In a new study, researchers found evidence that HPV vaccination is reducing the incidence of anal cancer among young adults in the US. Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch analyzed data from the US Cancer Statistics database from 2001 to 2018 to examine anal cancer incidences among different age groups and determine the potential impact of HPV vaccination. They found that cancer incidence among young adults 20 to 44 years of age began to rapidly and significantly decrease within...

A blood test, combined with a risk model based on an individual’s history, more accurately determines who is likely to benefit from lung cancer screening than the current U.S. recommendation, according to a study led by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. A personalized lung cancer risk assessment, combining a blood test based on a four-marker protein panel developed at MD Anderson and an independent model (PLCOm2012) that accounts for smoking history, was more sensitive and...

Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital in Fort Bend County is using an innovative, minimally invasive technique to treat chronic subdural hematomas, serious bleeding in the membrane between the skull and the brain caused by head trauma. Board-certified neurosurgeon Tsz Yeung Lau, M.D., recently performed a successful meningeal artery embolization (MAE) to stop a patient’s bleeding. The patient – a woman in her 80s – was on blood thinners for a heart condition and had recently...

Dr. Eric Walser will debut a new treatment for prostate cancer that uses focused ultrasound beams rather than needles or incisions. “This is a radical new therapy which also shows promise and is approved for the treatment of essential tremors and Parkinson’s disease,” said Walser, chair of Radiology and director of the Interventional Radiology Department at the University of Texas Medical Branch. “We see future applications for brain cancer and cancer in other parts of the body....

Combination therapies including venetoclax and another therapy have displayed promising results against subtypes of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that are particularly difficult to treat, including relapsed or refractory AML with a specific mutation, high-risk AML, and treated secondary AML. AML is a type of leukemia in which the myeloid stem cells produce immature blood cells, rather than mature, healthy cells, causing anemia and risk of bleeding and infection. Most patients with AML are not cured...

Hypoxia — insufficient oxygen levels in tissues — initiates cancer cell invasion and metastasis through the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) protein. During this process, cancer cells undergo a conversion to amoeboid migration, although the underlying mechanisms are not clear. New research led by Veronika te Boekhorst, Ph.D., and Peter Friedl, M.D., Ph.D., identified calpain-2 as a key regulator of the amoeboid conversion in response to hypoxia. The researchers demonstrated that hypoxia and HIF stabilization stimulate calpain-2 to...

T cell responses against SARS-CoV-2 may provide durable protection against infections, and T cells targeting the virus may be useful for COVID-19 treatments. To best utilize T cells for prevention and treatment, it is critical to understand the viral targets, or peptides, that T cells recognize. To date, researchers have relied on in silico methods to predict immunogenic viral peptides, but little has been done to experimentally validate predicted targets. Researchers led by Ke Pan,...

In a new single-arm study, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center researchers reported that radiation therapy as monotherapy is a safe and effective non-invasive treatment for oligometastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Led by Chad Tang, M.D., assistant professor of Radiation Oncology, the MD Anderson RCC Oligometastasis Phase II trial is the first study to investigate and report the use of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) as an alternative treatment to standard-of-care systemic therapy...

A study found that a healthy relationship curriculum can reduce physical dating violence among adolescents. The multi-year study, led by Jeff Temple, director of the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Center for Violence Prevention, recruited 24 Texas middle schools for the randomized controlled trial in 2017. The study compared students who received the standard health curriculum versus students in schools that implemented the Fourth R healthy relationship curriculum. Findings demonstrated that the Fourth R, adapted for a 7th grade, ethnically diverse audience of...