Tag Archives: major

Genetic testing could improve breast cancer prevention — ScienceDaily

Their study showed that prevention strategies could be improved by testing not only as currently for major cancer predisposition genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2 — which identify a small percentage of women at very high risk — but also by factoring in data on multiple gene variants that individually have only a small effect on risk, but are more common in the population. The research was carried out by researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, US — and is published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The study received funding from The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), Breakthrough Breast Cancer and the National Cancer Institute. Researchers stressed that their study was a computer modelling analysis and would need to be confirmed by further research aimed at validating the models they used and assessing real-life prevention approaches…

CT lung screening appears cost-effective

“This provides evidence, given the assumptions we used, that it is cost-effective,” said Ilana Gareen, assistant professor (research) of epidemiology in Brown University’s School of Public Health and second author on the new study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Four years ago, the vast NLST showed that low-dose helical CT scanning reduced mortality from lung cancer by 20 percent compared to chest X-rays. The study involved more than 53,000 smokers aged 55-74…

Number of young patients with newly diagnosed colorectal cancer anticipated to nearly double by 2030

Published in the current issue of JAMA Surgery, the findings build on prior studies of CRC trends but go a step further by providing quantitative estimates of exponentially increasing risk for CRC among patients who fall under 50, the age at which CRC screening becomes recommended for the general public. …

Hot flashes going unrecognized, leaving women vulnerable — ScienceDaily

More than 70 per cent of women who have had breast cancer experience menopausal problems, and hot flashes in particular, which are among the most prevalent and potentially distressing problems following breast cancer treatment. These can also be long lasting, persisting for more than five years once cancer treatment has ended and affecting all aspects of life, including sleep, social situations, intimate relationships and ability to work…

Sea sponge drug could boost advanced breast cancer survival by five extra months — ScienceDaily

Researchers led by Professor Chris Twelves, based at the University of Leeds and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, looked at two major clinical trials of more than 1,800 women with breast cancer that had started to spread to other parts of the body. The phase III trials — the final stage of testing before deciding whether a drug can be prescribed to patients — compared the survival of women treated with eribulin to those given standard treatment…

New molecular imaging technology could improve bladder-cancer detection — ScienceDaily

The researchers identified a protein known as CD47 as a molecular imaging target to distinguish bladder cancer from benign tissues. In the future, this technique could improve bladder cancer detection, guide more precise cancer surgery and reduce unnecessary biopsies, therefore increasing cancer patients’ quality of life. The work is described in a paper that will be published Oct. 29 in Science Translational Medicine…

National Cancer Institute supports next-generation Austrian HPV vaccine

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is supporting further clinical development of a new, improved, next-generation HPV vaccine. The vaccine was developed by a team led by Reinhard Kirnbauer from the Division of Immunodermatology at the MedUni Vienna in collaboration with Christina Schellenbacher and support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF). The new vaccine had already demonstrated its excellent efficacy in a pre-clinical study in 2013…

Improving breast cancer chemo by testing patient’s tumors in a dish — ScienceDaily

A team of biomedical engineers at Vanderbilt University headed by Assistant Professor Melissa Skala has developed the technique, which uses fluorescence imaging to monitor the response of three-dimensional chunks of tumors removed from patients and exposed to different anti-cancer drugs. In an article published last month by the journal Cancer Research the engineers describe applying the technique to the three major forms of breast cancer. They report that the test can detect significant drops in the metabolic activity levels of all three types of tumors within 72 hours when exposed to an effective drug whereas tumors that were resistant to a drug show no change…

New hope for potential prostate cancer patients — ScienceDaily

The only place in the Southeast offering the MRI-US image fusion technique is at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Program for Personalized Prostate Cancer Care. It is estimated that 2014 will see more than 240,000 new cases of prostate cancer, and more than 29,000 deaths from the disease, according to the National Cancer Institute…

Thyroid cancer genome analysis finds markers of aggressive tumors

The finding suggests the potential to reclassify the disease based on genetic markers and moves thyroid cancer into a position to benefit more from precision medicine. “This understanding of the genomic landscape of thyroid cancer will refine how it’s classified and improve molecular diagnosis. This will help us separate those patients who need aggressive treatment from those whose tumor is never likely to grow or spread,” says Thomas J. …