Professor Richard Dawkins, writer and biologist, says that "we live in dangerous times when superstition is gaining ground and rational science is under attack."

We have all heard the conspiracy theories about how the scientific community and our health care professionals want to hide the cure for cancer in order to make money. They don't want a cure, they say. Isn't that just a bit ridiculous when all of the people in those industries most certainly knows or loves someone who has gone through a cancer diagnosis. Does that make any sense?

The professor also says that "There are two ways of looking at the world - through faith and superstition, or through the rigours of logic, observation and evidence, through reason".

Katherine Schaefer was investigating methods for treating the inflammation seen in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis when something terrible happened -- she noticed her carefully cultured cells were dead. And then something wonderful happened -- she realized she had stumbled upon a potential new method of attacking cancerous tumors that have become resistant to existing drugs.

Schaefer and her colleagues at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York were testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator -- a compound never considered a cancer drug, or a drug of any kind really -- when Schaefer made a calculation error and used a lot more of the compound than she should have. And her cells died.

Upon further study, Schaefer found the compound killed just about every possible epithelial tumor cell. These cells line organs such as the colon and also the skin. The compound, that works like taxane drugs but without eventual tumor resistance, also killed colon tumors in mice without making them sick.

The research team, whose findings are published in the journal International Cancer Research, plans more safety tests in mice. And eventually, if their outcomes are promising, they plan to design something they can patent as a new drug -- because they would love to see this disastrous lab experiment one day lead to treatment for cancers of the colon, esophagus, liver, and skin.

Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researchers have developed a new method of identifying abnormalities that cause cells to develop into cancerous ones that is much quicker and far less expensive than the traditional method of identification.

According to the researchers, DNA sequencing to find cancer-causing mutations in genes is time consuming and expensive, and the vast majority of mutations it identifies don't cause cancer. With the new method, in less than two months they were able to find three activating mutations of the tyrosine kinase JAK3 in acute myeloid leukemia cells.

"It may have taken years to find these mutations with DNA sequencing alone," said Jeffrey Tyner, Ph.D, a senior author of the study. "As we streamline our process, we will be able to analyze cancer cells for mutations in a matter of just weeks."

"It moves forward the personalized medicine model where cancer treatment is tailored for each patient based on the molecular mutations at the heart of his or her cancer," states Dr. Brian Druker, JELD-WEN chair of leukemia research in the OHSU Cancer Institute and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

One day Dr. Druker believes this new method of identifying abnormalities that cause cells to turn into cancerous ones can be applied to many cancers and that there will be a targeted drug developed for each cancer. For more information, visit OHSU Cancer Institute news.