Category Archives: Cancer Knowledge

Trastuzumab should remain as standard of care for HER2-positive breast cancer, trial suggests — ScienceDaily

This study, being presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 Congress in Madrid, reveals that when used as a single HER2-targeted therapy in addition to standard chemotherapy, trastuzumab offers a better outcome than does lapatinib (Tykerb), says Edith A. Perez, M.D., deputy director at large, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and director of the Breast Cancer Translational Genomics Program at Mayo Clinic in Florida. Dr. Perez is co-chair of ALTTO (Adjuvant Lapatinib and/or Trastuzumab Treatment Optimization study). …

Nivolumab shows signs of superior response rate compared to standard chemotherapy in advanced melanoma

“Previously-treated advanced melanoma patients have limited options,” says the study’s principal investigator, Professor Jeffrey Weber, Director of the Donald A. Adam Comprehensive Melanoma Research Center of Excellence at the Moffitt Cancer Centre, Tampa, Florida. Nivolumab is an antibody in a class of drugs called ‘checkpoint inhibitors’, that act to relieve a critical brake placed on the immune system by the tumour itself. The drug then reinvigorates patients’ anti-tumour immune response and promotes shrinkage of the tumour…

Chemotherapy: Rolapitant reduces nausea and vomiting in phase III trial

Dr Martin Chasen, lead author and medical director, Palliative Care, Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre, Canada, said: “This agent makes a significant difference in the way people tolerate their chemotherapy. Patients experienced no loss in quality of life and, in fact, many saw meaningful improvements. One of the patients in the rolapitant cohort reported that he had just finished 18 holes of golf one week after receiving chemotherapy…

Customizing chemotherapy in lung cancer: New phase II data reported

In a randomized phase II study, researchers showed that patients whose lung cancers expressed low levels of an enzyme called thymidylate synthase experienced a greater benefit from treatment with the combination of pemetrexed and cisplatin than those whose tumours expressed high levels. “Thymidylate synthase is one of the proteins that is targeted by pemetrexed which is the most widely used chemotherapeutic regimen in the treatment of non-squamous NSCLC,” explains study author Professor Myung-Ju Ahn, from the Section of Hematology-Oncology at Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. “In this study, we tried to evaluate whether expression of thymidylate synthase is a predictive factor for response to pemetrexed plus cisplatin chemotherapy compared with gemcitabine plus cisplatin in non-squamous cell lung cancer patients.” In terms of response rate and progression-free survival, the clinical benefits of the pemetrexed combination compared to other regimen were more prominent in those patients who expressed low levels of the molecule, Ahn said…

Crizotinib treatment effective against ROS1-positive lung cancer, study suggests

“Prior to this study, there were a handful of reports describing marked responses to crizotinib in individual patients with ROS1-positive lung tumors,” says Alice Shaw, MD, PhD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center, lead author of the NEJM report. “This is the first definitive study to establish crizotinib’s activity in a large group of patients with ROS1-positive lung cancer and to confirm that ROS1 is a bona fide therapeutic target in those patients.” Crizotinib currently is FDA-approved to treat non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLC) driven by rearrangments in the ALK gene, which make up around 4 percent of cases…

Protein ‘map’ could lead to potent new cancer drugs

The scientists hope their findings will help them to design drugs that could target the enzyme, known as N-myristoyltransferase (NMT), and potentially lead to new treatments for cancer and inflammatory conditions. They have already identified a molecule that blocks NMT’s activity, and have identified specific protein substrates where this molecule has a potent impact. NMT makes irreversible changes to proteins and is known to be involved in a range of diseases including cancer, epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. In a study published in the journal Nature Communications chemists used living human cancer cells to identify more than 100 proteins that NMT modifies, with almost all these proteins being identified for the very first time in their natural environment…

Discrepancies in access to new cancer drugs revealed

Researchers say the results demonstrate the need for better collaboration between doctors and health authorities on an international scale, to ensure patients have access to the best treatments. Coordinated action is needed at an international level to ensure new cancer-fighting drugs are approved in a timely manner, oncologists said at the Congress. Their call came after a survey revealed that patients in some regions sometimes wait years longer than their counterparts elsewhere for new drugs to be approved. The drug approval process is important to ensure that safe and effective therapies are made available for patients, explains study senior author Dr Sunil Verma from Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Center, Toronto, Canada. …

Biochemists solve ‘address problem’ in cells that leads to lethal kidney disease

Led by Carla Koehler, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the UCLA College, the researchers identified a compound called dequalinium chloride, or DECA, that can prevent a metabolic enzyme from going to the wrong location within a cell. Ensuring that the enzyme — called alanine: glyoxylate aminotransferase, or AGT — goes to the proper “address” in the cell prevents PH1. The findings were published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and will appear later in the journal’s print edition. …

Minority background, low education, and low income negatively influence HPV vaccine series completion

To better understand why women who initiate HPV vaccination do not complete the series, a team of researchers led by Dr. Abbey Berenson from the University of Texas Medical Branch examined the correlates of vaccine series completion among young women using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a cross-sectional telephone health survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. …

Strategy to reduce side effects in modern cancer therapy

The aim of the research was to develop an improved tyrosine kinase inhibitor that is actually inactive and which is only activated selectively in the malignant tissue. This is intended to prevent damage to healthy tissue and therefore minimise side effects for patients. As part of the paper published in the journal Angewandte Chemie [Applied Chemistry], International Edition, a new inhibitor has been successfully synthesised and coordinated to cobalt(III). …