Like vampires, cancer tumors require an ample supply of blood to stay alive. Without fresh blood for sustenance, cancer cells shrivel up like raisins and die.

In a one-two punch, a familiar diabetes drug reduced tumors faster and prolonged remission in mice longer than chemotherapy alone, apparently by targeting cancer stem cells, report Harvard Medical School researchers in the Sept. 14 advance online Cancer Research.

One of the biggest challenges in scientists' quest to develop new and better treatments for cancer is gaining a better understanding of how and why cancer spreads. Recent breakthroughs have uncovered how different cellular proteins are turned 'on' or 'off' at the molecular level, but much remains to be understood about how protein signaling influences cell behavior.

New work by MIT cancer biologists shows that the interplay between two key genes that are often defective in tumors determines how cancer cells respond to chemotherapy.

Scientists at Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) have found that the Caspase-8 protein, long known to play a major role in promoting programmed cell death (apoptosis), helps relay signals that can cause cancer cells to proliferate, migrate and invade surrounding tissues. The study was published in the journal Cancer Research on June 15.

Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have identified a protein that marks the tumor suppressor p53 for destruction, providing a potential new avenue for restoring p53 in cancer cells.

University of Cincinnati (UC) cancer cell biologists have identified a distinct gene linked to increased lung cancer susceptibility and development. They say this gene—known as RGS17—could result in a genetic predisposition to develop lung cancer for people with a strong family history of the disease.

Gliomas are malignant brain tumors that arise from glial (supporting) cells of the brain. Gliomas are often resistant to chemotherapy. These tumors grow fine extensions that infiltrate normal brain tissue and, in addition, individual tumor cells can form satellites in surrounding tissue. Therefore, it is almost impossible to remove the tumor tissue completely by surgery.

Johns Hopkins engineers have invented a method that could be used to help figure out how cancer cells break free from neighboring tissue, an "escape" that can spread the disease to other parts of the body. The new lab-on-a-chip, described in the March issue of the journal Nature Methods, could lead to better cancer therapies.

Researchers at Purdue University have precisely measured the impact of a high-fat diet on the spread of cancer, finding that excessive dietary fat caused a 300 percent increase in metastasizing tumor cells in laboratory animals.

Starting with the tiny fruit fly and then moving into mice and humans, researchers at VIB and K. U. Leuven show that expression of the same gene suppresses cancer in all three organisms. Reciprocally, switching off the gene – called Ato in flies and ATOH1 in mammals – leads to cancer.

A team of researchers in Chicago has developed a way to examine cell biopsies and detect never-before-seen signs of early-stage pancreatic cancer, according to a new paper in the Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Letters.