An investigational therapy for solid tumors could be especially effective when combined with immunotherapy to target a specific kind of cancer cell, a research team at Duke and Harvard have found.

Led by Lee Zou, Ph.D., chair of Duke’s Department of Pharmacology & Cancer Biology, the researchers focused on the way some cancer cells impede normal DNA repair to fuel tumor formation. This phenomenon is known as defective DNA mismatch repair.

A new targeted drug, studied by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James), may offer a new treatment option for patients with blood cancers, including chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) whose disease has stopped responding to standard treatments.

Metabolites called nucleotides are the building blocks of DNA and can impact cancer's sensitivity or resistance to chemotherapy and radiation in brain cancer.

Findings from researchers at the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center, published in Cancer Discovery, show how a specific nucleotide metabolite, called GTP, controls responses to radiation and chemotherapy in an unexpected way.

Epigenetically active drugs enable the cell to read parts oft he genome that were previously blocked and inaccessible. This leads to the formation of new mRNA transcripts and also new proteins, as scientists from the German Cancer Research Center and the University Hospital Tübingen have now published. These "therapy-induced epitopes" could help the immune system recognize cancer cells.

Patients with cancer whose oncologist receives payments from industry appear more likely to receive some non-recommended and low value treatments, finds a US study published by The BMJ.

This finding raises potential concerns about quality of care, and the researchers say it may be appropriate to re-examine the current status of personal payments from the drug industry to physicians.

A research team from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center has identified a crucial epitope (a protein section that can activate the larger protein) on the CD95 receptor that can cause cells to die. This new ability to trigger programmed cell death could open the door for improved cancer treatments. The findings were published Oct. 14 in the Nature journal Cell Death & Differentiation.

A team of researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has developed a new method for using extracellular vesicles to enhance responses to immunotherapy in glioblastoma, potentially opening the door for wider use of engineered messenger RNA (mRNA) for cancer therapy. The study was published in Nature Communications.