- Last week Mayor Bloomberg, MSKCC, CUNY and Hunter College announced plans to build two new science and medical facilities on the Upper East Side.
- The New York Times reported that veterinarians from the Animal Medical Center began meeting with their counterparts at MSKCC to set up trials of a noninvasive device for removing tumors of the urinary tract with electrical impulses.
- Acupuncture for the treatment of chronic pain is better than placebo acupuncture (sham acupuncture) or no acupuncture at all, researchers from MSKCC wrote in the JAMA journal Archives of Internal Medicine.
- In a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, MSKCC’s Howard I. Scher and colleagues found that men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer after chemotherapy have improved survival and secondary end points after treatment with enzalutamide vs. placebo.
Category Archives: In the News
Cancer Research News: August 29 – September 12
- The human genome has twice as many genes than previously thought, says the GENCODE Consortium.
- Ovarian cancer screening can do more harm than good, panel recommends.
- The FDA approved a new prostate cancer drug , Xtandi, which can extend the life of men with advanced prostate cancer.
- A gene from stem cell donors may prevent relapse in leukemia patients.
Blog Buzz: August 27 – September 7
Making a splash on the blogs these last two weeks…
The results of the massive ENCODE project exploring the human genome are out! Ed Yong explains more about the project (for the non-scientist) and along with the flood of new data there has been online debate over how the project has been covered in the media. Over at The Finch and Pea, Mike White provides an overview of how major media stories have erred. Michael Eisen provides another critique. These discussions point to a gap between the public’s perception of DNA in particular – and science in general – and the difficult job of accurately communicating and reporting complex new discoveries. If you’d rather dive into the data yourself though, here is a link to the ENCODE explorer on Nature, which is also available as a free iPad app.
Eating well and maintaining a healthy weight are important but, as Rob Dunn’s guest post at the Scientific American Blog network pointed out, there is a lot we don’t understand about digestion and our bodies. Read The Hidden Truths About Calories for a better sense of what is and isn’t understood about food’s journey through our bodies and why the nutrition facts give only a sketch of the whole picture.
In related news, a 25-year study found that restricting the calories in the diets of rhesus monkeys did not not extend their lives, according to coverage in Nature news, it appears that the quality of food and genetics also play a role in aging.
Twitter has announced that their API will no longer support RSS and Atom in March, more in this post from Mashable .