vulnerability Archives - Family Medicine News

Loss of a DNA repair system creates a unique vulnerability in many cancer types

11.04.2019 Health Problems

Cancer cells adapt to potentially fatal mutations and other molecular malfunctions by adjusting one or more other genes’ activity, in the process becoming dependent on those genes for their survival and growth. The resulting genetic dependencies may provide targets for developing new precision-guided drugs or other cancer treatment strategies. Reporting in Nature, researchers led by members of the Cancer Dependency […]

New treatment strategy exploits acquired vulnerability in drug-resistant melanoma

11.05.2018 Health Problems

Cancer cells that develop resistance to drugs pay a price for this by simultaneously developing a new vulnerability. If this acquired vulnerability can be identified, it may be exploited clinically. A team of cancer researchers, led by Rene Bernards of the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Oncode Institute, have now exposed this acquired vulnerability in melanoma that has developed resistance to […]

Study may show how chronic early-life stress raises PTSD vulnerability

12.04.2018 Health Problems

A collaboration between investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital and Khyber Medical University in Pakistan may have discovered how chronic stress experienced early in life increases vulnerability to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) later in life. In their report published in Translational Psychiatry the researchers describe finding that chronic stress induces a persistent increase in the hormone ghrelin, both in a rat […]