Cancer Discoveries Archives - NFCR

Cancer Discoveries

Sarcoma Origin Identified

Cancer is anything but a straightforward disease; one tumor type can be entirely different from another not only in location, but causal agent and origin. There is differentiation even within the same type of cancer. Take sarcoma, which is in fact an umbrella term for nearly 100 cancers originating in…...

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Origin Cells of Glioblastoma May Have Been Identified

In what could be a major breakthrough, scientists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea claim to have identified the cellular origin of glioblastoma, a fast-growing type of central nervous system tumor that forms from supportive tissue of the brain and spinal cord. It…...

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Showing Promise: Confronting Brain Cancer in the Lab

Any brain cancer surgery carries significant risk. For one, post-procedural swelling can be deadly. Doctors must also take into account the size of the tumor, its type and grade, the location and whether or not it is pressing against a vital part of the brain. Moreover, the brain is the…...

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Kidney Cancer Detection Advances

About 73,820 new cases of kidney cancer are forecast to be diagnosed among Americans in 2019, and nearly 14,770 can be expected to die from the disease. Cancer of the kidneys, like any cancer, is most curable at an early stage. However, the majority of early-stage tumors do not present…...

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Esophageal Cancer Awareness Month: Identifying Potential for New, Personalized Treatments

Although esophageal cancer makes up only 1% of cancer diagnoses in the United States, it is among the most difficult cancers to treat. Esophageal cancer affects the esophagus, the tube which connects the throat to the stomach. The five-year survival rate for this cancer is just 18% – due in…...

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Metastasis Suppressor Genes

“It’s what I consider the most interesting science in the world,” says NFCR Fellow Danny Welch, Ph.D. He is alluding to his work discovering the presence of metastasis-suppressing genes in human DNA. Welch, the Hall Family Professor of Molecular Medicine, a professor of cancer biology and an associate director of…...

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Simulations Could Extend Life for Kidney Cancer Patients

Surgery is one of the oldest treatments for cancer. Even as research and technology have progressed, surgery has remained an excellent choice of treatment. Kidney cancer, whose attention we are called to especially during the month of March, is often treated with a surgical process called a partial nephrectomy. A…...

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Cancer Genomics Research: A Young and Exciting Field

Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of science focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping and editing of genomes, which itself is a specific organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes. While DNA was first isolated in 1869, and its structure identified in 1953, genomes were not first…...

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Anti-Cancer Properties Found in a Deadly Australian Arachnid

Identified as the deadliest arachnid in the world, a bite from the Australian funnel web spider can result in death in as little as fifteen minutes. However, according to recent findings, the venom of the funnel web spider may have curative properties when treating human melanoma cells. The survival of…...

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