Category Archives: Cancer

Bone drug should be seen in a new light for its anti-cancer properties — ScienceDaily

Several clinical trials – where women with breast cancer were given these drugs (bisphosphonates) alongside normal treatment for early-stage disease – showed that they can confer a ‘survival advantage’ and inhibit cancer spread in some women, although until now no-one has understood why. A new study by Professor Mike Rogers, Dr Tri Phan and Dr Simon Junankar from Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research has used sophisticated imaging technologies to reveal that bisphosphonates attach to tiny calcifications in tumours in mice. These calcium-drug complexes are then devoured by ‘macrophages’, immune cells that the cancer hijacks early in its development to conceal its existence. The study, which includes remarkable movies of the entire process described above, is published in the journal Cancer Discovery, now online…

Bone drug should be seen in a new light for its anti-cancer properties

Several clinical trials – where women with breast cancer were given these drugs (bisphosphonates) alongside normal treatment for early-stage disease – showed that they can confer a ‘survival advantage’ and inhibit cancer spread in some women, although until now no-one has understood why. …

Shape of things to come in platelet mimicry

For the first time, the researchers have been able to integratively mimic the shape, size, flexibility and surface chemistry of real blood platelets on albumin-based particle platforms. The researchers believe these four design factors together are important in inducing clots to form faster selectively at vascular injury sites while preventing harmful clots from forming indiscriminately elsewhere in the body…

Risk stratification model may aid in lung cancer staging and treatment decisions

Lung cancer treatment and prognosis is critically dependent on accurate staging that takes into account the extent to which cancer has spread from the primary lung tumor to other locations. Examination of lymph nodes containing lung cancer cells that have spread can be done by surgical removal, historically the standard practice, or by using a less invasive more cost effective technique called endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA). …

Massive non-Hodgkin lymphoma study underway

This has now resulted in the largest epidemiology and genetic studies of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) ever conducted. Thus far, these studies have culminated into four genetics papers published in Nature Genetics, American Journal of Human Genetics and Nature Communications, and an entire monograph in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs comprising 13 papers on environmental and medical risk factors found to be associated with various lymphoma subtypes. …

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. …

Meditation, support groups: Clear new evidence for mind-body connection demonstrated in study, researchers show — ScienceDaily

A group working out of Alberta Health Services’ Tom Baker Cancer Centre and the University of Calgary Department of Oncology has demonstrated that telomeres — protein complexes at the end of chromosomes — maintain their length in breast cancer survivors who practise meditation or are involved in support groups, while they shorten in a comparison group without any intervention. Although the disease-regulating properties of telomeres aren’t fully understood, shortened telomeres are associated with several disease states, as well as cell aging, while longer telomeres are thought to be protective against disease. …

Combination treatment for metastatic melanoma results in longer overall survival

F. Stephen Hodi, M.D., of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and colleagues conducted a phase 2 clinical trial in which 245 patients with unresectable (unable to be removed by surgery) stage Ill or IV melanoma were randomly assigned to receive ipilimumab (intravenously) on day 1 plus sargramostim (injected beneath the skin) on days 1 to 14 of a 21-day cycle (n = 123) or ipilimumab alone (n = 122). The researchers compared the effect of these treatments on length of overall survival, progression-free survival, response rate, safety, and tolerability…