General Promising Health News

[Guest guest]

Finding ways to make chemotherapy drugs more efficient is a continual challenge,

particularly for the treatment of cancers that are resistant to chemotherapy,

such as recurring breast and liver tumors.

One way to do this, is through the use of nanoparticles to deliver the drugs.

One example that researchers have been looking at recently is the nanodiamond, a

particle of carbon that is between 2 and 8 microns thick; about 10,000 times

thinner than a human hair.

The advantage of using such tiny particles is that you can get the drug to stick

to their surfaces, use them to enter cancerous cells and release the drug slowly

over time, exit the cell when they are finished, then leave the body altogether.

Ho told the press that in this study, they were able to boost the efficiency of

the cancer drug they tested 70 times while still maintaining safety.

It's the best of both worlds, " he said.

If you could see a nanodiamond you would understand why it has that name, it

looks like a diamond, and it is not just its size that makes it useful, but also

its shape. " They're called truncated octahedrons, " explained Ho. " They're shaped

like a soccer ball but the faces are more angled. " It's the faces of the

nanodiamonds that allow the drugs to bind tightly to their surface and release

slowly.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/219351.php

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Brain Tumor Caused By Single Gene Defect

Pilocytic astrocytoma, the most common brain tumor in children, is usually

slow-growing and benign. However, surgeons often cannot completely remove the

diffusely growing tumor. This means that patients need further treatment in

order to destroy remaining tumor tissue. Chemotherapy or radiation therapy can

lead to severe side-effects and have only little effect on these slowly growing

tumors. Affected children therefore urgently need new, targeted therapies.

A typical genetic defect in these brain tumors is already known: " From our own

research we know that there is a defect in the BRAF gene in the great majority

of pilocytic astrocytomas, " says Professor Dr. Lichter of the German

Cancer Research Center. This defect causes a cellular signaling pathway, which

in healthy cells is active only in case of acute need, to be permanently

activated.

A permanently active MAP kinase constantly transmits growth signals in cancer

cells, while it is also their Achilles' heel: In recent years, a number of drugs

have been developed which inhibit the enzyme activity of kinases very

specifically and, thus, can impede cancer growth.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/219278.php

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FYI,

Lottie Duthu