The Netherlands Cancer Institute’s Post

It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so maybe you already know that breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women? Sadly, women have a staggering 1 in 7 chance of getting breast cancer in their lifetime. Many of us will have been touched by this devastating disease.   So I’m proud that Animal Free Research UK is playing its part in bringing hope to patients.   We’re supporting Professor Valerie Speirs and Celia Rodríguez Rodríguez at University of Aberdeen to develop a model to predict the spread of breast cancer - without the use of animals. Animal research using, for example, genetically altered mice to reproduce tumours has been the traditional way of studying cancer. Yet the fundamental biological differences between animals and people means that the development and spread of cancer isn’t the same. The spread of cancer, known as metastasis is often less extensive in mice than in people.   Promising findings in animals often don’t translate to benefits for people, with around 95% of cancer drugs ultimately failing. Testing on animals is not only inhumane but is letting down cancer patients and their loved ones because scientists are missing crucial knowledge about how the disease develops and spreads as well as potential drug targets.   More humane, human-relevant, and effective ways of studying metastatic cancer are urgently needed if we are going to improve survival.   That’s why Celia is developing a sophisticated organ-chip system to determine whether particular breast cancer subtypes have a preference to spread to the bone or liver. The overarching goal is to establish a fast, cheap, animal-free approach which will more effectively predict the likelihood of a patient’s breast cancer spreading. This would provide a window to eliminate the disease before it starts to grow aggressively and invade other tissues and organs. As you know I like to say it’s a win-win - replacing animal testing, and understanding cancer in humans better. A brighter future for everyone. #BreastCancerAwarenessMonth #animalfreeresearch #nams #newapproachmethodologies #winwin #humaneresearch #breastcancer

#Immunotherapy 🐶👨🏼🦰 | Can Old Dogs Teach Us New Tricks 🤔 | Sniffing Out Novel #ImmuneCheckpointBlockade Opportunities in #Humans & #Dogs 👍 | Breaking OPEN ACCESS Study from Mikolaj Kocikowski, PhD et al at BioRxiv | In the quest for improved therapeutics targeting immune checkpoints (ICs), the authors turn to spontaneously developing dog (canine) cancers, which are unique models that genetically and clinically mirror human equivalents. Despite its potential, canine cancer immunology remains largely unexplored. Here*, Mikolaj Kocikowski, PhD, Marcos Yebenes Mayordomo, Javier Alfaro & Maciej Parys examine the RNA-seq-based expression of 44 ICs across 14 canine cancer types and an extensive human dataset. They unveil diverse canine IC expression patterns and unique human IC signatures that reflect the histological type and primary site of cancer. They uncover a striking similarity between canine brain cancers, osteosarcoma, and their human counterparts, identifying them as prospective immunotherapy models. Four ICs—CD160, A2AR, NKG2A, and OX40—are key to the differences observed between species. Moreover, individual patient IC signatures exhibit varying alignment with their respective cancer types, a finding with profound implications for personalized human therapy. This exploration illuminates new aspects of canine and human cancer immunology, setting the stage for discoveries at their crossroads. *https://lnkd.in/eeuZPsUk Celentyx Ltd Professor Nicholas Barnes PhD, FBPhS Omar Qureshi Catherine Brady (& FYI Dr Neil Bodie) FIGURE | Left: Dendrogram representing the hierarchical clustering of a distance matrix that compares canine and human cancers with respect to their immune checkpoint (IC) expression levels: Cancers grouped predominantly within their respective species (bold font - canine, normal font - human). However, notable interspecies similarities emerged, particularly between canine and human gliomas and between canine osteosarcoma and human sarcoma. The figure also illustrates that human cancers tend to cluster according to their histological subtype and primary cancer site | Right:  Comparative aspects of immune cell subsets in dogs and humans: Taken from 'Improving human cancer therapy through the evaluation of pet dogs' - https://lnkd.in/eBRs8Bpx |

