Chemotherapy is poison that happens to kill cancer cells faster than it kills healthy cells; that it wreaks havoc on the bodies of patients is unsurprising. But chemo may also affect their unborn children. According to a new study in PNAS, the offspring of mice treated with chemotherapy have higher rates of mutation, even though the offspring themselves were never exposed to the drugs.

The results suggest that these mutations arise from genome destabilization caused by exposure to chemo, rather than just mutated sperm from the treated father. Male mice in the study were exposed to one of three common anticancer drugs—cyclophosphamide, mitomycin C, or procarbazine—and then allowed to mate with untreated females. After sequencing a small piece of DNA from the offspring, the researchers found that mice with treated fathers had mutation rates up to twice that of mice with untreated fathers. Notably, these mutations were present in DNA inherited from both the treated father and untreated mother.

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Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, has speculated that the fact that he and four other South American leaders have all recently come down with various cancers could be a sign that the US has developed methods to give people cancer. Uh, is that even possible? Slate‘s Explainer does a thorough, interesting walk-through of all the reasons why the answer is, “Not reliably.”

Under a laser light, tumor cells light up.

What’s the News: Getting out every last bit of a tumor can be difficult–when you’ve got a patient open on the operating table, cancer cells don’t look any different from normal ones. But tag tumor cells with a glowing protein and turn the lights off, as scientists did in a recent study, and those things stand out like glo-sticks on the Fourth of July.

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The blood oxygen-monitoring chip, which is about 2 cm long and encased in plastic, is still in the
early stages of testing.

What’s the News: Scientists in Germany are developing a chip that keeps track of blood oxygen levels for implanting near tumors, reports Kate Baggot at Technology Review. When blood oxygen levels drop, signalling a burst of tumor growth, doctors would be alerted immediately, jump-starting the treatment process.

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Specially trained sniffer dogs can smell something on the breath of lung cancer patients.

Dogs will sniff anything and everything, and can even tell identical twins apart by scent. And tumors, you may be surprised to learn, have their own very faint smells. To figure out how to diagnose internal cancers that are frequently overlooked until too late from just a breath sample, scientists have been working with dogs to see if these smells can be reliably differentiated from, say, the smell of breakfast, that last cigarette, or emphysema.

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Modified immune cells decimated chronic lymphocytic leukemia, scientists found.

What’s the News: Striking results in a very small study have got the web a-buzz about a new cancer treatment: With three leukemia patients at the ends of their ropes, scientists modified some of their immune cells with a gene that enabled them to hunt down cancer cells. Remarkably, the treatment wiped out more than two pounds of tumor tissue in each patient, and the three have now been in remission for a year.

But what weight does such a small study carry, what about the side effects, and what do these results mean for people with other cancers?

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What’s the News: Due to a vicious disease, the population of the endangered Tasmanian devil has decreased by at least 70 percent since 1996. The cancer, devil facial tumor disease, spreads when an infected devil bites another, typically during feeding or mating. Because Tasmanian devils are so genetically similar, their bodies don’t recognize the intruding cancer cells as foreign.

But now, researchers have sequenced the genome of two devils and created a genetic test that could help breeders select genetically diverse mates. The test will help conservationists breed future generations of Tasmanian devils that are prepared for the cancer, as well as other types of diseases.

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What’s the News: Three new drugs have been shown to improve survival and slow disease progress in patients with metastatic melanoma. This advanced form of the disease is the deadliest type of skin cancer, with patients surviving for an average of only 6 to 9 months. Phase III clinical trials of the treatments—a new chemotherapy drug, an immune-system treatment combined with traditional chemotherapy, and a vaccine combined with another immune treatment—were recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Metastatic melanoma cells

What’s the News: Souped-up cells from a patient’s own immune system could one day be used to treat advanced melanoma, according to a preliminary study published in Science Translational Medicine investigating the safety of the technique. The researchers manipulated a patient’s immune system cells to better recognize cancer cells in the lab and then re-introduced those cells into the body—an approach called “adoptive T-cell therapy.”

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What’s the News: Scientists have developed a new carbon nanotube device (pictured above) that’s capable of detecting single cancer cells. Once implemented in hospitals, this microfluidic device could let doctors more efficiently detect the spread of cancer, especially in developing countries that don’t have the money for more sophisticated diagnostic equipment. Any improvement in detecting cancer’s spread is important, says MIT associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics Brian Wardle, because “of all deaths from cancer, 90 percent are … from tumors that spread from the original site.”

What’s the Context:

• The researchers’ original microfluidic device from four years ago featured tens of thousands of microscopic silicon posts coated with tumor-sticking antibodies: when cancer cells bumped into the posts, they’d stick. But if cancer cells didn’t bump into a silicon post, they’d go undetected. The group says their new version is eight times better.
• When cancer cells migrate, there are “usually only several [cancer] cells per 1-milliliter sample of blood” containing billions of other cells, making cancer exceedingly difficult to detect.
• This new dime-sized microfluidic machine works in the same way, but the solid silicon tubes were switched out for highly porous carbon nanotubes. This allows the blood to actually flow through the tubes instead of just around them, increasing the likelihood of catching a cancer cell.
• In other cancer detection news, some are using dogs to sniff out cancer and others use genetic tests to figure out cancer risks.
• Combating cancer ranges from new cancer-fighting drugs to just ignoring cancer (sometimes).

Not So Fast: The process of commercializing a technology like this takes quite a while; the previous version from four years ago is being tested in hospitals now and is may be commercially available “within the next few years.”

Next Up: The scientists are currently tweaking the device to try to catch HIV.

