Publications/Of Note


A new prognostic test can help determine whether a prostate cancer patient will go on to have a recurrence of the disease, even if surrounding lymph nodes initially appear negative for cancer, according to a study by Richard J. Cote, M.D., Keck School of Medicine professor of pathology and director of the Genitourinary Cancer Program, and his colleagues.

The study, “Detection of Occult Lymph Node Metastases in Patients with Local Advanced (pT3) Node-Negative Prostate Cancer” was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

American men are 35 percent more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than women are to be diagnosed with breast cancer.

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A protein that allows breast cancer cells to evade the body's natural immune responses could be a target of future cancer therapies, according to a study by senior author Parkash S. Gill, M.D., the Ezralow Family Chair in Cancer Therapeutics, and his colleagues.

The study, published in the American Journal of Pathology, is the first to identify how EphB4, a protein that sits on the surface of cells, serves as a sentry to guard the tumor cells from any defenses the body deploys to attack them. The goal of a future anti-cancer therapy would be to block the protein.

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USC researchers have helped identify a subset of colorectal cancer patients whose disease shares an unusual genetic “fingerprint” and their findings appear in Nature Genetics.

The findings could lead to advances in treatment for patients in the group, according to Peter Laird, Ph.D., Keck School of Medicine associate professor of surgery, biochemistry and molecular biology and director of basic research surgery and one of the lead researchers in the study.

The research also lays to rest a debate over whether there is a distinct group of colorectal tumors with an exceptionally high frequency of DNA methylation in CpG islands, which are short stretches of DNA usually found near gene regulatory regions.

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The Pew Charitable Trusts and the University of California at San Francisco named molecular biologist Judd Rice, Ph.D., a 2006 Pew Scholar in Biomedical Research.

Rice is one of only 15 researchers nationwide to receive the highly competitive award. His research focuses on how distinct cells of the body, which all contain the identical DNA blueprint, manage to behave differently.

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Researchers Robert D. Ladner, Ph.D., and Nouri Neamati, Ph.D., are among 11 recipients of the first Jeannik M. Littlefield-American Association for Cancer Research Grants in Metastatic Colon Cancer Research.

USC was the only institution to have two award recipients from the international pool of 114 investigators.

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Hematologist Allen Yang, M.D., Ph.D., received a Clinical Research Career Development Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The award is given to physicians in their second, third or fourth year as full-time faculty members in a university setting to test a hypothesis or accomplish intended research.