The Wrong Models It has been over half a century since then-President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act promising to find a cure for cancer.9 At that time—as is still the case today—cancer research was extensively conducted using mice, pigs, and monkeys. The burden imposed by cancer continues to rise,10 and we are still far from finding a cure. Even identical twins are not genetically identical, so imagine the genetic variability found in more than 8 billion humans! It is a mistake to believe that mice, pigs, and monkeys can adequately represent humans’ complex biology and disease etiology. “The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse,” said Dr. Richard Klausner, former director of the National Cancer Institute. “We have cured mice of cancer for decades—and it simply didn’t work in humans.”11 Using other animals as stand-ins for humans has long misled researchers in their quest for the right cancer target. This is evidenced by the high number of clinical trial failures. Only one in 10 cancer drugs that work in animals succeed in human trials due to differences between the species, which result in unpredicted toxicity or lack of efficacy.12 So why are experimenters still trying to cure human cancers using other animals? We need human-based models to study human cancers. #cancerresearchuk #cancerresearch #theprocessofanimaltestinghasneverbeenscientificallyvalidated #untileverycageisempty #freethebeagles #animalwelfare #3Rs https://lnkd.in/eq58U2Eu

"Dog and human cancers are quite similar in a number of ways,” says Yale School of Medicine's Gerry Post, DVM, MEM. When it comes to curing these cancers, researchers describe, such similarities "bring an important benefit: understanding cancer in one species will help scientists understand cancer in the other. And treatments that work well for one may actually work well for both." Discover how a novel cancer vaccine might offer hope for both canines and humans: https://bit.ly/49N88LW #ComparativeOncology #Immunotherapy #CancerVaccine #CancerResearch

Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is cancer in your breasts’ milk ducts. It’s considered a noninvasive or pre-invasive cancer. This means that the cancer isn’t aggressive and doesn’t typically spread beyond your milk ducts. Lumpectomy and radiation are the most common treatments. DCIS is highly treatable, and the prognosis is excellent. Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a type of breast cancer where cancer cells line your milk ducts within one or both breasts. Milk ducts are tubes that carry milk from the lobes of your breasts to your nipples so you can breastfeed (chestfeed). The cancer is “in situ,” or situated (contained) inside of your milk ducts. DCIS is also called noninvasive or pre-invasive breast cancer. This means that the cancer cells haven’t spread beyond the walls of your milk ducts. DCIS doesn’t typically metastasize, or spread to other organs in your body, as aggressive or invasive cancers do. Thank you to our team Dr S. ATHEENA MILAGI PANDIAN sir, Rashika Murugan mam Varma V sir MOHAMMED SAHIL S Sudherson M Kriya Sakthi Trainer_Atheenapandian Aruna V Dhanushya S Krithina Dharmarajan Thank you for the information Moffitt Moffitt Cancer Center Center for Health Equity Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Society NCI Division of Cancer Biology Research UK (CRUK) NCI Center for Cancer Tech Accelerator Research NCI Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis #NCI Center for Cancer Health Equity (CCHE) NCI Division of Cancer Tech Accelerator NCI Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics Thanks and Best Regards Sri Manoj Kumar Head of Biomedourse Atheenapandian Subsidiary of ATHEENAPANDIAN - India's No.1 Biomedical Industry for Training & Placements PH. +918807039891 WWW.ATHEENAPANDIAN.COM

✨ So proud and excited to share our recent research now published in PNAS !!! https://lnkd.in/eVR__jBT 👉 We investigated the pathogenesis of an important and deadly lymphoproliferative disease caused by AlHV-1, a gammaherpesvirus. AlHV-1 persists in wildebeest without inducing any disease, but this virus can induce a deadly lymphoproliferative disease in co-grazing ruminants such as cattle. The induced disease is named malignant catarrhal fever (MCF) and its pathogenesis has been a true enigma for decades. 👉 Our study highlighted for the first time the nature of expanding CD8 T lymphocytes in calves developing MCF, using multi-omics approaches (TCR-seq, RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, sc-V(D)J-seq) and revealed latently infected CD8 T cells have a unique effector/memory and exhausted phenotype.    👉 RNA-seq data revealed that infected CD8 T cells in vivo expressed potential viral oncogenes, among which we would identify A10 as a signaling protein in T cells being constitutively phosphorylated to drive T cell activation. Importantly, A10 expression and ability to be phosphorylated revealed to be essential to drive MCF. 👉 These findings bring are a real breakthrough in our understanding on the pathogenesis of MCF, and opens multiple avenues in the development of preventive measures against MCF in southern and eastern Africa, and also in zoological collections of endangered ruminant species. Moreover, the study highlights how a virus that persists in T lymphocytes can drive a deadly peripheral T cell lymphoma-like disease.   👉 This study was only possible with an amazing team of collaborators: Alain Vanderplasschen, David Vermijlen, Guillem Sánchez Sánchez, Stanislas Goriely, Abdulkader AZOUZ , Tim Connelley, Andrew Davison, Sciensano and BSL-3 facility in Maechelen! To illustrate our work, we have worked in collaboration with Adeline Deward, PhD at Illumine. And last but not least 🎉 I’m so grateful to my team and in particular Mei-jiao Gong and Françoise Myster who co-led this work during these past years !!!    This work was funded and made possible thanks to: F.R.S. - FNRS WEL Research Institute University of Liège Press release: https://lnkd.in/ej4CQfhc

