Latest Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Stories

SEATTLE, Sept. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Washington Officials Association are teaming up to raise the profile of September as Prostate Cancer Awareness Month with the "Blue Flags Against Cancer" campaign this week. High school football officials will replace their traditional yellow penalty flags with blue flags during varsity games played throughout the state Sept. 13-15. Blue is prostate cancer's awareness color. "In most situations,...

Discovery will lead to new screening protocol to better match patients and donors A team of scientists led by a bone marrow transplant researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has shed new light on why most bone marrow transplant patients who receive tissue-matched cells from unrelated donors still suffer acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). The answer appears to lie in the discovery of previously undetected genetic differences in the DNA of patients and unrelated marrow...

September spotlights childhood cancer, which remains the leading cause of death by disease of young Americans. At St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, doctors and scientists are working to change that statistic MEMPHIS, Tenn., Sept. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As St. Jude Children's Research Hospital celebrates its 50th anniversary and marks September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, investigators are focused on the future. Although survival rates for childhood cancer...

SEATTLE, Aug. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Since its opening in 2008, the Ben & Catherine Ivy Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment (the Ivy Center) at Swedish Medical Center's Neuroscience Institute has led the expansion drive of major research projects and expanded treatment options for patients living with brain cancer in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the world. The Ivy Center was founded in 2008 to create a world-class treatment and research facility...

Finding could lead to development of better therapies Developing resistance to chemotherapy is a nearly universal, ultimately lethal consequence for cancer patients with solid tumors – such as those of the breast, prostate, lung and colon – that have metastasized, or spread, throughout the body. A team of scientists led by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has discovered a key factor that drives this drug resistance – information that ultimately may be used to improve the...

An inexpensive "orphan drug" used to treat sleep disorders appears to be a potent inhibitor of cancer cells, according to a new study led by scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Their novel approach, using groundbreaking technology that allows rapid analysis of the genome, has broad implications for the development of safer, more-effective cancer therapies. The findings are published in the May 21 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A research...

LUNGevity, Nation's Largest Lung Cancer-focused Nonprofit, Funds Critical, Encouraging Research WASHINGTON, May 17, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- LUNGevity Foundation, the nation's largest lung cancer-focused nonprofit, is pleased to note promising updates in researchers' quest for early detection and treatments for lung cancer during May, Lung Cancer Hope Month. Renowned researchers and LUNGevity Science Board Members, including Dr. Pierre Massion, Vanderbilt University Medical...

SEATTLE, May 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation, a leading provider of next-generation sequencing assays for the adaptive immune system, announced today results from the first head-to-head comparison of high throughput sequencing (HTS) using immunoSEQ(TM) and traditional flow cytometry. The study, which was conducted in collaboration with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington Department of Laboratory Medicine, was...

Study is first to show feasibility and efficacy of a new use for autologous stem cell transplant For the first time, scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have transplanted brain cancer patients' own gene-modified blood stem cells in order to protect their bone marrow against the toxic side effects of chemotherapy. Initial results of the ongoing, small clinical trial of three patients with glioblastoma showed that two patients survived longer than predicted if they had not...

Study is first to find possible causative link but biological reasons are unknown For the first time, scientists have found what could be a causative link between the concentration of circulating Y-chromosome fetal cells in women who gave birth to children of either sex and their risk of later developing breast cancer and colon cancer. The findings show that the presence of fetal cells is a double-edged sword: Women with the lowest concentration of fetal cells were 70 percent less likely...