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Breast Cancer Drugs from Pfizer and Lill...

New drugs help fight breast cancerExperimental breast cancer drugs from Pfizer and Eli Lilly slowed or halted growth of advanced tumors in studies, potentially adding a new treatment option for patients and top-selling therapies for the companies.

Pfizer’s palbociclib doubled to 20.2 months the time in which patients’ advanced breast cancer didn’t progress, the drugmaker said today. In an unrelated study, Lilly’s drug, bemaciclib, aided 61 percent of patients with metastatic, hormone-sensitive breast cancer, meaning the size of their tumors shrunk by 30 percent or didn’t increase for 24 weeks.

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Early Detection Urine Test for Prostate ...

Urine test for cancerThe reason is that the traditional prostate cancer screening test – a blood test to measure prostate specific antigen, or PSA – does not give doctors a complete picture.

Now, the University of Michigan Health System has begun offering a new urine test called Mi-Prostate Score to improve on PSA screening for prostate cancer. The test incorporates three specific markers that could indicate cancer and studies have shown that the combination is far more accurate than PSA alone.
“Many more men have elevated PSA than actually have cancer but it can be difficult to determine this without biopsy. We need new tools to help patients and doctors make better decisions about what to do if serum PSA is elevated. Mi-Prostate Score helps with this,” says Scott Tomlins, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology and urology at the University of Michigan.

Preventing Cancer
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U.S. cancer death rates continue to drop

U.S. cancer death rates continue to drop

US Cancer RatesThe Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975–2009, shows that overall cancer death rates continued to decline in the United States among both men and women, among all major racial and ethnic groups, and for all of the most common cancer sites, including lung, colon and rectum, female breast, and prostate. However, the report also shows that death rates continued to increase during the latest time period (2000 through 2009) for melanoma of the skin (among men only) and for cancers of the liver, pancreas, and uterus. The special feature section on human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers shows that incidence rates are increasing for HPV-associated oropharyngeal and anal cancers and that vaccination coverage levels in the U.S. during 2008 and 2010 remained low among adolescent girls.

The report, produced since 1998, is co-authored by researchers from the American Cancer Society (ACS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR). It appears early online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and will be published in print issue 3, volume 105.

The decline in overall cancer death rates continues a trend that began in the early 1990s. From 2000 through 2009, cancer death rates decreased by 1.8 percent per year among men and by 1.4 percent per year among women. Death rates among children up to 14 years of age also continued to decrease by 1.8 percent per year. During 2000 through 2009, death rates among men decreased for 10 of the 17 most common cancers (lung, prostate, colon and rectum, leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney, stomach, myeloma, oral cavity and pharynx, and larynx) and increased for melanoma of the skin and cancers of the pancreas and liver. During the same 10-year period, death rates among women decreased for 15 of the 18 most common cancers (lung, breast, colon and rectum, ovary, leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, brain and other nervous system, myeloma, kidney, stomach, cervix, bladder, esophagus, oral cavity and pharynx, and gallbladder) and increased for cancers of the pancreas, liver, and uterus.

Studies
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Lung cancer likely to overtake breast ca...

Lung cancer likely to overtake breast cancer as the main cause of cancer death among European women

Lung cancer from smoking in womenLung cancer is likely to overtake breast cancer as the main cause of cancer death among European women by the middle of this decade, according to new research published in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology on February 13. In the UK and Poland it has already overtaken breast cancer as the main cause of cancer deaths in women.

The study by researchers in Italy and Switzerland predicts that just over 1.3 million people will die from cancer (737,747 men and 576,489 women) in the 27 countries of the European Union in 2013. Although the actual numbers have increased when compared with 2009 (the year for which there are World Health Organization mortality data for most EU countries), the rate (age-standardised per 100,000 population) of people who die from the disease has declined. Since 2009 there has been 6% fall among men and 4% fall among women.

However, despite the decline in cancer deaths overall, lung cancer death rates continue to rise among women in all countries, while breast cancer rates fall. In 2013 there will be an estimated 88,886 deaths (14.6 per 100,000 women) from breast cancer and 82,640 deaths (14 per 100,000 women) from lung cancer. Lung cancer deaths have risen by 7% among women since 2009.

One of the study’s authors, Professor Carlo La Vecchia (MD), head of the Department of Epidemiology at the Mario Negri Institute and professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Milan (Italy), said: “If these opposite trends in breast and lung cancer rates continue, then in 2015 lung cancer is going to become the first cause of cancer mortality in Europe. This is already true in the UK and Poland, the two countries with the highest rates: 21.2 and 17.5 per 100,000 women respectively.

“This predicted rise of female lung cancer in the UK may reflect the increased prevalence of young women starting smoking in the late 1960s and 1970s, possibly due to changing socio-cultural attitudes at that time. However, fewer young women nowadays in the UK and elsewhere in Europe are smoking and, therefore, deaths from lung cancer may start to level off after 2020 at around 15 per 100,000 women.”

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Squeezing Breasts Can Help Fight Breast ...

Squeezing Breasts Can Help Fight Breast Cancer

Squeezing breasts may help prevent cancer

New research has found that applying physical force on one’s breasts can prevent malignant cancer cells.

Researchers at the University of California Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory presented their findings Monday at the Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco.

