New study finds genetic alterations in the VAC14 gene are associated with an increased risk of docetaxel-induced peripheral neuropathy in prostate cancer patients

New study finds genetic alterations in the VAC14 gene are associated with an increased risk of docetaxel-induced peripheral neuropathy in prostate cancer patients.

Taxanes are a group of drugs commonly used to treat cancers of the breast, lung, ovary, or prostate, but its use can be limited by significant side effects. Researchers from Moffitt Cancer Center report prostate cancerpatients who have a variation in the VAC14 gene are more susceptible to a side effect called peripheral neuropathy when treated with the taxane docetaxel.

https://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2016/05/03/1078-0432.CCR-15-2823


TR

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Integron activity accelerates the evolution of antibiotic resistance | eLife

Antibiotic resistance – the ability of harmful bacteria to survive treatment by antibiotics – is a  growing threat . It is making it harder to treat life-threatening infections, including  tuberculosis ,  MRSA , and  gonorrhoea  – and increasing the risks of even minor surgery.  In order to solve antibiotic resistance, one thing researchers first need to understand is how to stop resistance from happening to begin with.  A recent study  conducted at the University of Oxford has helped increase that understanding by showing bacteria can cleverly rearrange their genetics in order to evade the effects of an antibiotic. Bacteria have multiple ways of evolving resistance. They can mutate to prevent antibiotics from targeting them, which can be done by modifying the proteins within the cell where antibiotics act. They can also acquire genes that help them produce antibiotic-destroying molecules, called enzymes. https://elifesciences.org/articles/62474
Read more

The incredible bacterial 'homing missiles' that scientists want to harness

Imagine there are arrows that are lethal when fired on your enemies yet harmless if they fall on your friends. It's easy to see how these would be an amazing advantage in warfare, if they were real. However, something just like these arrows does indeed exist, and they are used in warfare ... just on a different scale. These weapons are called tailocins, and the reality is almost stranger than fiction. "Tailocins are extremely strong protein nanomachines made by  bacteria ," explained Vivek Mutalik, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) who studies tailocins and phages, the bacteria-infecting viruses that tailocins appear to be remnants of. "They look like phages but they don't have the capsid, which is the 'head' of the phage that contains the viral DNA and replication machinery. So, they're like a spring-powered needle that goes and sits on the  target cell , then appears to poke all the way through the  cell me...
Read more

Aluminum and Tau in Neurofibrillary Tangles in Familial Alzheimer’s Disease - IOS Press

Scientists have long been aware of an association between aluminum and Alzheimer's disease (via the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Reports). Scientists out of Keele University (U.K.) wanted to learn more about that association, so they examined the brains of three deceased middle-aged adults, each of whom had tested positive for a genetic mutation associated with Alzheimer's, but none of whom had been diagnosed at the time of their death. Scientists found that aluminum was observable in the same places in the brain where the first signs of Alzheimer's disease are observed using diagnostic imagining. The fact that aluminum was found "at the scene" of damage to the brain does not prove that aluminum caused, or is capable of causing, such damage. Nothing in the research came even anywhere near to suggesting where the aluminum observed in the subject brains might have come from. It could just as easily have come from breathing in polluted air as it could have ...
Read more