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Immune function marker does not predict benefit of trastuzumab in HER-2+ breast cancer patients — ScienceDaily

And since trastuzumab, and not chemotherapy alone, is the standard of care for the HER2-positive sub-class of breast cancer, there is no need to test for these lymphocytes in HER2-positive patients in order to predict outcome, say researchers from Mayo Clinic in Florida. These findings, presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, don’t mean that immune function in this class of cancer isn’t important — just that it is likely more complicated than measuring the number of these lymphocytes, says the study’s lead author, 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. …

Measuring the Malignancy of Prostate Cancer — ScienceDaily

When cancer is diagnosed, the grade of its malignancy is a central concern for both patients and their physicians. This value is used to determine how intensively and how radically the cancer must be treated. Particularly in the case of prostate cancer, the disease can take widely varying courses in different patients…

Early trial of new drug shows promise for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer

The multi-center, non-randomized trial was designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability and antitumor activity of bi-weekly infusions of pembrolizumab (MK-3475, marketed as Keytruda�). The researchers enrolled 27 patients, aged 29 to 72 years, who had metastatic triple-negative breast cancer that either relapsed after treatment for early stage disease or progressed on therapy for advanced disease. …

Women with dense breasts will have to look beyond ultrasound for useful supplemental breast cancer screening

In a study released Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Tosteson and colleagues, including lead author Brian Sprague, MD, provide evidence on the benefits and harms of adding ultrasound to breast cancer screening for women who have had a negative mammogram and also have dense breasts. …

Majority of women with early-stage breast cancer in U.S. eceive unnecessarily long courses of radiation

“Hypofractionated radiation is infrequently used for women with early-stage breast cancer, even though it’s high-quality, patient-centric cancer care at lower cost,” said lead author Bekelman, an assistant professor of Radiation Oncology, Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and Abramson Cancer Center. “It is clinically equivalent to longer duration radiation in curing breast cancer, has similar side effects, is more convenient for patients, and allows patients to return to work or home sooner.” Shown to reduce local recurrence and improve overall survival after breast conserving surgery, conventional whole breast radiation, given daily over five to seven weeks, has been the mainstay of treatment in the U.S. for women for decades. …

Breakthrough solves centuries-old animal evolution mystery

Using a method called CEL-Seq that can spy on the activity of every gene within a cell at once, Technion Associate Professor Itai Yanai and his colleagues now provide compelling evidence that the layer called the endoderm evolved first, followed by the ectoderm layer and finally the mesoderm layer. Yanai has other big plans for CEL-Seq. “We applied this unbelievably powerful tool to figuring out the evolution of the germ layers, a 19th century problem, but it will also be useful in things like cutting-edge cancer research as well,” he said. …

Pathway that degrades holiday turkey fuels metastasis of triple negative breast cancer

“I’m not saying that people with metastatic breast cancer shouldn’t eat turkey during the holidays, but triple-negative breast cancer appears to have found a way to process tryptophan more quickly, equipping cancer cells to survive while in circulation, which allows them to metastasize,” says Thomas Rogers, the paper’s first author and PhD candidate in the laboratory of CU Cancer Center investigator, Jennifer Richer, PhD. When healthy cells become detached from the foundation on which they grow, they are programmed to undergo cell death through a process known as anoikis (“without a home” in Greek). This means that in order to metastasize, cancer cells have to evade anoikis — they have to survive while in suspension, unattached from a foundation. …

Testosterone may contribute to colon cancer tumor growth

In his study, James Amos-Landgraf, an assistant professor of veterinary pathobiology in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine, observed normal levels of naturally occurring colon cancer in a group of male rats. He then removed testosterone from those rats and colon cancer rates decreased dramatically. After reintroducing testosterone, the colon cancer rates returned to normal. “Previously, scientists believed that female hormones may have lent some sort of protection against tumor susceptibility,” Amos-Landgraf said…