Tag Archives: clinical trials

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 16 2012

male contraceptives are one step closer to reality

For the man who is not ready for a child in his life, there are several wonderful options available for family planning.  These include condoms, herbal remedies, vasectomies, prolonged heating of the testicles, and, of course, the infamous withdrawal method.

Obviously, most of these are either a tad final or woefully ineffective.  Except for the condom, which protects against a range of STD’s as well, men really don’t have a highly effective, reversible means for contraception.  Women, of course, have “The Pill,” and scientists have long been working to develop something similar for men.  Researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston reported their findings today in Cell that may very well bring us one step closer. 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 →

Jun 5 2012

drug restores a cell’s cancer fighting ability

Remember the Fonz?  Awesome motorcycle, snazzy leather jacket, ladies man.  And the ability to fix any jukebox with a single smack of the fist.  What a knock-out punch.  Yes, pun intended.

If only there were a way to bottle the restorative power of Fonzie.  Well, scientists at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey may have discovered a way, figuratively speaking.  Recent work from the lab of Dr. Darren Carpizo, published in the May issue of Cancer Cell, describes the discovery of a drug that selectively kills cancer cells by restoring the function of the tumor suppressor, p53. Continue reading →