Prostate cancer

Scientists continue to search for increasingly powerful drugs to take on cancer cells and inhibit tumor growth, and nature continues to provide them with rich source of inspiration, with the latest example coming from white button mushrooms.

A new meta-analysis has found a positive correlation between higher levels of coffee consumption and lower risk of prostate cancer. The research hopes to help bring clarity to an area of study with deeply inconsistent results.

Getting CRISPR into cells can be challenging. Now Australian researchers have packaged the tool inside porous materials called metal organic frameworks (MOFs) coated in a green tea compound, and used it to silence key genes in prostate cancer cells.

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.

“Synthetic lethality” is where genetic mutations that normally don’t harm a cell become deadly when paired up. Now, scientists have found a way to use this to selectively kill off cancer caused by genetic mutations, without harming healthy cells.

Scientists are reporting promising findings from a prostate cancer trial where patients were administered a drug typically used to treat breast cancer, where it proved more effective than standard treatments at applying the brakes to the disease.

Two new diagnostic techniques hope to help catch the most aggressive forms of prostate cancer. One study measures gene expression in tumors to predict disease severity, while another details a new imaging technique to detect metastatic disease.

Two new studies are demonstrating the development of diagnostic tests to detect prostate cancer. The research presents a urine test that can detect the disease in its early stages and a blood test that may catch the cancer as it begins to metastasize.

Two new systematic reviews have concluded omega-3 supplements confer little protective benefit against either cardiovascular disease or cancer. The research builds on prior study suggesting fish oil is mostly useless if taken by healthy individuals.

A safer and less invasive treatment option for prostate cancer could soon be on the table, with a novel MRI-guided ultrasound technique eliminating significant cancers in 80 percent of subjects in a year-long study.

A potential new cancer diagnostics tool has emerged from the UK’s University of East Anglia (UEA), where scientists have developed a urine test for the home that can reveal prostate cancers in need of treatment.

In preclinical tests, scientists at Wistar Institute have developed a molecule that disrupts a protein complex vital to cancer cell survival.