Tag Archives: duke

Early palliative care can cut hospital readmissions for cancer patients

The Duke researchers shared their findings at the Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. In the new treatment model, medical oncologists and palliative care physicians partnered in a “co-rounding” format to deliver cancer care for patients admitted to Duke University Hospital’s solid tumor unit. The Duke model fostered collaboration and communication between the specialists, who met several times a day to discuss patient care…

Prostate cancer’s penchant for copper may be a fatal flaw

Researchers at Duke Medicine have found a way to kill prostate cancer cells by delivering a trove of copper along with a drug that selectively destroys the diseased cells brimming with the mineral, leaving non-cancer cells healthy. The combination approach, which uses two drugs already commercially available for other uses, could soon be tested in clinical trials among patients with late-stage disease. …

Oral drug may improve survival in men with metastatic prostate cancer

The study, published on Nov. 19, 2013, in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, adds long-term survival and safety data for the drug tasquinimod, a new candidate for treating advanced and recurrent prostate cancer. “While all subgroups in the clinical trial benefited from tasquinimod, those whose cancer metastasized to their bones had the greatest benefit in terms of delaying the time from the start of treatment to when the cancer progressed,” said lead author Andrew J…

New insights into DNA repair process may spur better cancer therapies

The insights, reported online the week of Sept. 30, 2013, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, build on earlier work by the research team and identify new prospects for developing cancer therapies. The researchers have focused on a complex series of events that cells routinely undertake to repair DNA damaged by sun exposure, smoking and even normal metabolism. If not correctly repaired, DNA breakages can result in cellular damage leading to cancer. …

Bone growth factor may increase benign tumors but not malignant cancer

Other papers in the September Neurosurgery report on a stent-assisted approach for difficult-to-treat brain aneurysms and a new software program to help in identifying and protecting critical areas during brain tumor surgery. BMP Linked to Increased Risk of Benign Tumors Dr. Nandan Lad of Duke University Medical Center and colleagues analyzed the risk of cancers and benign tumors in nearly 4,700 patients receiving BMP as part of spinal fusion surgery. …

Osteoporosis drug stops growth of breast cancer cells, even in resistant tumors, study suggests

The findings, presented June 15, 2013, at the annual Endocrine Society meeting in San Francisco, indicate that the drug bazedoxifene packs a powerful one-two punch that not only prevents estrogen from fueling breast cancer cell growth, but also flags the estrogen receptor for destruction. "We found bazedoxifene binds to the estrogen receptor and interferes with its activity, but the surprising thing we then found was that it also degrades the receptor; it gets rid of it," said senior author Donald McDonnell, PhD, chair of Duke’s Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology. In animal and cell culture studies, the drug inhibited growth both in estrogen-dependent breast cancer cells and in cells that had developed resistance to the anti-estrogen tamoxifen and/or to the aromatase inhibitors, two of the most widely used types of drugs to prevent and treat estrogen-dependent breast cancer…