Side Effects And Drug Resistance Associated With Chemotherapy Tackled By Nanotechnology

Huixin He, associate professor of nanoscale chemistry at Rutgers University, Newark, and Tamara Minko, professor at the Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, have developed a nanotechnology approach that could potentially eliminate the problems of side effects and drug resistance in the treatment of cancer. Under traditional chemotherapy, cancer cells, like bacteria, can develop resistance to drug therapy, leading to a relapse of the disease.

As reported in the December 21, 2009, issue of the journal Small, He, Minko and their co-researchers, including investigators from Merck & Co. and Carl Zeiss SMT, a global nanotechnology firm, have designed nanomaterials that allow for the delivery of both a chemical (doxorubicin) to destroy cancer cells and a genetic drug to prevent drug resistance.

When administered to drug-resistant ovarian cancer cells, the treatment was more than 130 times lethal than when doxorubicin was administrated alone. “The drug can only be released when it is inside the cancer cells,” He said. “This controlled internal release mechanism can dramatically eliminate side effects associated with anticancer drugs to normal tissues.”

Battling Aggressive Breast Cancer with Nanotubes

In related research, Professor He and another team of co-researchers have developed single-walled carbon nanotubes that hold the potential of providing a more effective means for detecting and selectively destroying aggressive breast cancer cells. Read more

Genetics 2010: Model Organisms To Human Biology Meeting

The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is pleased to announce its meeting, “GENETICS 2010: Model Organisms to Human Biology,” June 12-15, 2010, at the Sheraton Boston, Massachusetts. This biannual meeting brings together investigators who study genetic models in flies, yeast, fungi, mice and other non-human organisms, with researchers in human genetics. Keynote speakers include Carol Greider, the 2009 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, Gary Ruvkun, a 2008 Lasker Award winner, and Jeremy Berg, Director, NIGMS/NIH.

SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM

Keynote Speakers:

Saturday, June 12, 2010: Gary Ruvkun, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, 2008 Lasker Award winner
Sunday, June 13, 2010: Carol Greider, The Johns Hopkins University, 2009 Nobel laureate
Monday, June 14, 2010: Jeremy Berg, Director, NIGMS/NIH

Plenary Sessions:

Invited Plenary Scientific Sessions will offer the opportunity to learn about the latest research in these fields. These sessions include invited speakers and those selected from among the submitted abstracts.

• Personal Genomics
• Cancer as a Genetic Disease
• Models of Disease
• Sex and Gene Expression
• Neurogenetics: From Synapses to Senescence
• Modern Approach to Pathogenesis and Infectious Disease
• Analyzing Genomes
• Organismal Architecture and Developmental Disabilities
• Stem Cells: The Genetics of Commitment

Source: Phyllis Edelman
Genetics Society of America

Zebrafish Journal Publishes Cancer Biology Special Issue

The zebrafish, a translucent fish often used as a model of human development and disease, offers unique advantages for studying the cause, growth, and spread of tumors using strategies and methods presented in the current “Cancer Biology” special issue of Zebrafish, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Guest Editors Steven D. Leach, MD, the Paul K. Neumann Professor in Pancreatic Cancer and Professor of Surgery, Oncology and Cell Biology at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD) and A. Thomas Look, MD, Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, and Vice-Chair for Research Pediatric Oncology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute (Boston, MA), have compiled a comprehensive collection of papers that describe current approaches for modeling human cancer in zebrafish, studying tissue remodeling in zebrafish embryos, and understanding the genes, genetic control elements, and repair pathways involved in the development and metastasis of tumors.

A particular advantage of using zebrafish to study cancer biology is the ability to transplant human tumors into the fish using well-established methods. Authors Leonard Zon, PhD, and Alison Taylor, PhD, from Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston present the concepts and techniques relevant to zebrafish transplantation assays. They describe how tumor transplantation has been used to study leukemia, rhabdomyosarcoma, and melanoma in the paper “Zebrafish Tumor Assays: The State of Transplantation.” Read more

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