Category: Oncology
Scientists Link a Single Type of Bacteria to Colorectal Cancer
“It sounds scary, but this is good information to have,” said Susan Bullman, Ph.D., of Fred Hutch Cancer Center, who co-led the study. “Microbes are manipulatable—you can target them. So [as] we see that this microbe is getting to tumors and may be contributing actively to disease progression, we can harness that information and think about how to prevent that.”
Radiation therapy takes advantage of cancer’s poor DNA repair abilities – an oncologist and physicist explain how
Nearly half of all cancer patients undergo radiation therapy as part of their care. Ionizing radiation, or the emission of high-energy waves or particles, works as a therapy by damaging a cancer cell’s DNA. It’s an effective tool for killing cancer cells because they are generally much less adept at DNA repair compared to healthy cells. Damaging specific parts of DNA prevents cancer cells from reproducing, effectively killing them.