Tag Archives: pennsylvania

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…

Classification of gene mutations in a children’s cancer may point to improved treatments

“Some mutations are more important than others,” said Ya�l P. Moss�, MD, a pediatric oncologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a co-leader of the new study published online today in the journal Cancer Cell. “By integrating biochemistry into our clinical strategies, we can better match a patient’s specific ALK-mutation profile with an optimum treatment.” Moss� is also an assistant professor of Pediatrics in the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. “Understanding the specific mutations that trigger signals in cell receptors to stimulate cell growth will help us identify biomarkers for specific subtypes of neuroblastoma,” said study co-leader Mark A…

Personalized cellular therapy achieves complete remission in 90 percent of acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients studied

The new data, which builds on preliminary findings presented at the American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting in December 2013, include results from the first 25 children and young adults (ages 5 to 22) treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and first five adults (ages 26 to 60) treated at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Twenty-seven of the 30 patients in the studies achieved a complete remission after receiving an infusion of these engineered “hunter” cells, and 78 percent of the patients were alive six months after treatment. “The patients who participated in these trials had relapsed as many as four times, including 60 percent whose cancers came back even after stem cell transplants. Their cancers were so aggressive they had no treatment options left,” said the study’s senior author, Stephan Grupp, MD, PhD, a professor of Pediatrics in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and director of Translational Research in the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia…

What to anticipate after you’ve heard those dreaded words ‘you have breast cancer’

“Most of the time, there’s no bad news,” says Karen Rizzo, MD, 2015 president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society and a practicing physician in Lancaster. “Unfortunately though, some will be told they should have a biopsy, possibly leading to those dreaded words ‘you have cancer.'” What happens next depends upon the patient and her situation, says Dr. …

Study reveals profile of patients most likely to delay hospice enrollment until final days of life

“Waiting until the final days of life to begin hospice can shortchange patients and their families — skipping over many benefits of hospice care and limiting the opportunity to improve patients’ quality of life during this stressful time,” said study co-author David Casarett, MD, a professor of Medicine and director of Hospice and Palliative care at Penn Medicine. “Our findings point to some reasons why patients may seek hospice care so late in the course of their illness, which we hope will enable us to improve transitions to hospice at a more beneficial point in their care.” The team examined de-identified data from electronic medical records of 64,264 patients in 12 hospices in the Coalition of Hospices Organized to Investigate Comparative Effectiveness network from January 2008 to May 2013. …

Prostate Cancer: Watchful waiting isn’t right for everyone — ScienceDaily

“We know that African American men have more aggressive prostate cancer than Caucasian men,” says Kosj Yamoah M.D., Ph.D., Chief Resident, Department of Radiation Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University. “Our study shows that African American men who are diagnosed with a low-grade cancer at first — the cancers that are sometimes watched rather than treated — are more likely to develop aggressive disease sooner than Caucasian men.” Dr. Yamoah, together with Timothy Rebbeck and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania, looked at patients whose cancers were low to intermediate grade and who underwent surgery to remove all or part of their prostate. The surgery was important because often men are given a so called “biopsy” Gleason score of cancer severity based on 12 needle biopsies of the prostate gland…

Ovarian cancer oncogene found in ‘junk DNA’

Most of those studies have focused on the portion of the human genome that encodes protein — a fraction that accounts for just 2 percent of human DNA overall. Yet the vast majority of genomic alterations associated with cancer lie outside protein-coding genes, in what traditionally has been derided as “junk DNA.” Researchers today know that “junk DNA” is anything but — much of it is transcribed into RNA, for instance — but finding meaning in those sequences remains a challenge. Now a team led by Lin Zhang, PhD, research associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has mined those sequences to identify a non-protein-coding RNA whose expression is linked to ovarian cancer. …