Multisystem intervention could potentially prevent or reverse frailty, research shows news-medical.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from news-medical.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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IMAGE: Diagnosis of frailty is based on three or more of five key clinical signs and symptoms: weakness, slow walking speed, low level of physical activity, fatigue or exhaustion, and unintentional. view more
Credit: Jennifer Fairman
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Physicians understand frailty as a dysregulation among multiple systems in the body that make it less resilient and unable to recover completely when faced with a physical challenge such as injury or illness. Defining frailty on a scientific level, however, has been a challenging task, explains Ravi Varadhan, Ph.D., associate professor of oncology in the Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
Researchers develop mutant gene-targeted immunotherapy approach to fight cancers
A novel targeted immunotherapy approach developed by researchers at the Ludwig Center, the Lustgarten Laboratory, and Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center employs new antibodies against genetically altered proteins to target cancers.
The researchers targeted their immunotherapy approach to alterations in the common cancer-related p53 tumor suppressor gene, the RAS tumor-promoting oncogene or T-cell receptor genes. They also tested the therapy on cancer cells in the laboratory and in animal tumor models. Their findings are reported in three related studies published March 1 in
Science Immunology,
Two of the three research studies led by Jacqueline Douglass, M.D., Ph.D. candidate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Emily Han-Chung Hsiue, M.D., Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins report on a precision medicine immunotherapy approach that specifically kills cancer cells by targeting mutant protein fragments presented as antigens on the cancer cell surface.
Although common across cancer types, p53 mutations have not been successfully targeted with drugs. Genetic alterations in tumor suppressor genes often resulted in their functional inactivation. Traditional drugs are aimed at inhibiting proteins. Inhibiting an already inactivated tumor suppressor gene protein in cancer cells, therefore, is not a feasible approach, says Hsiue, lead author on the
Genomic Test Helps Guide Precision Medicine to Estimate Risk of Prostate Cancer Metastasis, Death
February 11, 2021
San Francisco, CA (UroToday.com) A commercially available genomic test may help oncologists better determine which patients with recurrent prostate cancer may benefit from hormone therapy, according to new research from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and 15 other medical centers.
Researchers studied prostate cancer samples from 352 participants in the NRG/RTOG 9601 clinical trial, which compared radiation therapy alone with radiation therapy combined with hormone therapy. The investigators found that the Decipher test, which measures the activity of 22 genes among seven known cancer pathways, independently estimated the participants’ risk of metastasis, death from prostate cancer, and overall survival. Researchers say it also guided treatment recommendations for recurrence of prostate cancer after surgery, helping identify patients most likely to bene