Findings are a promising step toward developing improved treatments for the disease
UCLA researchers have identified mechanisms that determine how advanced melanoma can become resistant to immune checkpoint inhibitors, a discovery that could lead to the development of new and improved treatments for the deadliest type of skin cancer. (more…)
Groundbreaking research by a team of UCLA physicians and engineers demonstrates that prostate cancer — long identifiable only through painful, hit-or-miss biopsies — can be diagnosed far more easily and accurately using a new image-guided, targeted biopsy procedure.
Traditionally, prostate tumors have been found through so-called blind biopsies, in which tissue samples are taken systematically from the entire prostate in the hopes of locating a piece of tumor — a technique that dates back to the 1980s. But the cancer now appears detectable by direct sampling of tumor spots found using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, in combination with real-time ultrasound, the researchers say. (more…)
A recent finding by medical geneticists sheds new light on how facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy develops and how it might be treated. More commonly known as FSHD, the devastating disease affects both men and women.
FSHD is usually an inherited genetic disorder, yet sometimes appears spontaneously via new mutations in individuals with no family history of the condition.
“People with the condition experience progressive muscle weakness and about 1 in 5 require wheelchair assistance by age 40,” said Dr. Daniel G. Miller, University of Washington associate professor of pediatrics in the Division of Genetic Medicine. Miller and his worldwide collaborators study the molecular events leading to symptoms of FSHD in the hopes of designing therapies to prevent the emergence of symptoms or reduce their severity. (more…)
Taking a sample from just one part of a tumour may not give a full picture of its‘genetic landscape’, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The findings could help explain why attempts at using single biopsies to identify biomarkers to which personalised cancer treatments can be targeted have not been more successful. (more…)
