A study published in Nature by researchers at IRB Barcelona and the University of Washington shows that smoking and biological sex influence how mutated cells expand in healthy bladder tissue.

The findings may help explain why men and smokers are more likely to develop bladder cancer.

The novel approach used in this study reveals many more mutations than previously detected.

The research aims to pave the way for prevention and early detection tools in bladder cancer.

University of Calgary professor Dr. Aaron Goodarzi, PhD, is hoping to recruit up to ten thousand people from all over Canada to test their homes for radon and collect and send in their toenail clippings for analysis.

In a proof-of-concept (pilot) study published in Environment International, Goodarzi and co-principal investigator Dr. Michael Wieser, PhD, showed that measuring radioactive lead in toenails is a promising way to estimate a person’s long-term radon exposure.

The naturally occurring, odorless, colourless but radioactive gas is the second leading cause of lung cancer after tobacco smoking. Despite that, rules governing lung cancer screening programs in Canada can’t yet include radon exposure as one of risk criteria. The reason being few people can reliably report their radon exposure across decades like they can report the number of years they’ve smoked tobacco.

Researchers at MIT and Harvard Medical School found a way to engineer CAR-NK immune cells that makes them much less likely to be rejected by the patient’s immune system, a common drawback of this type of cancer immunotherapy.