Body

Cancer cells use a mutant gene to coerce neighbouring healthy tissue into helping with the disease's growth and spread, a major new study reports.

Healthy cells are persuaded to release unique growth signals which cancer cells can use to multiply but cannot secrete themselves, researchers found.

Their study sheds light on how cancer cells and normal cells communicate with each other, and could open up new approaches to cancer treatment.

Archaeologists from the Lomonosov Moscow State University studied the objects made of bone, antler and ivory, that were found at the Sungir archaeological site. They managed to learn how the Homo sapiens processed solid organic materials and produced tools and ornamentals. The work was published in a specialized digest Hugo Obermaier Society for Quaternary Research and Archaeology of the Stone Age.

• Many meat-eating dinosaurs may have been expert scavengers, like hyenas are today
• Researchers from Trinity College Dublin created 'Sims-like' computer models to recreate prehistoric ecosystems and put competing theories to the test
• Mid-sized meat-eaters, such as juvenile Tyrannosaur rexes, would have been the most efficient scavengers

ITHACA, N.Y. - Canine parvovirus, or CPV, emerged as a deadly threat to dogs in the late 1970s, most likely the result of the direct transfer of feline panleukopenia or a similar virus from domesticated cats.

CPV has since spread to wild forest-dwelling animals, including raccoons, and the transfer of the virus from domesticated to wild carnivores has been something of a mystery.

EUGENE, Ore. -- April 14, 2016 -- After vigorous exercise, some 3,000 genes go to work to aid recovery by boosting muscles and blood vessels, but in the presence of high doses of antihistamines almost 27 percent of the gene response is blunted, according to University of Oregon researchers.

A multi-institutional research team has estimated for the first time the number of children born with Down syndrome each year in Massachusetts over the past century, along with the numbers of pregnancies of a child with Down syndrome lost to either termination or miscarriage. Their report receiving advance online publication in the journal Genetics in Medicine is a follow-up to a 2015 paper describing such estimates on a nationwide level.

In a study published online by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, Luc G. T. Morris, M.D., M.Sc., of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues analyzed the incidence of thyroid cancer in the U.S. from 1983 to 2012. The incidence of thyroid cancer has risen rapidly since the 1990s. This increase, chiefly comprising small papillary cancers, has been attributed to widespread diagnosis of subclinical disease.

While neratinib plus paclitaxel was not superior to trastuzumab plus paclitaxel as first-line treatment for ERBB2-positive metastatic breast cancer in terms of progression-free survival, the combination was associated with delayed onset and reduced frequency of central nervous system metastases, a finding that requires a larger study to confirm, according to an article published online by JAMA Oncology.

PITTSBURGH, April 14, 2016 - Led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, an international panel of pathologists and clinicians has reclassified a type of thyroid cancer to reflect that it is noninvasive and has a low risk of recurrence. The name change, described today in JAMA Oncology, is expected to reduce the psychological and medical consequences of a cancer diagnosis, potentially affecting thousands of people worldwide.

Researchers led by teams at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Wenzhou Medical University of China have discovered a way to keep adult stem cells that are destined to become testosterone-producing cells multiplying and on track to fulfill their fate, a new study reports.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- University of Florida Health researchers have slowed a notoriously aggressive type of brain tumor in mouse models by using a low-carbohydrate diet.

A high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that included a coconut oil derivative helped reduce the growth of glioblastoma tumor cells and extended lifespan in mouse models by 50 percent, researchers found. The results were published recently in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

Elemental carbon appears in many different forms, some of which are very well-known and have been thoroughly studied: diamond, graphite, graphene, fullerenes, nanotubes and carbyne. Within this "carbon family", carbyne (a truly one-dimensional carbon structure) is the only one that has not been synthesised until now, despite having been studied for more than 50 years. Organic chemists across the world had been trying to synthesise increasingly longer carbyne chains by using stabilizing agents; the longest chain obtained so far (achieved in 2010) was 44 carbon atoms.

New York, NY, April 14, 2016 - Few data are available concerning the consequences of neonatal circumcision on penile sensitivity in adults. New research reported in The Journal of Urology® indicates that there are no differences in penile sensitivity for a variety of stimulus types and penile sites between circumcised and intact men. Additionally, this study challenges past research suggesting that the foreskin is the most sensitive and, in turn, most sexually relevant, part of the adult penis.

BAR HARBOR, ME - Recent research by Sandra Rieger, Ph.D., of the MDI Biological Laboratory identifying the underlying mechanisms of peripheral neuropathy, or nerve damage, has raised the prospect that drug therapies can be developed for the treatment of this condition, which causes pain, numbness and/or tingling in the hands and feet.

A common flu virus could be used to overcome patients' resistance to certain cancer drugs -- and improve how those drugs kill cancer cells, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

The work, funded by UK charity Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund, contributes to a growing area in cancer treatment in which viruses are harnessed to kill cancer cells.