Treating a rare genetic disorder that causes colon cancer in children

A University of Houston pharmaceutical scientist is developing a new drug which could bring relief to children suffering with Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP), a rare genetic disorder characterized by hundreds—if not thousands—of colorectal polyps. This hereditary cancer predisposition syndrome occurs in 3-per-100,000 live births and, if left untreated, causes colorectal cancer in patients nearly 100 percent of the time. Prior […]

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Major response to immunotherapy in early-stage mismatch repair deficient colon cancer

Pre-operative treatment with a combination of the immune checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab and ipilimumab achieves major pathological responses in 100 percent of early-stage colon cancers with mismatch repair deficiencies, according to results reported at ESMO 2018 from the first exploratory phase II trial to investigate this approach. Restoring patients’ immune response against cancer cells with checkpoint inhibitors is an established treatment […]

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Chemicals found in vegetables prevent colon cancer in mice

Chemicals produced by vegetables such as kale, cabbage and broccoli could help to maintain a healthy gut and prevent colon cancer, a new study from the Francis Crick Institute shows. The research, published in Immunity, shows that mice fed on a diet rich in indole-3-carbinol—which is produced when we digest vegetables from the Brassica genus—were protected from gut inflammation and […]

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Low/no calorie soft drinks linked to improved outcomes in advanced colon cancer patients

Drinking artificially-sweetened beverages is associated with a significantly lower risk of colon cancer recurrence and cancer death, a team of investigators led by a Yale Cancer Center scientist has found. The study was published today in the journal PLOS ONE. “Artificially sweetened drinks have a checkered reputation in the public because of purported health risks that have never really been […]

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Researchers discover how colon cancer mutates to escape the immune system

A UCLA-led study has found how colon cancer alters its genes during development in order to avoid detection by the immune system, creating a specific genetic imprint in the process. This ability of cancer to change its genes—a process called immunoediting—had never been described in colon cancer before, and the new understanding could help researchers develop new immunotherapies that target […]

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‘Second brain’ neurons keep colon moving

Millions of neurons in the gastrointestinal tract coordinate their activity to generate the muscle contractions that propel waste through the last leg of the digestive system, according to a study of isolated mouse colons published in JNeurosci. The newly identified neuronal firing pattern may represent an early feature preserved through the evolution of nervous systems. The enteric nervous system (ENS) […]

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Colon cancer cells use mysterious RNA strands to avoid cell death

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have discovered how unusually long strands of RNA help colon cancer cells avoid death, allowing unregulated growth. Unlike other RNAs, the intriguing strands do not appear to encode proteins and are termed “long non-coding RNAs” or “lincRNAs.”A new study showed some lincRNAs could be targeted by drug developers to halt colon […]

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