UK researchers have developed a 3D laboratory model of human breast cancer, specifically ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). The model, complete with normal cells and tumor cells, should help experts understand how the disease develops in its early stages, and it could replace the need for experiments in animals.

About one in five breast cancers in the UK start out as DCIS. Researchers wanted to learn more about how the early cancerous changes in cells develop into larger tumors, and they chose to fashion a 3D test tube model because it is more complex than a layer of cells in a Petri dish.

Once this experiment is proved successful, it could reduce and perhaps replace animal studies.

"With breast cancer, there is an urgent need to move away from animal research models because their similarity to human cancer can be so poor," says one expert who explains this model could help revolutionize breast cancer research -- because unreliable research costs time, money, and lives, both animal and human lives.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Techniscan Medical Systems (TMS), a Utah-based company that has developed an ultrasound imaging system known as UltraSound CTTM, a $2.8 million dollar small business grant to go forward with a radiation-free, non-invasive, breast cancer screening device that does not compress the breast during examination.

How does it work? While a woman is lying face down, the breast is suspended in warm water and an ultrasound scanner rotates in a circle, producing detailed 3-D images. According to the company, the diagnostic imaging tool will be able to detect normal, benign and malignant tissues in the breast.

To learn more about the UltraSound CTTM, visit the TMS website.

If we made no further progress in breast cancer research from this day on, the number of women dying from breast cancer five years from now would still drop substantially because we've progressed so much over the past few years, says MD Eric Winer in the October 2006 issue of Oprah magazine. Winer, director of the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is right. There has been a lot of progress. Breast cancer research is on a roll. And here are seven reasons why.

Few will argue the entertainment and interactive appeal of video games for a global legion of game players. Ben Sawyer of the Games for Health Project is simply planning to take video games in a new direction of greater purpose that retains all that's best in present day video games. He's not out to reinvent the wheel -- he is looking to design one of the hubs with a focus on health topics.

"This has absolutely nothing to do with the games industry needing to stand up and be apologetic about anything," insists Digital Mill president and game developer and co-director of the Games for Health Project Sawyer. "We are not doing this because game developers have a little PR problem that needs fixing. My goal is to get the industry to do this because it makes sense and it's a smart, cool thing to do, period."

What Sawyer has in mind runs along the line of HopeLab's Re-Mission, a challenging, 3D video game with 20 levels that takes the player on a journey through the bodies of young patients with different kinds of cancer. Players control a nanobot named Roxxi who destroys cancer cells, battles bacterial infections, and manages realistic, life- threatening side effects associated with the disease.

Sawyer blogs the Games for Health Project. As stated on the blog, the goal of the project is to "help foster and support a community of researchers, developers, and users of applications in game technologies and with game development talent to create new ways in playing a greater role in helping to organize and accelerate the adoption of computer games for a variety of challenges facing the world today."

In September, the Games for Health Project will hold its annual conference in Baltimore Maryland. For more details, visit the Games for Health Project blog. Fascinating stuff in innovative applications.

Developed by Hopelab, Re-Mission is a challenging, 3D video game with 20 levels that takes the player on a journey through the bodies of young patients with different kinds of cancer. Players control a nanobot named Roxxi who destroys cancer cells, battles bacterial infections, and manages realistic, life- threatening side effects associated with the disease. HopeLab stated that the results from its scientific study involving 375 teen and young adults at 34 medical centers in the United States, Canada and Australia showed young people who played Re-Mission were more likely to stick to their medication regimens than those who did not play the game.

The genesis for the video game came from Pam Omidyar's imagination while working in a research laboratory during the day, watching cancer cells multiplying under a microscope, and then going home to play video games with her family and friends. She got the idea that a video game for young people with cancer might play a positive role in helping them fight their disease. What if a video game designed especially for kids with cancer gave them a feeling of power over their disease as they blast away at the cancer cells? She had access to researchers to test the game and see if it really would help the kids. In 2001, Omidyar, wife of eBay Inc. founder, launched HopeLab to make this idea a reality. Today, HopeLab is a nonprofit organization that helps young people deal with chronic illnesses.

HopeLab is distributing a PC version of the game to young people with cancer, free of charge, through its website and online community at Re-Mission. The game is available is in english, french and spanish versions. The Re-Mission website also provides an interactive, online community where teens and young adults with cancer can share information and support one another.