The large-scale Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study (COGS) has published over a dozen coordinated papers detailing the genetic and environmental bases of breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers.
The papers report over 70 new susceptibility loci for these 3 hormone-related cancers, and will help clarify the underlying mechanisms of carcinogenesis and develop clinically relevant cancer prediction models.
Almost half of the 70 known loci associated with overall breast cancer risk in women of European ancestry were also associated with risk in east Asian women. In addition, certain environmental factors, specifically alcohol consumption, seem to modify the association between some common variants and breast cancer risk.
Doctors have treated 5 patients with B cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (B-ALL) using T Cells genetically modified to target CD19, a protein found on the surface of B-cells.
Cytokine elevations directly correlated to tumor burden at the time of CAR-modified T cell infusions, with some patients requiring steroid therapy to ameliorate cytokine-mediated toxicities.
Further information is available from MSKCC on both the research results and the ongoing clinical trial.
Researchers at the Cambridge Research Institute and University of Cambridge have found evidence for the formation of G-quadruplex structures in the genome of mammalian cells.
G-quadruplexes are capable of forming a four-stranded structure, unlike the normal two strands of DNA.
The experiments demonstrate that G-quadruplex structures are modulated during the cell cycle in a manner that is sensitive to whether or not the DNA is being replicated. It may be possible to develop drugs that trap the quadruplexes to stop cells dividing and prevent proliferation of cancer cells.