“People have known for centuries that physical force can influence our bodies,” research team member Gautham Venugopalan said in a statement. “When we lift weights, our muscles get bigger. The force of gravity is essential to keeping our bones strong. Here we show that physical force can play a role in the growth — and reversion — of cancer cells.”

Squeezing breasts can help guide cells back into a normal growth pattern, stopping the “out-of-control” growth of malignant cancer cells.

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Enzyme offers new therapeutic target for...

Enzyme offers new therapeutic target for cancer drugs

New cancer drugResearchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have uncovered a new signal transduction pathway specifically devoted to the regulation of alternative RNA splicing, a process that allows a single gene to produce or code multiple types of protein variants. The discovery, published in the June 27, 2012 issue of Molecular Cell, suggests the new pathway might be a fruitful target for new cancer drugs.

Signal transduction in the cell involves kinases and phosphatases, enzymes that transfer or remove phosphates in protein molecules in a cascade or pathway. SRPK kinases, first described by Xiang-Dong Fu, PhD, professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego in 1994, are involved in controlling the activities of splicing regulators in mammalian cells.

Prior studies have implicated SRPK1 in cancer and other human diseases. For example, it has been shown that SRPK1 plays a critical role in regulating the function of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor or VEGF, which stimulates blood vessel growth in cancer. SRPK1 has been found to be dysregulated in a number of cancers, from kidney and breast to lung and pancreatic.

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HPV Vaccine May Prevent Recurrence of Pr...

HPV Vaccine May Prevent Recurrence of Precancerous Conditions

HPV VaccineThe human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has been touted as a way to prevent cervical cancer and genital warts, but a new study suggests the vaccine may also prevent women diagnosed with precancers from developing recurrences.

Researchers randomly assigned more than 1,350 women diagnosed with genital warts or certain precancerous conditions to receive either three injections of the HPV vaccine or a placebo. The women were followed for about four years.

Women who received the vaccine had 46.2 percent lower risk of developing another HPV-related disease after treatment for their genital warts or their precancerous condition.

Typically, women treated for these types of conditions are at risk for subsequent disease later, but the study offers evidence that “vaccination offered substantial benefit” in terms of lowering that risk, wrote the international team of authors, led by Elmar Joura, an associate professor at the University of Vienna in Austria.

Experts not involved with the research told ABC News that the research is significant because it suggests for the first time that the HPV vaccine may offer benefits beyond prevention.

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Survival Rate of Cancer Patients in Kore...

Survival Rate of Cancer Patients in Korea Ranked in the Top in the World

South Korea Cancer Patients Survival RateSEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — As the whole world battles against cancer, the survival rate of cancer patients in Korea has shown a great improvement. Cancer is still the number one cause of death in Korea, but about half of Korean cancer patients have, in recent times, managed to survive for more than ten years, which illustrates that world class cancer treatments are available in Korea.

The Korean government recently announced that the survival rate of Korean cancer patients had improved from 59.5% in 2008 to 62.0% in 2009, while the cancer mortality rate showed a 19% decrease in 2006 and a 21% decrease in 2008. In addition, the 2011 Health Care Quality Indicators released by OECD member countries indicated that Korea excelled in the treatment of uterine cancer and that its survival rate for stomach cancer, 65.3%, well surpassed those of the USA (26%), Europe (24.9%), Japan (62.1%) and Canada (22%). In addition, the survival rate from thyroid cancer in Korea is 99.7% while that of breast cancer is 90.6%.

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Kids’ leukemia risk raised by dads who s

Kids’ leukemia risk raised by dads who smoke

Leukemia tied to fathers who smokeChildren whose fathers smoked have at least a 15 percent higher risk of developing the most common form of childhood cancer, a new Australian study finds.

“Paternal smoking seems to be real” as a risk factor, said Patricia Buffler, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the current analysis.

“The importance of tobacco exposure and children’s cancers has been overlooked until recently,” Buffler told Reuters Health. “So I think this paper is important” in adding to the growing body of evidence.

The research team, led by Dr. Elizabeth Milne at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Australia, surveyed the families of nearly 400 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Although ALL is the most common childhood cancer, it is still rare, affecting about three to five children out of every 100,000, according to the National Cancer Institute. More than 1,000 kids die of the disease every year.

Preventing Cancer
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Transplant recipients have a high risk o...

Transplant recipients have a high risk of developing cancer

Cancer Operating RoomOrgan transplant recipients in the United States have a high risk of developing 32 different types of cancer, according to a new study of transplant recipients which fully describes the range of malignancies that occur. Researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, the Health Resources and Services Administration, and their colleagues evaluated medical data from more than 175,700 transplant recipients, accounting for about 40 percent of all organ transplant recipients in the country. The results of this study appeared in the Nov. 2, 2011, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In 2010, a total of 28,664 organ transplants were performed in the U.S., including 16,899 kidney, 6,291 liver, 2,333 heart, and 1,770 lung transplants.

“While transplantation is a life-saving therapy for patients with end-stage organ disease, it also puts recipients at an increased risk for developing cancer, in part because of medications administered to suppress the immune system and prevent rejection of the organ. The cancer risk among transplant recipients resembles that of people with HIV infection, whose risk is elevated for infection-related cancers due to immunosuppression,” said lead author Eric A. Engels, M.D., in the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI. “A clearer understanding of the pattern of cancer risk associated with solid organ transplantation may help future patients have better, healthier outcomes.”

Studies
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