Personalizing precision medicine with combination therapies improves outcomes in cancer
Precision oncology often relies on treating patients with a single, molecularly matched therapy that targets one mutation in their tumor. In a report, published online in Nature Medicine on April 22, 2019, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers found that treating patients with personalized, combination therapies improved outcomes in patients with therapy resistant cancers.
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Cannabidiol could help deliver medications to the brain
Cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive compound in cannabis, is being touted as beneficial for many health conditions, ranging from anxiety to epilepsy. Although much more research is needed to verify these claims, scientists have now shown that CBD could have a different use as a "Trojan horse": helping slip medications across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and into mouse brains.
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High-dose vitamin D shows benefit in patients with advanced colorectal cancer
Results of a small clinical trial suggest that supplementing chemotherapy with high doses of vitamin D may benefit patients with metastatic colorectal cancer by delaying progression of the disease, say scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Prompted by the "very encouraging" results of the SUNSHINE clinical trial, the potential benefits of vitamin D supplementation in metastatic colorectal cancer will
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One-third of cancer patients use complementary and alternative medicine
A stunning one-third of people with a cancer diagnosis use complementary and alternative medicines such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture, herbal medicine, and supplements. UT Southwestern Medical Center's Dr. Nina Sanford made the discovery that's now drawing renewed attention to habits she said cancer patients must disclose during treatment. Dr. Sanford is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology who specializes in and treats cancers of the gastrointestinal tract.
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Immune cells fighting blood cancer visualized for the first time
When cancer escapes the immune system, our defenses are rendered powerless and are unable to fight against the disease. Chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR T cells) represent a promising immunotherapy strategy, developed with the aim of tackling tumors head-on. But the occurrence of relapse in some patients remains a challenge.
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Compound that kills drug-resistant fungi is isolated from ant microbiota
Antimicrobial and antifungal resistance, which describe the ability of bacteria and other pathogens to resist the effects of drugs to which they were once sensitive, is a major public health problem worldwide. A study published recently in the journal Nature Communications suggests that the solution may come from the tiny bodies of insects, or more accurately, from the microbiota that they host.
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First bacterial genome created entirely with a computer
All the genome sequences of organisms known throughout the world are stored in a database belonging to the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the United States. As of today, the database has an additional entry: Caulobacter ethensis-2.0. It is the world's first fully computer-generated genome of a living organism, developed by scientists at ETH Zurich.
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