Some cancer cells are resistant to treatment and persist. If they are capable of proliferating again, even a very small number of these cells may be enough to reconstitute a tumour after or despite treatment. Various approaches to eliminate these “cancer stem cells” (CSCs) have been tried in recent years: targeted therapies, vaccination and tumour starvation. In an article published in the journal Cell Reports, Christophe Ginestier, Inserm Research...
An Inserm team from the Mondor Institute for Biomedical Research (IMRB) has just identified a key switch in the immune response, and proposes a new immunotherapy-based approach for combating leukaemia. And maybe other cancers in time. This work is published in the journal Blood.
Two species of bacteria present in the gut boost the efficacy of cyclophosphamide-based chemotherapies by optimising the antitumour immunity induced by this drug. This is reported by researchers from Inserm, Gustave Roussy, CNRS, Institut Pasteur Lille, and the Universities of Paris Sud and of Lille in an article published on 4 October in the journal Immunity.
Paris Descartes University, AP-HP, CNRS and Inserm have unveiled a royalty-free method that enables wide-scale use of circulating DNA in patients with lung and pancreatic cancer. This study is published in the journal Clinical Chemistry.
Researchers from Paris Descartes University, CNRS, Inserm, University Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC) and the Paris Public Hospitals (AP-HP) have shown that analysis of epigenetic modifications could be used as a universal marker for monitoring tumour DNA circulating in the bloodstream of patients with colorectal cancer. This study is based on hypermethylation analysis of two genes (WIF1 and NPY) using a cutting-edge method: droplet-based digital PCR[1]. These results were published on...
Teams from the Paris Public Hospitals (AP-HP), Pierre and Marie Curie University, Inserm and the CarThera company, coordinated by Prof. Alexandre Carpentier, have successfully used ultrasound to temporarily permeabilise blood vessels in the brains of patients affected by recurrent malignant brain tumours.
Finding new, more effective and personalised treatments for cancer is the challenge of many researchers. A challenge that has been successfully met by a team from Inserm led by Stéphane Rocchi (Inserm Unit 1065, “Mediterranean Center for Molecular Medicine”), which has just synthesised and developed new drugs for melanoma. One of them, known as HA15, reduces the viability of melanoma cells without being toxic for normal cells. This work...
Scientists at the CEA’s Institute of Cellular and Molecular Radiation Biology, in collaboration with INSERM, Université Paris-Sud, and international partners, have demonstrated a connection between the expression of the TRAIL gene, which plays a role in cell death, and the radiosensitivity of certain human T lymphocytes. This research also showed a relationship between three genetic forms of TRAIL and the radiosensitivity of these T lymphocytes. Finally, two of these...
Two studies, one theoretical and the other biological and clinical, conducted by Nicolas Foray, radiobiologist at the Combined Research Unit 1052 'Cancer Research Centre of Lyon' (Inserm/CNRS/Centre Léon-Bérard/Lyon I University), have just been published in the International Journal of Radiation Biology and the International Journal of Radiation Oncology. These two studies allow a better understanding of the adverse side effects of radiotherapy. They propose a new theory about the...
The researchers from Unit 1138, “Integrative Cancer Immunology,” (Inserm, Pierre and Marie Curie and Paris Descartes Universities) have analysed the tumours from 838 patients with colorectal cancer, in order to identify markers for their metastatic potential. The genomic characteristics of the cancer cells seem to have little relevance. Conversely, lymphatic vascularisation around the tumour and the intensity of the patient’s immune response appear to be crucial, and might be...