Honing chemotherapy delivery to cancer cells is a challenge for many researchers. Getting the cancer cells to take the chemotherapy "bait" is a greater challenge. But perhaps such a challenge has not been met with greater success than by the nanotechnology research team of Omid Farokhzad, MD, Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) Department of Anesthesiology Perioperative and Pain Medicine and Research.

In their latest study with researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Massachusetts General Hospital, the BWH team created a drug delivery system that is able to effectively deliver a tremendous amount of chemotherapeutic drugs to prostate cancer cells.

The study is electronically published in ACS Nano.

Doses of a neurotransmitter might offer a way to boost the effectiveness of anticancer drugs and radiation therapy, according to a new study led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute.

Using animal models of human breast and prostate cancers, the researchers found that injections of the neurotransmitter dopamine can improve blood flow to tumors and improve delivery of an anticancer drug, doubling the drug's concentration in tumors and increasing its effectiveness. The increased blood flow also raised tumor oxygen levels, a condition that typically improves the effectiveness of both chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Cancer survivors have more than double the risk of a second primary cancer of the same type, according to a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Danish researchers looked at data for the entire population of Denmark (7 493 705 people) from 1980 to 2007 to determine whether the risk of secondary cancer is linked to the type of cancer found in the first instance. About 10% - 765 255 people - had one or more diagnoses of primary cancer for a total of 843 118 diagnoses.

About 15% of cancer survivors worldwide are diagnosed with a second primary cancer.

Scientists have designed a first draft of a mathematical model that someday could guide treatment decisions for advanced prostate cancer, in part by helping doctors predict how individual patients will respond to therapy based on the biology of their tumors.

These decisions would apply to treatment of cancer that has already spread beyond the prostate gland or that has recurred after initial treatments, such as surgery or radiation. Patients with this more advanced prostate cancer receive a therapy called androgen ablation, which inhibits production of testosterone - the culprit that allows a tumor to keep growing.

Obese rhesus monkeys lost on average 11 percent of their body weight after four weeks of treatment with an experimental drug that selectively destroys the blood supply of fat tissue, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports in Science Translational Medicine.

Body mass index (BMI) and abdominal circumference (waistline) also were reduced, while all three measures were unchanged in untreated control monkeys. Imaging studies also showed a substantial decrease in body fat among treated animals.

Prostate cancers are hungry, growing cells. Now we know how to cut off their food supply thanks to research to be published later this month in Cancer Research work funded by Movember and the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia.

Researchers at the Centenary Institute in Sydney have discovered a potential future treatment for prostate cancer - through starving the tumour cells of an essential nutrient they need to grow rapidly.

Their work, with human cells grown in the lab, reveals targets for drugs that could slow the progress of early and late stage prostate cancer.

Each year about 3300 Australian men die of prostate cancer. It's Australia's second worst cancer killer for men, matching the impact of breast cancer on women.

Men with prostate cancer are twice as likely to commit suicide, but a method where they put intrusive thoughts into words may reduce this risk, reveals research at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

In a study at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy, researchers surveyed the thoughts of 833 Swedish men before and after surgery for prostate cancer. The suicide rate in this group is high, and the aim of the study was to map the men's thoughts.

One in four thought about death

A new fourth-generation oncolytic virus designed to both kill cancer cells and inhibit blood-vessel growth has shown greater effectiveness than earlier versions when tested in animal models of human brain cancer.

Researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) are developing the oncolytic virus as a treatment for glioblastoma, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer (average survival: 15 months after diagnosis).

The new oncolytic virus, called 34.5ENVE, improved survival of mice with transplanted human glioblastoma tumors by 50 percent in a majority of cases compared with the previous-generation oncolytic virus.

A low-fat diet with fish oil supplements eaten for four to six weeks prior to prostate removal slowed down the growth of prostate cancer cells -- the number of rapidly dividing cells -- in human prostate cancer tissue compared to a traditional, high-fat Western diet.

Done by researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the short-term study also found that the men on the low-fat, fish oil supplement diet were able to change the composition of their cell membranes in both the healthy cells and the cancer cells in the prostate.

Recent studies have suggested that C-11 choline positron emission tomography/computerized tomography (PET/CT) scans can be utilized as a staging and potentially therapeutic tool in prostate cancer. The results of three studies, released during a meeting of the North Central Section of the American Urological Association (http://www.ncsaua.org/default.aspx), validate findings in Europe and expand the potential use of C-11 choline PET scans.