cancer drug

An experimental anti-cancer drug can prevent -- and even reverse -- potentially fatal cardiovascular damage in a mouse model of progeria, a rare genetic disorder that causes the most dramatic form of human premature aging researchers have reported.

Women with recurrent ovarian cancer can be helped by an experimental therapy using a drug already touted for its ability to fight other cancers, a finding that provides hope for improved treatment of this deadly disease.

Could a substance from the jasmine flower hold the key to an effective new therapy to treat cancer? Researchers have developed an anti-cancer drug based on a decade of research into the commercial applications of the compound Jasmonate, a synthetic compound derived from the flower itself.

The gene that allows fireflies to flash is helping researchers track the effectiveness of anti-cancer drugs over time.

The technique requires a substrate called luciferin to be added to the bloodstream, which carries it to cells throughout the body.

When luciferin reaches cells that have been altered to carry the firefly gene, those cells emit light.

In a new study published in PLoS Medicine, William Evans of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, and colleagues provide new insight into resistance to the widely-used cancer drug methotrexate in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common cancer in children.

Clinicians have been perplexed by the fact that some patients given the drug cetuximab -- an immune-based therapy commonly used to treat persons diagnosed with head and neck cancer, or colon cancer -- have a severe adverse reaction to the drug.

Researchers have now discovered that pre-existing antibodies cause the severe reaction to the drug. This discovery in turn has enabled them to explain the unusual geographic pattern of this reaction seen among individuals in the US.

A novel drug that fully eliminated brain tumors from mice in a dramatic 2004 study has shown a darker side -- causing permanent bone damage in younger mice.

The researcher who conducted both studies says the disappointing new finding raises concerns about using similar drugs to treat children's cancers, at least until there is a more thorough understanding of possible risks.

Researchers have designed a small molecule that is highly effective in cell cultures at inhibiting the interaction between the protein p53 and another protein that inactivates p53 in cancer.

The new molecule is ideal for drug development as it can be given orally as a pill and it appears to be safe for use in animals.

New research may help explain why an anti-cancer drug causes potentially fatal brain inflammation in certain patients.

Scientists at Harvard Medical School mimicked the drug's activity in mice and found that it damaged the cell lining that prevents fluid from leaking from the spinal cord into the brain.

The results will be published online on Feb. 11 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.