Delighted to share that our study on the origins of children's Burkitt Lymphoma (https://lnkd.in/d8jArapK) is just published in the journal PNAS, one of the world's most-cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary journals. Our results may help to explain why endemic Burkitt Lymphoma, a fast-growing cancer of the lymphatic system with a high mortality rate, develops much more commonly in children in some regions in Africa than anywhere else in the world. This collaborative study gain an important insight into how exposure to known cancer risk factors could drive development of endemic Burkitt lymphoma. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a common virus that more than 90% of the adult human population worldwide has been infected with at some point in their lives, is widely known to be associated with this type of cancer. However, as infection with EBV is common but development of endemic Burkitt lymphoma is relatively rare and geographically unequal, other risk factors that are prevalent in the affected regions are also expected to play a role. We tested how exposure to EBV and exposure to mycotoxins, toxins produced by fungi commonly found in food in these regions, influenced how cells reacted and the proteins and other biomolecules that they produced. Specifically, we found that exposure of B cells to aflatoxin B1 a common mycotoxin in Africa, causes an overexpression of specific molecules with a role in immunity, highlighting a possible cooperation of these exposures in the first stages of development of Burkitt lymphoma. These findings point to a new mechanism that may operate in the early stages of the development of endemic Burkitt Lymphoma and identify novel pathways that can be targeted in drug development against this disease, that represents almost 50% of paediatric cancers in Africa and the leading cause of cancer related death in many African countries. Grateful to Rita Khoueiry, Henri Gruffat, Francois-Loic Cosset, Sarah De Saeger, Marthe De Boevre, Lucia Mundo, Francesca Manara and other colleagues and all members of Epigenetics and Mechanisms Branch (EGM) at IARC - International Agency for Research on Cancer / World Health Organization for this enriching collaboration. I wish to pay special tribute to Rosita Accardi-Gheit who initiated the study and made a critical contribution at the early stage of the project. We acknowledge the IARC-Children with Cancer UK postdoctoral fellowship to Grace Odongo as well as the grants from FWO Belgium, INSERM (France), INCA France (PEDIAC project) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020. #childhoodcancer #Burkittlymphoma #Aflatoxin #Epstein-Barrvirus #immunity #Africa

The Irish Association for Cancer Research (IACR) 60th Anniversary Special Symposium took place today in Dublin and we heard about: ·       The all-Ireland cancer trials network ·       Advancing Precision medicine through collaboration ·       Epidemiology and Genetics ·       The Health Dividend of peace ·       The critical importance of research in delivering 21st century cancer care and much more. Some comments from a fantastic event: “We need to bring together diverse expertise, clinical insights, biological models, technologies and relationships to accelerate biomarkers discovery for precison diagnostics.” “The North, South and US Relationship is really successful and has led to real improvements for health systems and patients” Mark Lawler Queen's University Belfast said: “25 years ago NI was not a good place to get cancer there were no trials and we had the worst outcomes in the UK. The changes and the improvements we have seen were driven by Professor Paddy G. Johnson of QUB, a world leading pioneer for cancer research. The results are, for example, a 30% decrease in breast cancer mortality in a decade, Ireland and Northern Ireland are now firmly embedded in cancer research map, solid evidence of acheivements through outcomes, the cross border oncology research programme, investing in people and networks to build a critical mass. “We are good at breakthrough in Europe, but not good at follow-through. Innovation is invention and adoption, so implementation science and integration of precision diagnostics, data and therapeutics into health systems needs to be prioritised. This will unlock the health and economic benefits from investments in R&D to commercialise medical breakthroughs for patients. "The big challenges need multidisciplinary expertise. So my advice is go and knock on doors include non-health-sector team members and have humility to expand the use of skills, resources and tools of key groups to join the consortia to keep improving and moving forward with our mission." Henry Rodriguez Fiona McGinty Montserrat Garcia-Closas Satish Gopal Sudipto Das Sharon Glynn William Gallagher Catherine Young Annette Byrne [She/Her] Emma Creagh European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) American Association for Cancer Research Irish Association for Cancer Research (IACR)

