, including a chief judge for a U.S. Bankruptcy Court, undertook the research because the relationship between receiving a cancer diagnosis and bankruptcy is less well understood than the much-studied link between high medical expenses and likelihood of bankruptcy filing.

"This study found strong evidence of a link between cancer diagnosis and increased risk of bankruptcy," the authors wrote. "Although the risk of bankruptcy for cancer patients is relatively low in absolute terms, bankruptcy represents an extreme manifestation of what is probably a larger picture of economic hardship for cancer patients. Our study thus raises important questions about the factors underlying the relationship between cancer and financial hardship."

For this study, researchers analyzed data from a population-wide registry of individuals over age 21 who lived in western Washington and who were diagnosed with cancer between Jan. 1, 1995 and Dec. 31, 2009. They were compared to a randomly sampled age-, sex-, and ZIP code-matched population of people without cancer. Cancer cases were identified using the Cancer Surveillance System of Western Washington, a population-based cancer registry based at Fred Hutch that is part of the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results Program (SEER).

The cancer and control cohorts were both linked with the records of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Washington. The court serves 19 counties in western Washington, including all 13 counties represented in the Cancer Surveillance System of Western Washington. Researchers included Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings only.

"This is the strongest evidence we have between a disease and risk for severe financial distress," Ramsey said. "I've not seen other studies that linked databases of this quality."

Ramsey directs the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research (HICOR), which is dedicated to health economics and cancer outcomes research. Its mission is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of cancer prevention, early detection and treatment to reduce the economic and human burdens of cancer. HICOR is believed to be the first of its kind among comprehensive cancer centers nationwide.

Among the study's key findings: Between 1995 and 2009 there were 197,840 people in western Washington who were diagnosed with cancer and met the inclusion criteria for the study. Of those, 4,408 (2.2 percent) filed for bankruptcy protection after diagnosis. Of the matched controls who were not diagnosed with cancer, 2,291 (1.1 percent) filed for bankruptcy. Compared to cancer patients who did not file for bankruptcy, those who did were more likely to be younger, female and nonwhite. The youngest age groups had up to 10 times the bankruptcy rate as compared to the older age groups. The authors noted that because cancer is generally a sudden and unexpected event, the risk of bankruptcy is influenced by factors such as debt load before diagnosis, assets, presence and terms of health and disability insurance, number of dependent children, and incomes of others in the household at the time of the cancer diagnosis. "The youngest groups in the study were diagnosed at a time when their debt-to-income ratios are typically highest - often unavoidably, because they are paying off student loans, purchasing a home, or starting a business," the authors wrote. "All working-age people who develop cancer face loss of income and, in many cases, loss of employer-sponsored insurance, both of which can be devastating for households in which the patient is the primary wage earner." In contrast, people age 65 or older generally have Medicare insurance and Social Security benefits. These older people are likely to have more assets and possibly more income than working-age people. "However, it is likely that having stable insurance (specifically, coverage not tied to employment) plays a major role in mitigating the risk of bankruptcy for those over age sixty-five," the authors wrote. The proportion of cancer patients who filed for bankruptcy within one year of diagnosis was 0.52 percent, compared to 0.16 percent within one year for the control group. For bankruptcy filings within five years of diagnosis, the proportion of cancer patients was about 1.7 percent, compared to 0.7 percent for the control group. The incidence rates for bankruptcy at one year after diagnosis, per 1,000 person-years, for the cancers with the highest overall incidence rates were as follows: thyroid, 9.3; lung, 9.1; uterine, 6.8; leukemia/lymphoma, 6.2; colorectal, 5.9; melanoma, 5.7; breast, 5.7; and prostate. 3.7. The incidence rate for all cancers combined was 6.1. The high bankruptcy incidence rate for those with thyroid cancer may be because thyroid cancer affects younger women more often than other cancers do according to the researchers. "Compared to men, younger women are more likely to live in single-income households and to have lower wages and lower rates of employment, and therefore less access to high-quality health insurance - leaving them more financially vulnerable," the authors wrote.Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our cancer / oncology section for the latest news on this subject. The National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health funded the research. Co-authors included Karen Overstreet, chief judge of the U.S Bankruptcy Court, Western District of Washington; and researchers from the University of Washington; University of Utah School of Medicine; and University of Bristol (U.K.).
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