News

Deadly Form of Advanced Prostate Cancer Is Common, Calls for Distinct Treatment

A new study of prostate cancer in 202 men, whose cancers had spread and were resistant to standard treatment, found that a surprisingly large number of these cancers – about 17 percent – belong to a deadlier subtype of metastatic prostate cancer. Previously, it was thought that these cancers

Evolution of Melanoma Reveals Opportunities for Intervention

UC San Francisco researchers have identified the sequence of genetic changes that transform benign moles to into malignant skin cancer and have used CRISPR gene editing to recreate the steps of melanoma evolution one by one in normal human skin cells in the lab. The research identified key molecular

Staying Safe in the Sun - A Dermatologist Helps Separate Facts from Hype

​Skin cancer is the number-one cancer diagnosis in the United States – it’s more common than breast, prostate, and lung cancers combined. Skin cancers can be divided into two types – nonmelanoma (basal and squamous cell carcinomas) and melanoma, with melanoma being the least common but most life

UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals Celebrate Top-Tier 2018-19 Rankings

UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals rank among the nation’s top-tier pediatric medical centers, according to U.S. News & World Report’s annual survey for 2018-19. In the Best Children’s Hospitals rankings, released on June 26, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals’ campuses in Oakland and San Francisco

Combination Therapy May Revive Prospects for 'Embattled' Breast Cancer Drugs

More than 60 percent of breast cancer cases involve defects in the same biochemical chain of events within cancer cells — known as the PI3 kinase (PI3K) pathway — but efforts to develop therapies targeting this pathway have met with little success after hundreds of mostly failed clinical trials. And

Immune Profile for Successful Cancer Immunotherapy Discovered

In a new study published online June 25, 2018 in Nature Medicine, UC San Francisco researchers have identified a key biological pathway in human cancer patients that appears to prime the immune system for a successful response to immunotherapy drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors. The findings

UCSF Molecular Oncology Initiative/ Q&A with Alejandro Sweet-Cordero, MD

As UCSF increasingly leads the way in precision medicine, especially for cancer, the Cancer Center’s Molecular Oncology Initiative (MOI) has become central to those efforts. Using the UCSF500 gene panel assay, the MOI’s focus is on integrating genomic findings from molecular diagnostic tests with