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Magazine
In the Feb. 16 SN: Robots roll into the classroom, brain zaps for severe depression, particle colliders of the future, how to walk like a tetrapod, sleepless nights boost Alzheimer's proteins and more.
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Feature
Vitamin D supplements aren’t living up to their hype
01/27/2019 - 06:00 Clinical Trials, Nutrition, CancerIn the supplement world, vitamin D is a bit like a Kardashian. Its fame seemed to come out of nowhere about a decade ago, garnering so much press so fast that it’s hard to remember a time when people weren’t talking about it.
Vitamin D had long been known for protecting bones, but its star began to rise in the early 2000s after researchers made connections hinting that vitamin D was good...
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News
A new 3-D printed ‘sponge’ sops up excess chemo drugs
01/15/2019 - 09:00 Cancer, Chemistry, TechnologyBringing the filtering abilities of a fuel cell into the blood vessels of living organisms, a new device could cut down on toxic effects of cancer treatment.
At the heart of this approach — recently tested in pigs — is a tiny, cylindrical “sponge” created by 3-D printing. Wedged inside a vein near a tumor being treated with chemotherapy, the sponge could absorb excess drug before it...
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News
Tumor ‘organoids’ may speed cancer treatment
12/17/2018 - 12:00 Cancer, Biomedicine, CellsSAN DIEGO — Collecting cancer cells from patients and growing them into 3-D mini tumors could make it possible to quickly screen large numbers of potential drugs for ultra-rare cancers. Preliminary success with a new high-speed, high-volume approach is already guiding treatment decisions for some patients with recurring hard-to-treat cancers.
“Believe it or not, for some rare cancers...
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News
Discovery of how to prod a patient’s immune system to fight cancer wins a Nobel
10/01/2018 - 14:30 Cancer, PhysiologyStopping cancer by removing brakes on the immune system has earned James P. Allison of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University in Japan the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
“Allison’s and Honjo’s discoveries have added a new pillar in cancer therapy,” Nobel committee member Klas Kärre said in an Oct. 1 news conference...
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Science Ticker
Cancer immunotherapy wins the 2018 medicine Nobel Prize
10/01/2018 - 06:42 Physiology, CancerJames P. Allison of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University in Japan have won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for advances in harnessing the immune system to fight cancer.
All previous types of cancer therapy were directed at the tumor cell, but Allison’s and Honjo’s approach was to remove brakes that keep the immune system in check, unleashing...
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Science Ticker
There’s a new cervical cancer screening option
08/21/2018 - 11:00 Health, CancerFor cervical cancer screening, there’s a new option in town.
Women ages 30 to 65 can opt to have human papillomavirus, or HPV, testing alone every five years, according to new recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
HPV testing alone joins two other alternatives that are still endorsed: an HPV test plus a Pap test every five years, or a Pap test alone every...
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News
Cancer cells engineered with CRISPR slay their own kin
07/11/2018 - 14:00 Cancer, Biomedicine, GeneticsUsing gene editing, scientists have hoodwinked tumor cells into turning against their own kind.
Cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream have something of a homing instinct, able to find and return to the tumor where they originated. To capitalize on that ability, researchers engineered these roving tumor cells to secrete a protein that triggers a death switch in resident tumor cells...
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News
Evidence grows that an HPV screen beats a Pap test at preventing cancer
07/03/2018 - 11:58 Health, Clinical Trials, CancerEvidence continues to grow that screening for human papillomavirus infection bests a Pap test when it comes to catching early signs of cervical cancer.
In a large clinical trial of Canadian women, pap tests more often missed warning signs of abnormal cell growth in the cervix than did HPV tests, researchers report July 3 in JAMA. As a result, at the end of a four-year period,...
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Feature
How to make CAR-T cell therapies for cancer safer and more effective
06/27/2018 - 09:00 Cancer, Health, Clinical TrialsThis wasn’t 15-year-old Connor McMahon’s first time in the hospital. But the 107° fever he’d been running for three days had his dad frightened. The teen was hallucinating, talking gibberish and spouting curses.
“I thought he was going to die,” says Connor’s father, Don McMahon, who stayed close as his son received and recovered from an experimental treatment for leukemia. “It was really...
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Editor's Note
Medical breakthroughs come with a human cost
Medical innovations can be risky, as this issue’s cover story on new CAR-T cell therapies for cancer reveals. The treatments, which tailor a patient’s own immune system cells to attack cancer, can be astonishingly successful. But CAR-T therapy can also be an untamed beast, unleashing a ferocious immune response that indiscriminately attacks the body. The challenge scientists face now...06/27/2018 - 07:00 Health, Cancer, History of Science