A single surgery to remove cancer from both the colon and the liver to which it has spread may be better in some cases than the current standard treatment of two separate surgeries with chemotherapy in between, according to a study led by Duke University Medical Center researchers.

Patients in Liverpool are to trial a new therapy for pancreatic cancer - a disease which sees most sufferers die within a year of diagnosis.

Most postmenopausal women with small breast tumors don't need chemotherapy to reduce their recurrence risk after lumpectomy.

It is well known that cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation therapy often experience nausea and loss of appetite. But until now, few researchers have looked into why this happens and what can be done to ensure that cancer patients maintain a healthy diet during treatment.

In his paper, to be published in The EMBO Jorunal, Dr Surrallйs describes how proteins of the Fanconi/BRCA pathway recognise the presence of genetic mutations in order to repair them. The researchers also found that alteration of this mechanism makes tumour cells much more sensitive to certain drugs. This discovery will make it possible to develop strategies to make tumours more vulnerable to chemotherapy.

University of Newcastle researcher Kathryn Skelding, funded by the National Breast Cancer Foundation and Viralytics Ltd, has been working on a new treatment which only affects cancer cells - this would be an improvement on conventional chemotherapy and radiation treatment, which also impact on normal body cells.

Instead of using theusual cancer-fighting modalities, surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation,researchers from a drug development company called Advaxis, have embarked on a novel approach to fighting cancer: Engaging the immune system to
attack cancer in the same the way it would a flu vaccine, by creating new
life forms.

There is an urgent reason to study stem cells: stem cells are at the heart of some, if not all, cancers. Mounting evidence implicates a clutch of rogue stem cells brandishing 'epigenetic' marks as the main culprits in cancer. Wiping out tumours for good, some biologists believe, depends on uprooting these wayward stem cells.