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Researchers affiliated with the University of São Paulo’s Ribeirão Preto Medical School (FMRP-USP) in Brazil have demonstrated the potential of a leukaemia drug, arsenic trioxide, to treat medulloblastoma, a type of brain cancer most common in children. When they tested arsenic trioxide on cells taken from one of the most aggressive subgroups of this type of tumour, they obtained promising results in terms of tumour cell death. The drug also made the tumour cells more [...]

Brazilian researchers have discovered that a drug regularly prescribed to control cholesterol can also be used to treat cachexia, or wasting syndrome, a condition characterized by rapid weight loss and muscle atrophy associated with extreme physical weakness. This condition is common among patients with chronic diseases such as cancer, heart failure and AIDS. The study has been published in Scientific Reports. "Our goal is to understand more comprehensively how cachexia develops and to [...]

Cells in humans and other vertebrates, as well as invertebrates, have signalling pathways that play essential roles in embryo development, cell proliferation and tissue structuring. Dysregulation in one of these signalling pathways, known as the beta-catenin-dependent Wnt signalling pathway, can cause embryo malformation and diseases such as breast cancer and cervical cancer. Researchers at the Center for Medicinal Chemistry (CQMED) have discovered a way to regulate this pathway. Created [...]

Researchers in Brazil have discovered a new effect of a drug widely used as a chemotherapeutic agent and offered to patients free of charge by SUS, the national health service. Paclitaxel is prescribed for the treatment of breast, lung and ovarian cancer, as well as other types of tumours. It is known to act as an antineoplastic agent, inhibiting the growth of abnormal tissue due to cell proliferation. The new study shows that it can also reactivate the patient's immune response, thus [...]

The offspring of females fed a low-protein diet during pregnancy and lactation are significantly more likely to develop prostate cancer as they age. This is the main finding of a study performed with rats at São Paulo State University's Bioscience Institute (IBB-UNESP) in Botucatu, Brazil. The results of the study, which was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), have been published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A. "Our previous research showed that intrauterine [...]

In most cases of prostate cancer, tumour cell growth is stimulated by the action of male hormones, or androgens, such as testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT). For this to happen, these hormones have to bind to androgen receptors, proteins located mostly in the cytoplasm of prostate cells. When hormone and receptor bind, they migrate to the cell nucleus, where they either activate or inhibit a number of genes to create a gene expression pattern that favours tumour proliferation. A study [...]

The theory that cancer progression involves the acquisition by tumour cells of features similar to those of stem cells has gained strength in the scientific community. According to this theory, tumour cells tend to "forget" the tissue from which they originated as the disease progresses, acquiring an undifferentiated phenotype associated with heightened aggressiveness and treatment resistance. In a study whose findings were published in the journal Cell , researchers at the University of São [...]

Thyroid cancer is a disease with good cure rates in most cases. In 5% of patients, however, the tumour becomes refractory to the available therapies and may spread all over the body, causing death. In a study conducted at the University of São Paulo's Biomedical Science Institute (ICB-USP) in Brazil, researchers discovered that increasing tumour aggressiveness is accompanied by decreasing expression of 52 microRNAs - small RNA molecules that do not code for proteins but perform a regulatory [...]

When researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil treated human melanoma cell lines with a synthetic compound similar to curcumin, one of the pigments that give turmeric (Curcuma longa) its orange colour, they identified genes with altered expression in potentially invasive tumours and malignant cells resistant to chemotherapy. According to the scientists, if further studies confirm the importance of these genes to disease progression and increasing chemoresistance, it will be [...]