Advances in diagnosis and care have yielded significant improvements in childhood cancer survival rates in Europe, but the long-term side-effect burden in young people — driven by the unlicensed use of adult cancer medicines — often means the price of survival is high, scientists say. Prescribing unlicensed drugs or the ‘off-label’ use of adult medicines for childhood … Read more
by Vittoria D’Alessio Drugs that activate or block the body’s oxygen-sensing machinery to treat conditions such as anaemia in patients with chronic kidney disease and cancer are being made possible because we now understand the way that cells respond to oxygen deprivation, according to Sir Peter Ratcliffe, one of three winners of this year’s Nobel … Read more
Tiny vehicles up to 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair that are cloaked in biological camouflage could provide new ways of treating cancer with fewer side-effects. Over billions of years nature has perfected ingenious ways for biological cells to move around their environment and harmlessly transport packages of chemicals between one … Read more
Cancer is a group of diseases that we may never be able to cure completely, but scientists are optimistic that vaccines, personalised medicine and smart lifestyle choices will help prevent and treat a much greater proportion of cases than currently happens. We asked three cancer experts – Nobel laureate Professor Harald zur Hausen, Professor Walter … Read more
Fifteen Danish dogs with advanced cancer are to receive a new type of therapeutic vaccine which, it is hoped, will rid them of the disease and pave the way for human testing. Unlike preventative vaccines, therapeutic vaccines are not used to prevent someone from getting a disease but rather to support an immune system that … Read more
Professor Rolf Bjerkvig, a specialist in brain cancer research, tells us why guerrilla cells make the disease so hard to treat. Brain tumours are hard to treat completely with surgery because they leave behind cells that invade the brain. In this video, which covers 72 hours, you can see cells breaking off from a tumour to invade other … Read more