Apr. 1, 2021 , 10:10 AM
When New York City medical oncologist Vicky Makker meets a patient with endometrial cancer that has spread or recurred, she knows the outlook isn’t good. Even after radiation and drug treatments, most women with advanced disease die within 5 years.
But this spring, Makker is helping launch two clinical trials she hopes will change the picture. The drug patients will receive, called a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitor, has already failed in multiple cancer trials. But the new studies are taking an unconventional tack to resurrect the drug: putting patients on a ketogenic diet, a low-carbohydrate regimen that typically involves loads of meat, cheese, eggs, and vegetables. The researchers hope the diet will render tumors more vulnerable to the drug, which blocks a growth-promoting pathway in cells. “It’s very outside of the mainstream thinking,” says Makker, a researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
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Prof. Matthew Vander Heiden has been selected to serve as the new director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, reports Anissa Gardizy for
The Boston Globe. “We have broken down all these barriers, these traditional silos of fields, and I think that uniquely positions us to answer the big questions about cancer going forward, says Vander Heiden of the Koch Institute s work.
Matthew Vander Heiden named director of the Koch Institute mit.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mit.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
21,22 and photothermal therapy (PTT)
23,24), SDT is featured with sufficient tissue-penetrating depth, high therapeutic efficiency, mitigating side effects and low cost, which makes it specific for treating some patients with tumors in deep positions that are challenging to access surgically.
25,26 The therapeutic mechanism of SDT generally involves the sono-cavitation effect using sonosensitizers and the production of highly toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS), predominantly the singlet oxygen (
1O
2), which kills cancer cells directly by inducing necrosis or apoptosis, also known as immunogenic cell death (ICD), and indirectly by damaging vessels or inhibiting neovascularization in tumor tissues and producing tumor-specific immunity.
21,27,28 Although tumor-associated antigens like peptides or proteins may induce antitumor immune effects under the help of immunologic adjuvants, the existing heterogeneity of patients limits their clinical application.
Why cancer cells waste so much energy
January 17, 2021MIT
In the 1920s, German chemist Otto Warburg discovered that cancer cells don’t metabolize sugar the same way that healthy cells usually do. Since then, scientists have tried to figure out why cancer cells use this alternative pathway, which is much less efficient.
MIT biologists have now found a possible answer to this longstanding question. In a study appearing in
Molecular
Cell, they showed that this metabolic pathway, known as fermentation, helps cells to regenerate large quantities of a molecule called NAD+, which they need to synthesize DNA and other important molecules. Their findings also account for why other types of rapidly proliferating cells, such as immune cells, switch over to fermentation.