A new paradigm for cancer research

The $100 billion federal government investment in the “War on Cancer,” has produced only relatively modest progress in cancer research advances, according to Yale School of Medicine researcher Dr. Cary Gross, and his collaborator Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel.

The pair authored a recent viewpoint article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, tackling the issue of value in cancer research.

Gross and Emanuel recommend a new paradigm for research, one that focuses on improving efficacy and value, as well as ensuring population health impact and generating new knowledge. Specifically, they call for changes to the design of clinical trials, charging the cancer research community to set a target of reducing the cost of trials by more than 50%.

“Not only has the investment in cancer research been substantial, but the costs of conducting research are increasing, and the available funds are increasingly scarce, the pair write. “Considering the substantial investment to date, it is difficult to make a compelling argument that simply increasing research funding will produce a decline in cancer mortality.”

Light wave technique an advance for optical research

RMIT Univ. researchers have developed artificial microflowers that self-assemble in water and mimic the natural blooming process, an important step for advances in frontier-edge electronics.

Flower-shaped structures have been the focus of research because their distinctive surfaces offer exciting potential for applications in a range of fields - from optoelectronics and chemosensors to nanotechnology, biotechnology, biomedicine and organic electronics.

The team from the RMIT-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology Research Centre has for the first time developed microstructures shaped like flowers that build through self-repeating arrangement in water.

Lead investigator Dr Sheshanath Boshanale said the field of organic flower-shaped morphology was still in its infancy.

Popping microbubbles help focus light inside the body

A new technique developed at Caltech that uses gas-filled microbubbles for focusing light inside tissue could one day provide doctors with a minimally invasive way of destroying tumors with lasers, and lead to improved diagnostic medical imaging.

The primary challenge with focusing light inside the body is that biological tissue is optically opaque. Unlike transparent glass, the cells and proteins that make up tissue scatter and absorb light. "Our tissues behave very much like dense fog as far as light is concerned," says Changhuei Yang, professor of electrical engineering, bioengineering, and medical engineering. "Just like we cannot focus a car's headlight through fog, scientists have always had difficulty focusing light through tissues."

To get around this problem, Yang and his team turned to microbubbles, commonly used in medicine to enhance contrast in ultrasound imaging.