Pancreatic cancer and other cancers can only thrive, grow and spread if they have nutrients from blood, just like other tissues in our bodies. Cancer cells and tumors at first rely on nearby blood vessels to get what they need to survive, but, as tumors grow, they need to form new vessels. These vessels differ from those in regular tissue, Sushanta explained, which is part of the reason cancer can be so difficult to treat. …
Locally advanced pancreatic cancer has the lowest survival rate of any solid tumor, with a cumulative five-year survival rate of only 4 percent for all stages of disease. Surgery is rarely an option for patients because tumors often involve vital blood vessels. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy given concurrently remain the mainstay treatment, yet to-date, no treatment has had a significant impact on improving outcomes. “To move the needle forward toward prolonged survival and better treatment outcomes, our research team created a combined investigational regimen for patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer,” said Richard Tuli, MD, PhD, a radiation oncologist in the Department of Radiation Oncology and a member of the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute. …
Looking back at medical records from more than 58,000 women, Fox Chase’s Angela Jain, MD, Medical Oncologist and co-investigator Elizabeth Handorf, PhD, member of the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Facility, found that only 8.94% received chemotherapy before ovarian cancer surgery in 1998; by 2011, that figure had increased to 26.72%. …
Trebananib (formally known as AMG 386; Amgen) is a first-in-class peptide-Fc fusion protein (or peptibody) that targets angiogenesis (the growth of new blood vessels into cancerous tumors) by inhibiting the binding of both angiopoietin 1 and 2 to the Tie2 receptor. This is very different mechanism of action than other agents that also effect angiogenesis by inhibiting vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) such as bevacizumab (Avastin; Genentech). Trebananib does not increase the risks of hypertension (high blood pressure) and bowel perforation like bevaciuzmab, but still has a similar impact on tumor shrinkage and delaying cancer progression…
The new type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan could improve care for a type of cancer called myeloma and reduce reliance on bone marrow biopsies, which can be painful for patients and often fail to show doctors how far the disease has spread. The research is published today in the journal Radiology and was carried out by researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. It received funding from Cancer Research UK and the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Facility in Imaging, with additional funding from the EPSRC. The new whole-body, diffusion-weighted MRI scans showed the spread of cancer throughout the bone marrow of patients with myeloma — one of the most common forms of blood cancer — more accurately than standard tests…
“The CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial was designed and formulated in 2005, and the rationale was simple: we had new drugs –bevacizumab and cetuximab– and the study was designed to determine if one was better than the other in first-line for patients with colon cancer,” said lead study author Alan P. Venook, distinguished Professor of Medical Oncology and Translational Research at the University of California, San Francisco, USA. The CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial studied patients whose tumours were KRAS wild-type at codons 12 and 13. …
Life expectancy for HIV-infected people is now similar to uninfected people, but survival for HIV patients who develop cancer is not. While many studies have attempted to understand why HIV-infected cancer patients have worse outcomes, the new study, the largest of its size and scope, examined differences in cancer treatment as one potential explanation. For early-stage cancers that have the highest chance of cure with appropriate treatment, those with HIV were twice to four times as likely to not receive appropriate cancer treatment, the researchers found…
Scientists discovered that cells can change into an invasive, liquid-like state to readily navigate the narrow channels in our body. …
The current results are based on a genome-wide association study, a type of study in which researchers examine numerous genetic variants to see if any of them are associated with a certain type of complication, which could sometimes emerge years after treatment was completed. “Our findings, which were replicated in two additional patient groups, represent a significant step towards developing personalized treatment plans for prostate cancer patients,” said Barry S. …
The research utilized information from 66,717 Medicare patients aged 66 and older diagnosed with clinical stage T1-T2 prostate cancer (cancer that did not spread beyond the prostate) between 1992 and 2009. These men did not have surgery or radiation treatment within six months of their diagnosis. The data were compiled from the population-based Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database linked to Medicare files. 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, is the lead author…