Cancer

Exactly how exercise could be directly helping the body fight cancer has been unclear. Now, a study led by researchers from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet has discovered the way exercise can bolster the cancer-killing ability of certain immune cells.

Tiny nanoscale materials offer unique properties. A research team has demonstrated how an adaptation of this technology can be used to tackle mesothelioma, a hard-to-treat cancer caused by asbestos exposure, with a little help from laser light.

Chemotherapy remains one of our best treatments against cancer but, frustratingly, cancer cells can develop resistance to these drugs. Now, researchers have found that calcium can weaken their defense mechanism, making drugs effective once more.

A team of researchers has made a surprising new discovery, finding a pair of previously unknown salivary glands. Nestled deep in the back of the nasopharynx, the discovery may help prevent damaging side effects from head and neck cancer radiotherapy.

Researchers in India have taken an impressive step forward with efforts to tackle cancer using magnetic nanoparticles, working the technology into a bandage that proved capable of killing skin cancer cells in experiments on mice.

Researchers have developed a new tool that could help form more effective brain cancer treatments, with an ability to classify the deadliest cells to help gauge how aggressive a patient’s disease might be.

The pursuit of early-stage cancer screening methods that are both low-cost and non-invasive is a common goal among medical researchers, and a team in Australia is claiming a significant advance in this area.

Researchers in Germany have developed a new drug that can act like a shredder for proteins implicated in causing cancer. In tests on lab-grown cancer cells, the drug worked to kill the tumors, suggesting a new pathway to a treatment for the disease.

However useful a drug may be, it’s a problem if it has adverse effects on healthy cells. Now researchers have shown a way to keep drugs on target, by wrapping them in a transport that can only be unlocked by a certain RNA sequence unique to cancer.

“Trojan horse” approaches use all kinds of trickery to sneak drugs into cancer cells to kill them off, but scientists are putting forward another solution, demonstrating how a new drug-free nanoparticle can do the heavy lifting on its own.

Gold has shown promise in fighting cancer in many studies, and now researchers have found a way to grow gold nanoparticles inside cancer cells within 30 minutes. From there, the gold can help with imaging and even be heated up to kill the tumors.

Max Planck researchers have demonstrated an intriguing new way to fight cancer by using molecular fibers that, while harmless to healthy cells, activate a tumor’s self-destruct sequence when they encounter the specific environment of cancer cells.