New method makes it easier to treat prostate and pancreatic cancer
Laser light in combination with certain drugs - known as photodynamic therapy - can destroy cancer tumours, but is today used mostly to cure skin cancer. The reason that internal tumours are not treated with the method is that the technology does not exist to check that the precise amount of light is administered. However, software developed by researchers in atomic physics at Lund University in Sweden looks like being able to solve the problem.
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New HIV-vaccine tested on people
Scientists from the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp University Hospital and Antwerp University have tested a new 'therapeutic vaccine' against HIV on volunteers. The participants were so to say vaccinated with their own cells. The researchers filtered certain white blood cells out of the volunteer's blood, 'loaded' them outside the body and then gave them back. The immune system of the testees was better than before in attacking and suppressing the virus, the scientists reported in the top journal AIDS. But they still cannot cure the disease.
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Donation opens new opportunities for more effective diabetes treatment
The Swedish medical university, Karolinska Institutet, has received a grant of 1.6 million Euro from the Stichting af Jochnick Foundation for research into the fundamental causes of diabetes. The grant will make it possible to use unique methods to study how the release of insulin is regulated in living organisms - and this will create new opportunities for developing more effective drugs against diabetes.
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Improving Medical Treatment Requires a Risk-based Approach to the Regulation of Clinical Trials
Current EU legislation represents a major hurdle to improving medical treatment due to the straight-jacket of EU legislation that the 2001 Clinical Trials Directive imposes, a group of leading European medical scientists charged today in a position paper1 issued in Brussels and Strasbourg. The paper issued by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and its European Medical Research Councils (EMRC) welcomes the planned revision of the 2001 Clinical Trials Directive expected later this year, but urges the Commission to take the opportunity to introduce a series of improvements to the Directive.
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Identified a cause of resistance to colon cancer treatment
Doctors and researchers of Hospital del Mar and its research institute, the IMIM, have lead a study describing a new pharmacological resistance to cancer. This new mechanism is a mutation in an oncogene called EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) causing resistance to treatment using a drug called cetuximab, a monoclonal antibody which specifically attacks the EGFR.
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Cancer studies warn over NHS cost-cutting
A leading cancer researcher has identified very high levels of doctor-patient trust and confidence within the NHS. University of Leicester researcher Professor Paul Symonds also highlights the risk of jeopardizing this record of success if measures to become more cost effective are not carefully thought through and implemented. In two papers published this month in the journal Clinical Oncology, Professor Paul Symonds of the Department of Cancer Studies and Molecular Medicine, assesses attitudes and beliefs concerning cancer care in the UK.
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The concept of 'overactive bladder' serves better commercial rather than patient interests
"The overactive bladder syndrome has become an accepted way to simplify a complex array of symptoms and leads people to believe that an overactive bladder is an independent disease in itself. However, the truth is not as simple as this, as there are usually several factors at work explaining the symptoms. This is also one of the reasons why so called overactive bladder medications often do not bring the hoped result," says Kari Tikkinen, MD, PhD, from the HUCS Department of Urology.
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