A team of 24 researchers from the U.S., Europe, Taiwan and Japan and led by University of Illinois scientists has engineered a new anti-cancer agent that is about 200 times more active in killing tumor cells than similar drugs used in recent clinical trials.

Caswell et al.report in the Journal of Cell Biology how the altered behavior of integrins can prompt metastatic movement in tumor cells.

Study shows treatment with a newly discovered drug could be useful in sensitizing tumor cells to therapeutic irradiation and potentially some chemotherapies

Research from the University of Southern California (USC) has discovered a new mechanism to allow embryonic stem cells to divide indefinitely and remain undifferentiated. The study, which will be published in the May 22 issue of the journal Nature, also reveals how embryonic stem cell multiplication is regulated, which may be important in understanding how to control tumor cell growth.

Immune cells called macrophages can destroy tumor cells by producing inflammatory proteins that are toxic to the tumor. But the environment inside the tumor somehow halts this production and instead causes the cells to make proteins that promote tumor growth.

A new fundamental mechanism of how tumour cells communicate has just been discovered by the team of Dr. Janusz Rak at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) in collaboration with Dr Guha from the University of Toronto. The cancer cells are able to communicate with their more healthy counter-parts by releasing vesicles.

A characteristic of tumor cells is that they grow in an uncontrolled manner. One reason for this is that although normal cells stop growing when they contact one another (a process known as contact inhibition), tumor cells do not.

Researchers in California report development of an anti-cancer “warhead” that targets the acidic signature of tumor cells in much the same way that heat-seeking missiles seek and destroy military targets that emit heat.

The more scientists learn about microRNAs – short strands of RNA that can interfere with normal gene activity – the more obvious it becomes how closely they are associated with cancer. In a new study, scientists at The Wistar Institute and their colleagues have identified two microRNAs (miRNAs) that promote tumors’ deadly spread, or metastasis.

Cancerous tumors are wildly unfavorable environments. Struggling for oxygen and nutrients while being bombarded by the body’s defense systems, tumor cells in fact require sophisticated adaptations to survive and grow. For decades, scientists have sought ways to circumvent these adaptations to destroy cancer.

Primary and metastatic tumors of the spleen are described as unusual, excluding involvement by lymphoma. Indeed, isolated splenic metastasis from colorectal carcinoma is not a common occurrence. Its rareness has been hypothetically explained by several characteristics of the spleen, such as anatomical, histological and immunological features.

New data generated by Annamaria Biroccio and colleagues at the Regina Elena National Cancer Institute, Rome, have provided a molecular characterization of the anticancer effects of the molecule RHPS4.