Cancer cells circulating in the blood, or circulating tumour cells (CTCs), are known to be associated with a bad prognosis in women with metastatic breast cancer.

A Jekyll-Hyde mechanism that both protects healthy cells and enables cancer cells could be the basis for new cancer-fighting drugs.

Anti-cancer treatments often effectively shrink the size of tumors, but some might have an opposite effect, actually expanding the small population of cancer stem cells believed to drive the disease, according to findings presented today in Atlanta, Georgia at the American Association for Cancer Research’s second International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development.

A new study shows that an important drug used in the treatment of malignant melanoma has little effect on the melanoma cells themselves. Instead, it activates immune-system cells to fight the disease.

Scientists have provided new details about how cancer cells spread by surrounding themselves with platelets – the blood cells needed for blood clotting.

A compound found in broccoli and related vegetables may have more health-boosting tricks up its sleeves, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

Carnegie Mellon University scientists have developed tiny, spherical nanogels that uniformly release encapsulated carbohydrate-based drugs. The scientists created the nanogels using atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), which will ultimately enable the nanogels to deliver more drug directly to the target and to dispense the drug in a time-release manner.

Understanding the molecular structures of compounds that give certain fruits and vegetables their rich colors may help researchers find even more powerful cancer fighters, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that a commonly prescribed diabetes drug kills tumor cells that lack a key regulatory gene called p53. Results from current studies in mice may result in new therapies for a subset of human cancers that tend to be aggressive and resistant to existing treatments.

MIT scientists and colleagues have found a way to create in the lab large amounts of cancer stem cells, or cells that can initiate tumors. The work, reported in the August 13 issue of Cancer Cell, could be a boon to researchers who study these elusive cells. Labs could easily grow them for use in experiments.

In some ways, certain tumors resemble bee colonies, says pathologist Tan Ince. Each cancer cell in the tumor plays a specific role, and just a fraction of the cells serve as “queens,” possessing the unique ability to maintain themselves in an unspecialized state and seed new tumors.

A new imaging technique developed at MIT has allowed scientists to create the first 3D images of a living cell, using a method similar to the X-ray CT scans doctors use to see inside the body.