Tag Archives: farber

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…

Unsuspected gene found frequently mutated in colorectal, endometrial cancers

Reporting in the October 26, 2014 edition of Nature Genetics, investigators from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard said the mutated gene helps control an important cell-signaling pathway, Wnt, that has been implicated in many forms of cancer. They suggest that the RNF43 mutation may serve as a biomarker that identifies patients with colorectal and endometrial cancer who could benefit from precision cancer drugs that target the Wnt pathway, although no such drugs are currently available. “Tumors that have this mutation may be telling us that they are dependent on the Wnt signaling pathway, and they will be uniquely sensitive to drugs that inhibit this pathway,” said Charles Fuchs, MD, MPH, an author of the paper and director of the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancer at Dana-Farber. He is also affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health…

Side effects of cancer prevention surgery can be helped with a single-day education program, study finds

The program taught women how to manage some of the physical and emotional difficulties that can follow ovary-removing surgery and helped many participants resume satisfying sexual activity and reduce feelings of anxiety and depression, the investigators found. The study, published today in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, underscores the need to inform women about the aftereffects of this type of surgery and, critically, let them know that such problems can be dealt with successfully. “For women who inherit genetic mutations that put them at increased risk for ovarian cancer, oophorectomy — surgical removal of the ovaries — can sharply lower that risk…

U.S. has seen widespread adoption of robot-assisted cancer surgery to remove the prostate

In 2001, surgeons began using robotic technologies in operations to remove the prostate. To examine trends in the use of such robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) procedures for prostate cancer patients, Steven Chang, MD, MS, of Harvard Medical School, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, led a team that analyzed 489,369 men who underwent non-RARP (i.e., open or laparoscopic radical prostatectomy) or RARP in the United States from 2003 to 2010. During the study period, RARP adoption (defined as performing more than 50 percent of annual radical prostatectomies with the robotic approach) increased from 0.7 percent to 42 percent of surgeons performing radical prostatectomies. Surgeons who performed at least 25 radical prostatectomies each year were more likely to adopt RARP…

New computer model may aid personalized cancer care

Reporting in the journal Cell Reports, researchers combined several types of data from pre- and post-treatment biopsies of breast tumors to obtain a molecular picture of how the cancer evolved as a result of chemotherapy. “Better understanding of tumor evolution is key to improving the design of cancer therapies and for truly individualized cancer treatment,” said Kornelia Polyak, MD, PhD, a breast cancer researcher. The model was developed by Polyak and Franziska Michor, PhD, a computational biologist at Dana-Farber. …

Antipsychotic drug exhibits cancer-fighting properties

The findings suggest that developing medications that activate PP2A, while avoiding perphenazine’s psychotropic effects, could help clinicians make much-needed headway against T-cell ALL, and perhaps other tumors as well. A study team led by Alejandro Gutierrez, MD, and A. …

Novel drug regimen can improve stem cell transplantation outcomes

In a new phase 2 trial, patients treated with bortezomib had lower rates of severe acute GVHD and treatment-related mortality, and experienced better one-year overall survival than has been seen historically with such patients receiving standard preventive therapy, the investigators reported at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting. …