Tag Archives: cancer treatment

Favorable 15-year survival outcomes for older prostate cancer patients with low-risk disease

Previous research by the study’s lead author Grace Lu-Yao, PhD, MPH, cancer epidemiologist at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and colleagues examined 10-year outcomes for this population (JAMA, Vol. 302, No. 11). The 2009 research showed men diagnosed with prostate cancer beginning in… Read More »

Driving tumor cells to their death

B cells are white blood cells that produce antibodies against antigens, namely substances which the immune system recognises as foreign. Normal B cell development and maturation is regulated by a balance between kinase and phosphatase enzymes. These enzymes phosphorylate or de-phosphorylate the signalling subunits of the B cell antigen receptors (BCR). This means that the… Read More »

New insights into survival outcomes of Asian Americans diagnosed with cancer

“What we have found is that Asian Americans are an incredibly diverse group that cannot be indiscriminately combined together,” said Trinh, associate surgeon for the Division of Urology at BWH, faculty at the Center for Surgery and Public Health (CSPH) and lead author of the study. “With Asian Americans, there is important variation in socioeconomic… Read More »

Cancer patients want more information about medical imaging risk

In recent years, there have been numerous reports in the media about potential risks of tests that use ionizing radiation. However, benefit-risk discussions about ionizing radiation from medical imaging are rare and seldom initiated by clinicians. For the new study, researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City analyzed over nine… Read More »

Palbociclib shows promise in patients with hormone-resistant breast cancer

“The FDA approval has expanded treatments options for many metastatic breast cancer patients, but these new results are showing how effective the drug can also be for breast cancer patients who have already tried endocrine therapies and may be running out of options,” said lead investigator Angela DeMichele, MD, MSCE, associate professor in the division of Hematology/Oncology and Epidemiology and co-leader of the Breast Cancer Research Program at the Abramson Cancer Center. “Combined with the promising results from other trials looking at the effectiveness of this drug, our results indicate that palbociclib can extend the duration of disease control and produce tumor shrinkage in patients with estrogen-receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer, without the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy.” The newly-published phase II trial primarily sought to evaluate disease response and control, while monitoring for the presence of side effects such as neutropenia, an abnormally low white blood cell count. Patients enrolled in the trial had previously undergone several prior chemotherapy and hormonal regimens for metastatic disease…

Human neural stem cells restore cognitive functions impaired by chemotherapy

In preclinical studies using rodents, they found that stem cells transplanted one week after the completion of a series of chemotherapy sessions restored a range of cognitive functions, as measured one month later using a comprehensive platform of behavioral testing. In contrast, rats not treated with stem cells showed significant learning and memory impairment. The frequent use of chemotherapy to combat multiple cancers can produce severe cognitive dysfunction, often referred to as “chemobrain,” which can persist and manifest in many ways long after the end of treatments in as many as 75 percent of survivors — a problem of particular concern with pediatric patients. “Our findings provide the first solid evidence that transplantation of human neural stem cells can be used to reverse chemotherapeutic-induced damage of healthy tissue in the brain,” said Charles Limoli, a UCI professor of radiation oncology…