Tag Archives: centre

Genetics the dominant risk factor in common cancers

Researchers at the Centre for Primary Health Care Research at Lund University and Region Skåne in Sweden have presented the new research findings based on studies of population registers. “The results of our study do not mean that an individual’s lifestyle is not important for the individual’s risk of developing cancer, but it suggests that the risk for the three most common types of cancer is dependent to a greater extent on genetics,” said Bengt Zöller, a reader at Lund University who led the study. The researchers studied adoptees born in Sweden in relation to both their biological parents and their adoptive parents. The Swedish multi-generation register and the cancer register were used to monitor 70 965 adopted men and women. …

Research backs risk-reduction surgery for ovarian cancer

The researchers from The University of Manchester — part of Manchester Cancer Research Centre — looked at 691 women who had undergone genetic testing and were confirmed as carrying a mutation in either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene before they had developed cancer. The study, funded by Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention, the UK’s only charity entirely dedicated to the prediction and prevention of breast cancer. The results were published recently in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment…

High levels of immune cells in breast tumors may help ID patients who benefit from trastuzumab

"We have previously shown that high levels of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes [immune cells in a tumor] are predictive of response to trastuzumab and chemotherapy administered after surgery for early-stage, HER2-positive breast cancer using samples from patients enrolled on the randomized, adjuvant phase III clinical trial called the FinHER study," said Sherene Loi, M.D., Ph.D., medical oncologist and head of the Translational Breast Cancer Genomics Lab at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia. "Our new data further support the positive relationship between tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and better outcomes with trastuzumab therapy, this time in a cohort of patients with newly diagnosed HER2-positive breast cancer who received the therapy before surgery. …

Head, neck cancer trial shows assessing HRQOL is valuable to patients, doctors

EORTC trial 24954 set out to compare two treatment schemes for patients with resectable hypopharyngeal and laryngeal cancers, and the results published in Cancer show that there is a trend towards worse HRQOL scores in patients receiving alternating chemoradiotherapy (Alternating arm) as opposed to those given sequential induction chemotherapy and radiotherapy (Sequential arm). However, very few differences reached the level of statistical significance, and most patients’ HRQOL scores returned to baseline once treatment was completed. Dr. …