A group of scientists from Hamburg may have taken a big step towards more effective cancer drug development, Europe's largest cancer congress, ECCO 15 – ESMO 34 [1], heard today (Wednesday 23 September). Dr Ilona Schonn, Director of Cell Culture Research at Indivumed GmbH, told the conference that they had developed a preclinical drug test platform that would enable researchers to analyse tumour tissue for individual patient drug responses on the molecular level.

A drug now used to treat cancer may also be able to restore memory deficits in patients with Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study conducted by scientists at Columbia University Medical Center, which appeared in the September issue of The Journal of Alzheimer's Disease: Volume 18:1.

For cancer drug developers, finding an agent that kills tumor cells is only part of the equation. The drug must also spare healthy cells, and – ideally – its effects will be reversible, to cut short any potentially dangerous side effects.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shed new light on a process that fixes breaks in the genetic material of the body's cells. Their findings could lead to ways of enhancing chemotherapy drugs that destroy cancer cells by damaging their DNA.

In a discovery that rebuffs conventional scientific thinking, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) have discovered a novel way to block the activity of the fusion protein responsible for Ewing's sarcoma, a rare cancer found in children and young adults.

As more pet owners are choosing to treat their pets' cancers through advanced medicine, veterinarians gain valuable knowledge about the progression and treatment of cancers in humans through pet trials of new drugs.

Natalie Ciaccio, a fourth-year graduate student researcher in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Kansas, is investigating what might be an ideal target for anti-cancer drug therapy, and she is focusing her work on brain tumors specifically.

In the past few years, a number of anti-cancer drugs have been developed which are directed selectively against specific key molecules of tumor cells.

Researchers in the Department of Chemistry at Wake Forest University in collaboration with colleagues at the Wake Forest University Health Sciences Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed a new class of platinum-based anti-tumor drugs that animal studies have shown to be 10 times more effective than current treatments in destroying certain types of lung cancer cells.

New technology developed by Duke University bioengineers can help clinicians more precisely detect whether specific cancer drugs are working, and should give basic researchers a powerful new tool to better understand the underlying mechanisms of cancer development.

University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers have discovered a new therapy for transplant patients, targeting the antibody-producing plasma cells that can cause organ rejection.

Researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have taken a major step forward in the field of metabolic engineering, successfully using the bacterium Escherichia coli to synthesize a class of natural products known bacterial aromatic polyketides, which include important antibiotic and anticancer drugs.