A new study on how the progression of acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) is influenced by the bone marrow environment has demonstrated for the first time that targeting a specialized protein known as osteopontin (OPN) may be an effective strategy to increase the efficacy of chemotherapy in patients with this type of blood cancer. Study data were published online in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH).

One of the most widely used medications to treat arrhythmias may increase the risk of developing cancer, especially in men and people exposed to high amounts of the drug. That is the conclusion of a new retrospective study published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The study's results indicate that a potential link between amiodarone and cancer warrants further investigation.

A significant breakthrough has been made by scientists at The University of Manchester towards developing an effective treatment for neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Researchers at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology have detailed how an enzyme in the brain interacts with an exciting drug-like lead compound for Huntington's Disease to inhibit its activity.

Research for diabetes is far more focused on drug therapies than preventive measures, and tends to exclude children and older people who have much to gain from better disease management, according to a Duke Medicine study. By analyzing nearly 2,500 diabetes-related trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov from 2007-10, the authors provide a broad overview of the research landscape for diabetes.

In a report that appears online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers have shown that a subset of breast cancer patients who have tumors overexpressing a protein called the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2 positive) may benefit from a combination of targeted treatments that zero in on the breast cancer cells themselves.

It's generally thought that anticancer chemotherapies work like antibiotics do, by directly killing off what's harmful. But new research published online on April 4 in the Cell Press journal Immunity shows that effective chemotherapies actually work by mobilizing the body's own immune cells to fight cancer. Researchers found that chemo-treated dying tumors secrete a factor that attracts certain immune cells, which then ingest tumor proteins and present them on their surfaces as alert signals that an invader is present.

The creation of new blood vessels in the body, called "angiogenesis," is usually discussed in connection with healing wounds and tumors. But it's also an ongoing process in the female reproductive tract, where the growth and breaking of blood vessels is a normal part of the menstrual cycle. But abnormal growth of blood vessels can have painful consequences and resultant pathologies.