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One of the way scientists try to combat cancer is to selectively disrupt angiogenesis, the process by which blood vessels form to support the growth of the tumor cells.
Biotech company Amgen launched a spiffy new website with 15 gorgeously rendered animations explaining the process of angiogenesis as it relates to vascularized tumor in plain English.
You don’t have to be a molecular biologist to appreciate the "Fantastic Voyage"-like animations – and you may learn something cool about cancer biology!
Not to be missed: Link – via Wired Science
Maureen Burns in Rugby, England has a 10-year-old mixed breed collie named Max who probably saved her life. Max started actingly strangely, sniffing his owner’s breath and rubbing against her right breast.
Mrs. Burns discovered a lump but it did not show up on a hospital mammogram. She convinced doctors to do a biopsy and sure enough, the tumor was malignant.
She’s had surgery to remove the lump, followed by radiation treatment, and her prognosis is excellent. Mrs. Burns is convinced that she is alive today because of her dog’s keen sense of smell.
“It was his peculiar reaction that alerted me to the fact that something was wrong. At first I thought he was just getting old, he was not so playful and his eyes were sad. He’d sniff my breath in an odd way — I even asked my husband Roger if I had halitosis.”
– Maureen Burns
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Children who receive treatment for cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston are receiving a special treat while construction goes on outside. Children write their names on sheets of paper and tape them to the window. Then ironworkers erecting the new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care paint the names on steel beams and hoist them into place.
The building’s steel skeleton is now a brightly colored, seven-story monument to scores of children receiving treatment at the clinic – Lia, Alex, and Sam; Taylor, Izzy, and Danny. For the young cancer patients, who press their noses to the glass to watch new names added every day, the steel and spray-paint tribute has given them a few moments of joy and a towering symbol of hope.
A similar project was carried out in 1996 when the Smith Research Laboratories were built. A movie was made at that time to raise money for The Jimmy Fund.
Yesterday, crawling on their stomachs in the bitter cold and whipping winds, the ironworkers looked down at the latest batch of names posted in the walkway window. Looking up at them were Kristen and her sisters, Cathryn, 5, and Hannah, 3, who have been accompanying her to chemotherapy. They pointed as the ironworkers painted the girls’ names onto the side of a 4-ton I-beam and hoisted it on to the seventh floor.
“She’ll always be a piece of this building, which is a good feeling to have,” Elizabeth Hoenshell said, holding Kristen. “They don’t have to do this, the guys. They could just do their job and do a good job at it and give us a building that we can get treatment at, but they go the extra step and that’s huge.”
Link to story. Link to photo gallery. -via Metafilter
See a video from the earlier project, but have your hankie ready. Link
(image credit: David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)
Jacob Vanderlaan of Sussex, New Brunswick loved tractors. After he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, the 9-year-old made his request to the Children’s Wish Foundation. He wanted to visit the John Deere factory in Moline, Illinois.
But the boy everyone knows as ‘Jake’ is too ill to travel, so the tractors came to him Friday as the extended family that is the farming community around Sussex organized a parade past the boy’s home as he lay on a folded-down seat at the living room window.
Wrapped in a fleece, farm-themed blanket, a stuffed cow on his lap, Jake shielded his eyes from the sun with a black cap in one hand, waving excitedly with the other at the familiar faces behind the wheels of the passing farm vehicles.
For one afternoon, the family was able to forget the cancer that mom Julie Vanderlaan described as “extremely aggressive”, which has left her son heavily medicated to fight through the pain.
Over 50 farmers rode tractors and other farm equipment to Jake’s home -they were the same farmers who had been helping the family in every way possible since Jacob’s illness was diagnosed.
“I never expected this,” Julie said. “People are offering to do anything they can, they are just showing up every day to help. It all means so much.
“It’s overwhelming. It just makes you so appreciative to be a part of this type of community.”
Jacob died the day after the tractor parade. Link -via Fark
(image credit: Cindy Wilson/Telegraph-Journal)
Scientists have grown this Gumby/gingerbread man shape out of living human cancer cells!
The structure was grown using about 100,000 beads of the connective protein collagen, seeded with cells from a human liver cancer culture and tipped into a body-shaped mould. On the surface of each bead are cells of a type that secrete proteins and collagen that bind all the cells together.
Researchers are working to produce cell cultures that resemble organs in order to test new drugs. Link -via Culture Dish
David Baird has just completed his Herculean 112-day journey pushing a wheelbarrow across Australia (that’s 4,115 km or 2,557 mi on foot). He did this to raise money for breast and prostate cancer research.
The fit looking 65-year-old said he was feeling ‘amazingly good’, considering he had traveled a massive 4115km on foot.
Taking in about 70 towns along the way, Mr Baird said he pushed the wheelbarrow for between 10 and 12 hours a day. [...]While he never had any doubts he wouldn’t complete his journey, he admitted each day “was hard”.
“My most concern was my survival with the traffic, he said. That was quite horrendous.”
(Photo: POST Newspaper Online)
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