Newsroom

In recent days, the U-M Health System added its 10,000th research volunteer to our participant registry, a major milestone. There is still a great need for research participants at U-M and nationwide. A lack of volunteers slows progress in the fight against cancer, diabetes, depression and other devastating illnesses.     Read more

The University of Michigan wants to make sure everyone has the facts about lung cancer, a disease that kills more people each year than breast, colon and prostate cancers combined. Join in the discussion on Thursday, February 16 when Gregory Kalemkerian, M.D., director of the U-M Multidisciplinary Lung Cancer Clinic will be available to answer questions about the disease.     Read more

University of Michigan pediatric oncology researcher Elizabeth R. Lawlor, M.D., Ph.D., has received a $150,000, two-year grant from CureSearch for Children's Cancer to help study metabolic changes in Ewing sarcoma with the goal of developing new treatments for this bone cancer. Understanding how these cancer cells survive is a primary focus of investigation in many research laboratories around the world.    Read more

A mutant protein found in nearly all pancreatic cancers plays a role not only in the cancer's development but in its continued growth, according to a new study from University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers. The finding suggests a possible target for developing new ways to treat this deadly disease.    Read more

Cancer treatments designed to block the growth of blood vessels were found to increase the number of cancer stem cells in breast tumors in mice, suggesting a possible explanation for why these drugs don't lead to longer survival. The drugs Avastin and Sutent have been looked at as potential breast cancer treatments. But while they do shrink tumors and slow the time till the cancer progresses, the effect does not last, and the cancer eventually regrows and spreads.    Read more.

A natural enzyme -- alpha-1-antitrypsin -- derived from human blood plasma showed potential in significantly reducing the effects of graft-vs.-host disease, a common and deadly side effect of lifesaving bone marrow transplants. This drug -- which is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Admninistration, has been used by many patients over extended periods of time and is known to cause minimal side effects.    Read more

Independent of other factors, such as smoking history and HPV status, matted lymph nodes appear to signal increased chance of oropharyngeal cancer spreading to other parts of the body. Patients with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma who had "matted" lymph nodes – nodes that are connected together – had a 69% survival rate over three years, compared to 94% for patients without matted nodes.    Read more

A technique that lets researchers monitor single cancer cells in real time as they float in liquid could help doctors study the breakaway tumor cells that cause metastasis. In a new study, a program known as Spatially Invariant Vector Quantization (SIVQ) was able to separate malignancy from background tissue in digital slides of micropapillary urothelial carcinoma, a type of bladder cancer whose features can vary widely from case to case and that presents diagnostic challenges even for experts.   Read more