At least in mice and monkeys’ study, it worked that way!

Mice and monkeys exposed to normally-lethal doses of radiation treatment have lived longer after being injected with the drug CBLB502.

Radiotherapy is used to kill cancer-infected cells through radiation. However, the treatment also kills healthy cells surrounding the cancer-affected area through a biological suicide mechanism, or apoptosis.

The biological suicide is a reaction activated by the body in order to stop the multiplication of damaged DNA and cells. Radiotherapists must balance targeting too much radiation at the risk of killing healthy cells or protecting the healthy cells but possibly not wiping out all of the cancer.

Is CBLB502 the first of its kind that will protect healthy cells from radiation while at the same time not protecting the cancer cells?

CBLB502 is a product of Cleveland BioLabs.

Read the full report.

Post from: Blisstree

New Drug May Protect Healthy Cells Against Radiotherapy

Starving healthy cells helps to differentiate them from tumor cells, a trick that could make cancer treatments more effective.

The new finding may pave the way for higher and more frequent chemo doses that better shrink tumors without harming normal cells.

Any thoughts on the matter? I’d like to hear them.

Find more details from Scientific American.

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Fasting Before Chemotherapy, Beneficial to Cancer Patients

Such were the findings of a team from University of Rochester Medical Center.

The new study also showed that when the pancreatic cancer cells were doubly assaulted — pre-treated with the antioxidant, resveratrol, and irradiated — the combination induced a type of cell death called apoptosis, an important goal of cancer therapy.

Although red wine consumption during chemotherapy or radiation treatment has not been well studied, it is not “contraindicated,” Okunieff said. In other words, if a patient already drinks red wine moderately, most physicians would not tell the patient to give it up during treatment. Perhaps a better choice, Okunieff said, would be to drink as much red or purple grape juice as desired.

Antioxidants or not, I just love red wine (and grapes too!). Give me a bottle of a nice red wine…i can finish it all by myself in one sitting.

Read the full report at URMC.

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More Evidence That Red Wine Antioxidants Can Kill Cancer Cells

Inside cells of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the researchers have dramatically reduced the time it takes to pinpoint molecular abnormalities that might be vulnerable to specific drug treatments by analyzing the proteins instead of the genes.

“This approach gives us a way to figure out what’s driving the growth of a cancer in an individual patient and ultimately match that patient with the right drug,” said Druker, who is based at the Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute in Portland.

Druker and his team found the method of hunting cancer genes via the DNA sequence insufficient but instead added tools from the burgeoning field of proteomics, the study of proteins.

“We decided this more functional assay would get us to the disease-causing genes more rapidly,” said Druker, who has been studying a group of cell-signaling proteins called tyrosine kinases for 20 years.

Read more at HHMI News.

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New Strategy Using Proteomics Tools, Identifies Cancer Targets Faster