A new research helps explain why breast-milk cells lose their structure, causing them to clump up in strange ways and sometimes become cancer tumours. With the support of Chen Ling and Dongmei Zuo at McGill’s Goodman Cancer Centre, McGill Biochemist Dr. William Muller has discovered how one particular gene regulates epithelial cells – cells that normally form in sheets and are polarized to enable the transport of molecules in a single direction. It’s this loss of polarity that is thought to play an important role in breast tumour development. Scientists at the Ontario Cancer Institute (Princess...

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LONDON: In what’s being claimed as a major breakthrough, scientists have developed a simple blood test to detect breast cancer in women. Normal breast screening checks, using Xray mammograms, detect a tumour only once it is three or four times bigger, by which time it may have started to spread beyond breast. But, this test can pick up a cancer the size of a small seed before a woman has developed any symptoms. Developed by the scientists, led by Norwegian company Diagenic ASA, the test looks for raised levels of chemical “markers” for cancer picked up as blood flows through...

Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer Scientists for decades have lumped Asians into one homogenous group when studying conditions like breast cancer and heart disease, leading to false conclusions that don’t take into account the health disparities among different nationalities, researchers now say. In fact, subgroups of Asians and Pacific Islanders can face dramatically different risks for developing certain diseases. One recent study found that Hmong adults in California have rates of liver and cervical cancer three to four times higher than those of other Asians and Pacific Islanders, for...

By Daniel Martin A method of destroying breast tumours by surrounding them with ice could offer hope of a safe non-surgical cure for the disease, research suggests. The technique called cryotherapy is already used to treat prostate cancer. It involves inserting several needle-like ‘cryoprobes’ into the tumour and passing super-cold gas through them. The ice ball rapidly created around each site kills off the cancerous cells. Freezing therapy has been tried before for breast cancer – but this is the first time a minimally invasive version, which requires no surgery, has been developed....

Researchers at the University Of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center released a study that shows that freezing cancerous tumors can kill the cancer, another up-side to this being that it causes an immune system response that could provide a natural barrier to this disease. Research showed that of two methods used (fast freezing in 30 seconds, and slow freezing, over a period of minutes) that not only was fast freezing more effective in killing the cancerous cells, it provided an immune system response that hindered the spread, it is believed. Read More…

By Tracee Cornforth An estimated 182,800 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in 2000. Approximately 42,200 deaths will occur in women from breast cancer in 2000. One in eight women or 12.6% of all women will get breast cancer in her lifetime. Breast cancer risk increases with age and every woman is at risk. Every 13 minutes a woman dies of breast cancer. Seventy-seven percent of women with breast cancer are over 50. Approximately 1400 cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in men in 2000 and 400 of those men will die. More than 1.7 million women who have had breast cancer...