Reference: Grace D. Chen et al. “Nanoporous Elements in Microfluidics for Multiscale Manipulation of Bioparticles.” Small. DOI: 10.1002/smll.201002076

Image: Brian Wardle/MIT

What’s the News: Scientists have identified three gene mutations that lead to acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that afflicts white blood cells, which may lead to better cancer drugs in the future. As Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute hematologist George Vassiliou told the BBC, his team’s study “found critical steps that take place when the cancer develops. Identifying the biological steps … means we can look for new drugs to reverse the process.”

How the Heck:

• The researchers discovered the major mutation by switching on the Npm1 gene in mice: They observed that about one third of the mice went on to develop leukemia.
• They knew some other genes were involved because not all the mice contracted cancer. So next, they randomly mutated mouse genes, and then analyzed the mutations in the ones that developed cancer, identifying two other mutations in the process. The second mutation affected cell growth and division and the third affected the cell’s environment.

What’s the Context:

• Acute myeloid leukemia occurs when the body develops an abnormal amount of undeveloped white blood cells. It’s the most common type of acute leukemia, accounting for more than 6,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.
• The scientists chose to work on this kind of leukemia because “there had been little progress in developing new drugs.”
• 80beats has covered acute myeloid leukemia in the past, including its link to a possible HIV cure, and more on leukemia in general, from whether the cancer can be passed on from mother to child to decoding a cancer patient’s genome.
• In 2005 Discover covered the news of a possible vaccine for leukemia.

Not So Fast: Researchers caution that it could take decades before new cancer-fighting drugs based on this study come on the market. This present study only used mice as subjects.

Reference: George S Vassiliou et al. “Mutant nucleophosmin and cooperating pathways drive leukemia initiation and progression in mice.” Nature Genetics. doi:10.1038/ng.796

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Bruce Wetzel

• All bats aren’t created equal: Using robotic moths, scientists discovered that bats emitting non-stop radar-like calls catch more insects than their intermittent-emitting brethren—and they do this by hearing the “siren-like” echoes of flying bugs. This suggest that bats evolved their echolocation abilities to increase their nightly catch.
• Scientists reported that ovarian cancer survival rates have doubled in the UK in the past 30 years, a change they attribute to better treatments, such as broader access to chemotherapy.
• Cheetos, Snickers, and electricity: Japanese companies are rolling out the first vending machines capable of charging electric cars, with plans of installing at least 10,000 by the end of the year.

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• Shark seek: Tiger sharks and thresher sharks remember and zero in on specific places to hunt for food in an area that might be 30 miles across. That shows they might possess not only the ability to navigate by smell or by the Earth’s magnetic field, but also broader spatial memory for their home range.
• “If you eat by shoving your entire writhing body into your meals, your dinner companions are probably going to leave.” The hagfish, however, has no such concern for manners: It absorbs its nutrients right through its skin.
• We be jammin’: Satellite provider Thuraya Telecommunications and news channel Al Jazeera both report that sources in Libya are illegally trying to jam their signals, and traced the attempts to “a Libyan intelligence service facility south of Tripoli.”
• British researchers discover a way to use urine tests to screen for prostate cancer—and potentially double the accuracy of current methods.
• Numismatist power: Coin experts create interactive digital maps of coins through history and where they came from, putting a treasure trove of information at historians’ fingertips.
• Super honey from down under: A myrtle native to Australia produces honey packed with antibacterial compounds that can stymie even antibiotic-resistant microorganisms like MRSA.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

• Materials violence: NASA will use a million pounds of force to crush a 20-foot-tall aluminum-lithium rocket fuel tank outfitted with sensors (all in the name of science, of course). The idea is to test out how modern composite materials buckle under incredible pressure, in the hope of finding out where the weaknesses might be.
• Real-life forensic science is rarely as easy or glamorous as its TV counterpart. Actual blood spatter experts, for example, don’t operate with quite the ease of the title character in “Dexter.” But a new study proposes a way to use simple trigonometry to calculate not only the point of origin for blood but also the height above the ground, which previously couldn’t be determined.
• You knew this day would come: The United States has approved the first deepwater offshore drilling permit given out since the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
• As strong as metal and as moldable as plastic: Yale scientist Jan Schroers’ new super-alloys.
• Half of adult males may be carrying the human papillomavirus (HPV), according to a study in The Lancet. It often lingers quietly but is transmitted sexually and is the cause of most cervical cancers in women.
• “Strictly speaking, there should be no blue whales.” So begins DISCOVER blogger Carl Zimmer as he explores the curious question of why blue whales, with so many more cells than human beings and so many chances for those cells to go wrong, are not killed by cancer at an astounding rate.

Image: NASA

They’re about three and a half feet tall and their origins are mysterious, but an isolated group of Ecuadorians with a genetic mutation causing dwarfism are making news for another reason: They hardly ever get cancer or diabetes. Medical researchers say the villagers’ genetic protection from these diseases could lead to preventative treatments for the general population–and could therefore increase human longevity.

The villagers’ condition is called Laron syndrome, which is caused by an insensitivity to growth hormone.

Laron syndrome results from a mutation in the gene that codes for growth hormone receptor (GHR), a protein that binds with the human growth hormone and ultimately results in the production of the insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), causing cells to grow and divide. When a person has two of these mutated and non-working genes, they can develop the disease. [LiveScience]

Jaime Guevara-Aguirre, the leader of the study about the Ecuadorians appearing in Science Translational Medicine, has been looking into their condition and extraordinary resistance to age-related diseases for more than two decades, since his serendipitous discovery of the people while riding horseback in Ecuador.

“I discovered the population in 1987,” Dr. Guevara-Aguirre said in an interview from Ecuador. “In 1994, I noticed these patients were not having cancer, compared with their relatives. People told me they are too few people to make any assumption. People said, ‘You have to wait 10 years,’ so I waited. No one believed me until I got to Valter Longo in 2005.” [The New York Times]

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