Malignant tumors have usually lost their ability to destroy themselves by programmed cell death, or apoptosis. Therefore, tumors are often resistant to chemotherapy or radiation therapy, whose effect is based on forcing tumor cells to commit suicide.

Recurrent low-grade serous carcinoma, a rare type of ovarian cancer, is less sensitive to chemotherapy and therefore more difficult to treat than more common high-grade ovarian cancers, according to researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The findings were reported at the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists 39th Annual Meeting on Women's Cancers.

Research shows that adding chemotherapy to chemoradiation treatment following surgery for pancreatic cancer appears to have limited survival benefit.

The addition of the drug gemcitabine with chemoradiation for the treatment of patients who had surgery for pancreatic cancer was associated with a survival benefit, although this improvement was not statistically significant, according to a study in the March 5 issue of JAMA.

A technique that specifically “tags” tumors responding to chemotherapy may offer a new strategy for determining a cancer treatment’s effectiveness within days of starting treatment, according to a new study by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators.

A new study from the Monell Center increases understanding of the biological mechanisms responsible for the nausea and vomiting that often afflict patients undergoing chemotherapy. The findings could lead to the development of new approaches to combat these debilitating side effects.

In the battle against malignant brain tumors, dual implantation of radioactive seeds and chemotherapy wafers following surgery showed promising results in a study led by specialists at the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cincinnati (UC) and University Hospital.

They found the HDAC inhibitor-resistant cell line resistant to many therapies, including more standard treatment such as chemotherapy, but highly sensitive to heat shock protein 90, or hsp90, inhibitors, another emerging cancer treatment.

Scientists have uncovered critical new details about the mechanisms that modulate the response of ovarian cancer cells to chemotherapy. The research, published by Cell Press in the December issue of Cancer Cell, helps to explain why many patients develop resistance to the taxane class of drugs and may lead to improved treatment of ovarian cancer.

Oral squamous cell carcinoma is a deadly cancer that, even when treated successfully, often leaves patients permanently disfigured. Other than radical surgery, there are few known treatments.

A series of genes that protect cells from the powerful, common chemotherapeutic agent doxorubicin has been identified by researchers working to understand how the drug also can destroy the heart.

Chemotherapy given at the same time as radiation therapy can help patients with a certain type of lung cancer live nearly 50 percent longer than they might have otherwise if the same treatment was given differently, according to an international team’s analysis of several trial results.