Research shows Chinese herb ‘Sweet Wormwood’ and Iron can Kill 98% of cancer cells within 16 hours: https://lnkd.in/dXD7uAzx Science Journal : " Scientists are testing a recipe of wormwood and iron on breast cancer cells, and so far the results are encouraging. In a new study, researchers report that artemesinin--a derivative of the wormwood plant--kills iron-enriched breast cancer cells but doesn't harm many healthy ones. Artemesinin's destructive properties are triggered by higher than normal levels of iron in cancer cells. Many experiments have found that artemesinin turns deadly in the presence of iron. In Asia and Africa, artemesinin tablets are widely and, in many cases, successfully used to treat malaria, because the parasite has a high iron concentration. Cancer cells can also be rich in iron, as they often soak up the mineral to facilitate cell division. The cells bring in extra iron with the help of transferrin receptors, special receiving points that funnel the mineral into the cell. Although normal cells also have transferrin receptors, cancerous ones can have many more. To test artemesinin's effect on breast cancer cells, bioengineers Henry Lai and Narendra Singh of the University of Washington, Seattle, enriched segregated normal breast cells and radiation-resistant cancerous ones with holotransferrin, a compound normally found in the body that carries iron to the cells. Then the team dosed the cells with artemesinin. As the pair reports in the 16 November issue of Life Sciences, almost all the cancer cells exposed to holotransferrin and artemesinin died within 16 hours. The compounds killed only a few of the normal cells. Lai believes that because a breast cancer cell contains five to 15 more receptors than normal, it absorbs iron more readily and hence is more susceptible to artemesinin's attack." ---Source : https://lnkd.in/dVC8_eRv Image Source : https://lnkd.in/dpE8zPMC

Research shows Chinese herb ‘Sweet Wormwood’ and Iron can Kill 98% of cancer cells within 16 hours: https://lnkd.in/dXD7uAzx Science Journal : " Scientists are testing a recipe of wormwood and iron on breast cancer cells, and so far the results are encouraging. In a new study, researchers report that artemesinin--a derivative of the wormwood plant--kills iron-enriched breast cancer cells but doesn't harm many healthy ones. Artemesinin's destructive properties are triggered by higher than normal levels of iron in cancer cells. Many experiments have found that artemesinin turns deadly in the presence of iron. In Asia and Africa, artemesinin tablets are widely and, in many cases, successfully used to treat malaria, because the parasite has a high iron concentration. Cancer cells can also be rich in iron, as they often soak up the mineral to facilitate cell division. The cells bring in extra iron with the help of transferrin receptors, special receiving points that funnel the mineral into the cell. Although normal cells also have transferrin receptors, cancerous ones can have many more. To test artemesinin's effect on breast cancer cells, bioengineers Henry Lai and Narendra Singh of the University of Washington, Seattle, enriched segregated normal breast cells and radiation-resistant cancerous ones with holotransferrin, a compound normally found in the body that carries iron to the cells. Then the team dosed the cells with artemesinin. As the pair reports in the 16 November issue of Life Sciences, almost all the cancer cells exposed to holotransferrin and artemesinin died within 16 hours. The compounds killed only a few of the normal cells. Lai believes that because a breast cancer cell contains five to 15 more receptors than normal, it absorbs iron more readily and hence is more susceptible to artemesinin's attack." ---Source : https://lnkd.in/dVC8_eRv Image Source : https://lnkd.in/dpE8zPMC