Feature Channels: Personalized Medicine

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A research team jointly led by scientists from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of California, Los Angeles, have enhanced a device they developed to identify and “grab” circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, that break away from cancers and enter the blood, often leading to the spread of cancer to other parts of the body. If more studies confirm the technology’s effectiveness, the NanoVelcro Chip device could enable doctors to access and identify cancerous cells in the bloodstream, which would provide the diagnostic information needed to create individually tailored treatments for patients with prostate cancer.

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Researchers at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center have developed new guidelines to treat recently diagnosed multiple myeloma patients who are not participating in clinical trials. The guidelines give physicians practical, easy to follow recommendations for providing initial therapy, stem cell transplant and maintenance therapy. The guidelines are published in the current issue of the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings and represent a consensus opinion of hematologists at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center sites in Minnesota, Florida and Arizona.

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A wireless personal health monitoring system using smartphones to upload data via the Internet will revolutionize the U.S. healthcare industry, its pioneering creators say.

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• Levels of 13 genes elevated in unaffected breasts of women with hormone receptor-negative breast cancer. • Eight of the genes were associated with lipid metabolism. • Ability to identify those at risk may help tailor prevention strategies.

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For the first time, scientists have transplanted neural cells derived from a monkey's skin into its brain and watched the cells develop into several types of mature brain cells, according to the authors of a new study in Cell Reports. After six months, the cells looked entirely normal, and were only detectable because they initially were tagged with a fluorescent protein.

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Millions of people unknowingly carry rare gene mutations that put them at high risk of developing preventable diseases such as colorectal cancer, breast cancer, and several catastrophic blood vessel disorders. University of North Carolina experts from the School of Medicine and from the Gillings School of Global Public Health propose that screening healthy adults for these and other specific, rare genetic disorders could potentially prevent these diseases.

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Investigators working on the precision medicine initiative at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey are embarking on a genomic analysis study which could illuminate more options in developing personalized and precise treatments for cancer patients. It is believed that some rare and poor prognosis cancers that currently have limited treatment options may harbor genomic changes that can potentially be treated with specific targeted therapies. Through Next Generation Sequencing and data analysis of DNA in tissue samples, researchers aim to identify these changes in order to guide treatment.

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Rebecca Wachs has invented a new implantable sensor with the ability to wirelessly transmit data from the site of a knee replacement, spinal fusion, or other orthopedic surgery. Simple, robust, and inexpensive to make, her sensor holds the promise of advancing personalized medicine by giving doctors an unprecedented wealth of information about how an individual patient is healing.

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A healthy lung has some capacity to regenerate itself like the liver. In COPD, these reparative mechanisms fail. HDAC therapies may be useful for COPD, as well as other airway diseases. The levels of HDAC2 expression and its activity are greatly reduced in COPD patients. Decreased HDAC activity may impair the ability of the lung epithelium to regenerate.

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When it comes to healing the terrible wounds of war, success may hinge on the first blood clot – the one that begins forming on the battlefield right after an injury. Researchers believe the initial response to injury may control subsequent healing.

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An abdominal aortic aneurysm — a bulge in the large artery that carries blood away from the heart — can be immediately life-threatening if it grows large enough to rupture. The chance of survival when it ruptures is less than 10 percent. Many who find out they have that risk are able to have a minimally invasive repair. But up to 30 percent instead face a major open operation because of the location of the aneurysm. This new customized graft allows them, too, to have a quick recovery.

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In laboratory studies, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a way to personalize chemotherapy drug selection for cancer patients by using cell lines created from their own tumors.

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Low-grade serous ovarian cancer is less common and aggressive than the high-grade variety, yet exceptionally difficult to treat when frontline therapy fails.

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New facility at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, with support from public, private sectors, will perform whole-genome sequencing for research, clinical applications; leading bioinformatics provider CTG (NASDAQ:CTGX) to serve as technology partner

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In a genome-wide analysis of 13 metastatic prostate cancers, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center found consistent epigenetic “signatures” across all metastatic tumors in each patient. The discovery of the stable, epigenetic “marks” that sit on the nuclear DNA of cancer cells and alter gene expression, defies a prevailing belief that the marks vary so much within each individual’s widespread cancers that they have little or no value as targets for therapy or as biomarkers for treatment response and predicting disease severity.

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Using only a computer, an Internet connection, and publicly accessible online resources, a team of Whitehead Institute researchers has been able to identify nearly 50 individuals who had submitted personal genetic material as participants in genomic studies.

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By analyzing tissues harvested from organ donors, Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have created the first ever “atlas” of immune cells in the human body. Their results provide a unique view of the distribution and function of T lymphocytes in healthy individuals. In addition, the findings represent a major step toward development of new strategies for creating vaccines and immunotherapies. The study was published today in the online edition of the journal Immunity.

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Researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson have developed potentially game-changing diagnostic and prognostic genetic tests shown to better predict prostate cancer survival outcomes and distinguish clinically-relevant cancers.

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Johns Hopkins researchers report concrete steps in the use of human stem cells to test how diseased cells respond to drugs. Their success highlights a pathway toward faster, cheaper drug development for some genetic illnesses, as well as the ability to pre-test a therapy’s safety and effectiveness on cultured clones of a patient’s own cells.

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Ge Wang, director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Biomedical Imaging, has a history of “firsts” in the imaging world, including the first paper on spiral multi-slice/cone-beam CT in 1991, on bioluminescence tomography in 2004, and on interior tomography in 2007. In a recent paper that appeared in the refereed journal PLoS One, Wang speaks about new combinations of medical imaging technologies that hold promise for improved early disease screening, cancer staging, therapeutic assessment, and other aspects of personalized medicine. The integration of multiple major tomographic scanners into a single framework is a new way of thinking in the biomedical imaging world and is evolving into a grand fusion of many imaging modalities known as omni-tomography.