Tag Archives: breast cancer

Oct 19 2012

in honor of breast cancer awareness month

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but October completely snuck up on me.  I feel like it was only a few days ago that I was grilling for Labor day.  Guess that’s what long days and longer nights in the lab will do to you.  Then I started to notice the changing colors of the new season.

There is pink EVERYWHERE – Breast Cancer Awareness Month is here in full force.  As if I might miss a pink ribbon here or there, my Houston Texans decided to reinforce the message last Sunday night.  Unfortunately, the game was a minor disaster, but for a city doing such profound cancer research, it was inspiring to see such a display from the hometown crowd.

And so, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month, I return from my small hiatus to share some research being done in the Bayou City with novel therapies for treating breast cancers. Continue reading →

Aug 1 2012

with their powers combined, new drugs may better combat cancer

I watched a lot of stupid cartoons as a kid – there’s no denying that.  Do you remember one called “Captain Planet”?  I know my sister will, but for those of you not wasting your time in the early 90′s, here’s the gist.  The show centered around a group of earth-conscious teenagers with magic rings who fought for the planet.  However, when the bad guys were too much, they combined their magic rings to summon Captain Planet to save the day.  Awesome, right?

Maybe not, at all, but the point is that sometimes it’s better to work together to get the job done.  A research team led by Dr. John Copland at the Mayo Clinic in Florida is taking the same approach to cancer therapeutics, and their recent work, published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, explains how a new drug combination is killing cancer cells.

Continue reading →

Jan 6 2012

searching for the cure within

It would appear that there may be a natural compound floating around inside of us whose potential we may have seriously underestimated. Luckily for us, it may be a weapon we could soon use to battle cancer.

A research team led by Dr. Vladimir Titorenko at Concordia University, have discovered that lithocholic acid (LCA), a bile acid normally produced in the liver, seems to be good at selectively killing cancerous cells over healthy counterparts. They published their findings in the October 2011 issue of Oncotarget.

Continue reading →

Aug 5 2011

playing monopoly with your genes? federal appeals court approves

Never have I found a game that simultaneously stirred such nostalgia and disgust as Monopoly. Something so timeless, so simple, so polarizing.  I guess it’s understandable when the game usually plays out something like this:

Six.  One, two, three, four….five.  Boardwalk, are you *%#$ing kidding me?!?  All I’ve got is a hundred bucks.  Fine!  You win – I quit anyway.

And that’s only if you’re lucky.  Half the time it seems like it drags on forever until someone inevitably throws their beige benjamins skywards in frustration.  Personally, I quite enjoy the game when I can actually find someone to join me.

I enjoy it, that is, until it manifests itself in my daily life.  In a stunning recent turn of events, a federal appeals court has overturned a previous court ruling that declared the patenting of genes illegal.  The landmark case involving Myriad Genetics, Association for Molecular Pathology, et al. v. United States Patent and Trademark Office, has kept the attention of eyes and ears in my field for the past few years.  Can you imagine someone snatching up ownership of your genes just like Monopoly properties?  Just hope you hold the deed to Boardwalk when the times comes you need it. Continue reading →