cancer

Do cell phones cause brain tumors? Debate rages

A controversial study holds to an earlier claim that mobile phone use does not increase a person's risk of developing a brain tumor.

The study, which was published in the British Medical Journal yesterday, argues that even after using a cell phone for more than a decade, a person's chances of getting a brain tumor are about the same as they would be without cell phone use. The study, which is an update to previous research that found no link between mobile phone use and cancer, examined the instances of brain tumors among long-term cell phone users in … Read more

Jobs' fight against pancreatic cancer was 'admirable'

Steve Jobs was a billionaire, a famous problem solver, and according to one medical expert familiar with the form of cancer he suffered from, a man who fought an "admirable" battle against the disease.

"(A liver transplant) is a huge operation involving a major organ. I was amazed to see him up around. --Tanios Bekaii-Saab, doctor

If anyone was equipped with the resources to mount a serious fight against cancer it was the Apple co-founder. Nonetheless, Jobs lost his battle yesterday when he passed away at the age of 56.

His family has not disclosed the cause … Read more

Lasers could help biotag cancer cells

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara are introducing a novel technique using a form of laser spectroscopy and biotags that help discriminate between cancerous and healthy cells.

While the tech is likely years away from clinical trials, the team hopes it will eventually lead to a microdevice that can predict when prostate cancer will metastasize--which is key, given it is the metastasis throughout the body, not the primary tumor, that kills prostate cancer patients.

"The delay is not well understood," says Gary Braun, biologist and second author of the paper that appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. &… Read more

Foldit game leads to AIDS research breakthrough

In 2008, University of Washington scientists released the game Foldit, hoping a sort of critical mass of gamers would mess around with proteins and, in the process, uncover some of their intrigue. (We have more than 100,000 types of proteins in our bodies alone.)

Last year, we checked in on the project's progress, and principal investigator Zoran Popovic said that some 60,000 people worldwide had taken on the challenge. Popovic hoped the initial results his team reported on last year would convince those on the sidelines that scientific discovery games could actually lead to important breakthroughs.

Well, … Read more

Scientists view 'natural killer' cells in super 3D

Researchers at the Imperial College London and the University of Oxford are reporting in the journal PLoS Biology that they can see the inner workings of white blood cells at the highest resolution ever documented.

To do this, the team immobilized a white blood cell using a pair of optical laser tweezers and watched with a super-res microscope as the so-called Natural Killer cell's actin filaments parted, creating a tiny portal through which enzyme-filled granules passed to kill targeted diseased tissue.

If you think the resulting image (at right) doesn't look super-res, consider the zoom. The place where … Read more

Hybrid imaging device spots ovarian cancer early

Today, if a woman is considered to be at high risk for ovarian cancer, surgeons tend to want to preemptively remove her ovaries.

That may sound harsh, but of all the gynecological cancers, ovarian has the lowest survival rate--mainly because, without reliable symptoms, it is difficult to detect early on.

Now, researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Connecticut have combined three imaging tools to spot tissue irregularities that signal ovarian cancer at earlier stages of its development.

Describing their hybrid device in the September issue of the Optical Society's Biomedical Optics Express journal, the researchers say they have combined photoacoustic imaging for contrast, optical coherence tomography for hi-res subsurface imaging (called OCT, this is the top image at the right), and pulse-echo ultrasound for deep-tissue imaging (second image) to identify malignant tumors.

The superimposed images (at the bottom of the images) enabled the team to spot malignant tissue (indicated with yellow diamond arrows).

They performed their initial tests on surgically removed pig and human ovarian tissue--but with the device measuring just 5 millimeters across, it could potentially be inserted through a tiny slit to image tissue without having to biopsy it.

The researchers were able to confirm that they'd correctly identified malignant cells by staining the tissue and examining it by microscope. Next step: test the device on live patients using minimally invasive surgery.… Read more

Tiny oxygen generators improve cancer treatments

Radiation therapy requires oxygen to be effective, which makes cancers that tend to be hypoxic (meaning they are deprived of oxygen)--such as pancreatic and cervical cancers--harder to treat. (Tumors can become hypoxic for a few reasons, e.g. they grow so quickly they actually outgrow blood supply, or cells proliferate so many times that the density taxes the available oxygen.)

So researchers at Purdue have been building and testing tiny devices that can be implanted in tumors and then generate oxygen, thereby making the area far more susceptible to radiation and chemotherapy.… Read more

iPod, Android cancer device offers low-cost testing

A professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan State University has unveiled a device that, in conjunction with an iPod Touch or Android-based tablet, analyzes microRNAs to detect cancer quickly and affordably.

Syed Hashsham says his Gene-Z device, which he demonstrated this week at the National Institutes of Health's first Cancer Detection and Diagnostics Conference, in Bethesda, Md., could dramatically improve early cancer detection in developing nations that have few, if any, cancer screenings services.

"Until now, little effort has been concentrated on moving cancer detection to global health settings in resource-poor countries," Reza Nassiri, the … Read more

Worried about skin cancer? Try coffee

Full disclosure: I just finished a cup of black coffee, and it was damn fine. (And yes, I make Twin Peaks references wherever possible.)

So it is with vigorous jumping up-and-down motions, aided surely by the caffeine, that I write about a team's findings from the University of Washington and Rutgers University that caffeine can help lower one's chances of UV-associated skin cancer by inhibiting a DNA repair pathway, essentially helping cells die after exposure to sunlight.

The team reports on this "protective effect of caffeinated beverage intake" in the August 15 issue of the Proceedings … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1529: HTC tries to buy some street cred (Podcast)

HTC spends $300 million to acquire some Beats Electronics awesomeness, but we have to admit: we're befuddled. Also, Apple is now officially the world's most valuable company, and we're happy, because they're slightly less evil than ExxonMobil. And in the worst idea we've heard in a while, the British Prime Minister floats the idea of turning off social networks to stem the rioting in London. Dude, do you WANT more riots!?