ROCHESTER, Minn – 08 Mar 2018: Mayo Clinic and IBM Watson Health (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled results from early use of the Watson for Clinical Trial Matching, an IBM cognitive computing system. Use of this system in the Mayo Clinic oncology practice has been associated with more patients enrolled in Mayo’s breast cancer clinical trials. (more…)
Earlier this month, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released new recommendations on screening for breast cancer, which differed slightly from new recommendations by the American Cancer Society published in October and also from recommendations by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists last updated in 2011. (more…)
Dr. Anees Chagpar, associate professor of surgery (oncology) at Yale School of Medicine and director of The Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven, breaks down the new set of breast cancer screening guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force (USPSTF). (more…)
As women age, key breast cells ignore their surroundings, Berkeley Lab scientists find
Scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have gained more insights into why older women are more susceptible to breast cancer. They found that as women age, the cells responsible for maintaining healthy breast tissue stop responding to their immediate surroundings, including mechanical cues that should prompt them to suppress nearby tumors. (more…)
Every day 18 people die from cancer in Greater Manchester – around 6,500 a year – making the death toll around 10 per cent higher than the UK average, according to the latest figures published by Cancer Research UK – part of Manchester Cancer Research Centre.
The main reason for the higher death rates is that that people in Greater Manchester are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer compared to the UK average, with rates of cancer cases also around 10 per cent higher.* This is likely to be partly due to higher numbers smoking in the city, smoking rates are around seven per cent higher than the national average. (more…)
Masonic Cancer Center researchers discover a virus-fighting enzyme
It’s well known that sunlight and chemical carcinogens can mutate DNA, and that mutations are essential for cancer to develop.
One big mystery was what causes the thousands of mutations evident in most breast cancers.
Now researcher Reuben Harris, Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, and his colleagues have found evidence that one of our own proteins is a major source of these mutations. The researchers have just published evidence implicating the protein—an enzyme called APOBEC3B—in the international journal Nature. (more…)
Even though Medicare spends over $1 billion per year on breast cancer screenings such as a mammography, there is no evidence that higher spending benefits older women, researchers at Yale School of Medicine found in a study published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.
Led by Dr. Cary Gross, associate professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine and director of the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center at Yale, the study sought to provide a comprehensive understanding of breast cancer expenditures that incorporate the cost of screening and associated work-up, as well as treatment. They assessed overall national costs, as well as variation in costs across geographic regions. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — A glass plate with a nanoscale roughness could be a simple way for scientists to capture and study the circulating tumor cells that carry cancer around the body through the bloodstream.
Engineering and medical researchers at the University of Michigan have devised such a set-up, which they say takes advantage of cancer cells’ stronger drive to settle and bind compared with normal blood cells. (more…)
