Tag Archives: hospital

New treatment target identified for aggressive breast cancer — ScienceDaily

The gene ErbB2, commonly called HER2, is highly expressed in about 25 percent of breast cancers. Scientists have now found the protein Erbin, thought to be an anti-tumor factor, also is highly expressed in these cancers and essential to ErbB2’s support of breast cancer. When scientists interfere with the interaction between the two in mice, it inhibits tumor development and the usual spread to the lungs, according to an international team reporting in the journal PNAS. The team documented the overexpression of both in 171 cases of mostly aggressive human breast cancer as well. …

New treatment designed to save more eyes from cancer

Treatments for retinoblastoma have progressed dramatically in recent years, one being a procedure called ophthalmic artery infusion chemotherapy. A tiny catheter is inserted into an artery that provides blood flow (and chemotherapy) directly to the eye and tumor. Originally introduced in the late 1980s, direct ophthalmic artery infusion significantly increases treatment effectiveness while reducing side effects. Unfortunately, many children with retinoblastoma are not good candidates for conventional ophthalmic artery infusion — in particular younger, smaller patients with advanced disease, according to Todd Abruzzo, MD, director of Interventional Neuroradiology at Cincinnati Children’s. …

Obesity accelerates aging of the liver, researchers find using novel biological aging clock

Although it had long been suspected that obesity ages a person faster, it hadn’t been possible to prove the theory, said study first author Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a professor of biostatistics at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. …

Elevated cholesterol, triglycerides may increase risk for prostate cancer recurrence — ScienceDaily

“While laboratory studies support an important role for cholesterol in prostate cancer, population-based evidence linking cholesterol and prostate cancer is mixed,” said Emma Allott, PhD, postdoctoral associate at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. “Understanding associations between obesity, cholesterol, and prostate cancer is important given that cholesterol levels are readily modifiable with diet and/or statin use, and could therefore have important, practical implications for prostate cancer prevention and treatment. “Our findings suggest that normalization, or even partial normalization, of serum lipid levels among men with dyslipidemia [abnormal lipid profile] may reduce the risk of prostate cancer recurrence,” said Allott. Allott, Stephen Freedland, MD, associate professor of surgery at Duke University School of Medicine, and colleagues, analyzed data from 843 men who underwent radical prostatectomy after a prostate cancer diagnosis and who never took statins before surgery. …

Potential link between breast cancer genes, salivary gland cancer

Although salivary gland cancer is rare, this retrospective study suggests it occurs 17 times more often in people with inherited mutations in genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2, than those in the general population. “Further study is needed to confirm this preliminary result, but I believe that a BRCA-positive patient with a lump in a salivary gland should have that lesion evaluated as soon as possible,” says co-author Theodoros Teknos, MD, professor and chair of otolaryngology, director of head and neck oncologic surgery, and the David E. Schuller, MD, and Carole H. Schuller Chair in Otolaryngology at the OSUCCC — James. …

Survival molecule helps cancer cells hide from the immune system

A new study by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC — James) shows that a molecule called nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB) helps cancer cells by suppressing the immune system’s ability to detect and destroy them. …

Mesothelioma: New Findings On Treatment Options

“Mesothelioma remains a difficult disease to find better treatment options for, so we asked whether high-dose hemithoracic radiotherapy would decrease the rate or delay the time of local recurrence after chemotherapy and radical surgery,” says lead author Prof Rolf A. Stahel, from the Clinic and Policlinic for Oncology, at the University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland, and current President of the European Society for Medical Oncology. The multicentre trial included 153 patients with surgically-treatable malignant pleural mesothelioma, who were first treated with three chemotherapy cycles of cisplatin and pemetrexed, followed by surgical removal of affected lung tissue, with the goal of complete removal of the cancerous areas of lung. …

Chemotherapy: Rolapitant reduces nausea and vomiting in phase III trial

Dr Martin Chasen, lead author and medical director, Palliative Care, Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre, Canada, said: “This agent makes a significant difference in the way people tolerate their chemotherapy. Patients experienced no loss in quality of life and, in fact, many saw meaningful improvements. One of the patients in the rolapitant cohort reported that he had just finished 18 holes of golf one week after receiving chemotherapy…

Crizotinib treatment effective against ROS1-positive lung cancer, study suggests

“Prior to this study, there were a handful of reports describing marked responses to crizotinib in individual patients with ROS1-positive lung tumors,” says Alice Shaw, MD, PhD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center, lead author of the NEJM report. “This is the first definitive study to establish crizotinib’s activity in a large group of patients with ROS1-positive lung cancer and to confirm that ROS1 is a bona fide therapeutic target in those patients.” Crizotinib currently is FDA-approved to treat non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLC) driven by rearrangments in the ALK gene, which make up around 4 percent of cases…

Pertuzumab adds 16 months survival benefit to trastuzumab and chemotherapy treatment for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer — ScienceDaily

CLEOPATRA was a pivotal phase III study where researchers evaluated the safety and efficacy of pertuzumab, trastuzumb and chemotherapy in 808 patients with previously untreated HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer has historically been one of the most aggressive forms of the disease. “In CLEOPATRA we evaluated whether dual HER2 blockade by combining the antibody pertuzumab with trastuzumab and chemotherapy would help people live longer (overall survival, OS) or live longer without their disease worsening (progression-free survival, PFS),” explains lead author Dr Sandra Swain from Washington Hospital Center, Washington, USA…