Bone cancer in children begins years before tumour is visible

Scientists have discovered that some childhood bone cancers start growing years before tumours appear and get diagnosed. Ewing sarcoma is a rare cancer found mainly in bone or soft tissue of young teenagers as they grow, and is the second most commonly diagnosed bone cancer in children and young people. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) discovered large scale rearrangements in Ewing Sarcomas and other children’s cancers, and showed that these can take years to form in bone or soft tissue. In Ewing sarcoma, two specific…

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Prostate cancer spread can be predicted through tumour cells in blood samples

Prostate cancer spread can be predicted through tumour cells in blood samples (Shutterstock Images) A new study says that researchers have found a group of circulating tumour cells in prostate cancer patient blood samples which are linked to the spread of the disease. This is the first time these cell types have been shown to be a promising marker for prostate cancer spread. In a study, presented at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference in Liverpool, of around 80 samples from men with prostate cancer, scientists at the…

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Cholesterol deprivation can kill brain tumour cells

Offering new hope for an alternative treatment of brain cancer, researchers have found that depriving the deadly tumour cells of cholesterol, which they import from neighbouring healthy cells, kills tumour cells and causes their regression. “Disrupting cholesterol import by GBM (glioblastoma) cells caused dramatic cancer cell death and shrank tumours significantly, prolonging the survival of the mice,” said senior author Paul Mischel, Professor at University of California San Diego School of Medicine in the US. Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and most aggressive form of brain cancer, which is…

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New hope for patients with deadly brain tumour

Non-invasive gene therapy could treat brain tumour (Fatine El Hassani/Getty Images) Researchers have found a potential new way of stopping one of the most aggressive types of brain tumour from spreading, which could also lead the way to better patient survival. Glioblastoma, which is one of the most common types of malignant brain tumours in adults, grow fast as well as spread easily. The tumour has threadlike tendrils that extend into other parts of the brain making it difficult to remove it all, the study from the University of Southampton…

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