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Patients who never smoked or who quit smoking have lower risk of developing secondary cancers

The analysis studied the association between patients’ smoking histories and their risks of developing SPLC, which is defined as a new lung cancer unrelated to the initial tumor based on histology and location in the lung. The study analyzed 1,484 patients (372 current smokers, 1,014 former smokers and 98 never smokers) who underwent surgery, with or without adjuvant chemotherapy or radiation therapy, for stage I-IIIA NSCLC at Duke University Medical Center between 1995 and 2008. Baseline covariates and oncologic outcomes including local control (LC), development of distant metastases (DM), overall survival (OS) and rates of SPLC were assessed. …

Majority of prostate cancer patients surveyed five years after treatment with vessel-sparing radiation therapy report preserved sexual function

The study examined the patient-reported outcomes of 91 men with prostate cancer who received MRI-guided, vessel-sparing radiation at University of Michigan Providence Cancer Institute. The vessel-sparing radiation technique limits the amount of radiation to critical erectile tissues using MRI scans to identify the blood vessels responsible for erections. …

New gene research helps pinpoint prostate cancer risk

QUT Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation’s Dr Jyotsna Batra and Distinguished Professor Judith Clements, who led the Australian researchers in the large consortia of research hubs around the world, said the teams analysed more than 10 million genetic markers in 80,000 men. “It’s the largest analysis of genetic biomarkers ever done. We found another 23 new prostate cancer risk loci (sites) on the genome in addition to the 76 identified previously,” Dr Batra said. …

Researchers discover key to making new muscles

There are two important processes that need to happen to maintain skeletal-muscle health. First, when muscle is damaged by injury or degenerative disease such as muscular dystrophy, muscle stem cells — or satellite cells — need to differentiate into mature muscle cells to repair injured muscles. Second, the pool of satellite cells needs to be replenished so there is a supply to repair muscle in case of future injuries. In the case of muscular dystrophy, the chronic cycles of muscle regeneration and degeneration that involve satellite-cell activation exhaust the muscle stem-cell pool to the point of no return. …

Novel immunotherapy vaccine decreases recurrence in HER2 positive breast cancer patients — ScienceDaily

One of only a few vaccines of its kind in development, GP2 has been shown to be safe and effective for breast cancer patients, reducing recurrence rates by 57%. Further, women with the highest overexpression of HER2 (known as HER2 +3) had no cancer recurrences when they were administered the vaccine after completing trastuzumab (Herceptin), a type of immunotherapy drug known as a monoclonal antibody. HER2 is an oncoprotein that promotes tumor growth and is expressed to some extent in 75-80% of breast cancers. “This is an important and different avenue in immunotherapy research, in that we are investigating ways to prevent cancer recurrence by stimulating the immune system to treat cancer,” says principal investigator Elizabeth Mittendorf, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Surgical Oncology…

Some women still don’t underststand ‘overdiagnosis’ risk in breast screening — ScienceDaily

In a survey of around 2,200 women, Cancer Research UK scientists at University College London (UCL) found that 64 per cent felt they fully understood the information given about overdiagnosis — the chance that screening will pick up cancers that would never have gone on to cause any harm — by the National breast screening programme. Information about overdiagnosis has only been included in the NHS breast screening invitation leaflets since late 2013, meaning that overdiagnosis is likely to be a new concept for many people. But despite uncertainty over the information they were given, intentions to attend breast screening remained high, with only seven per cent of women saying they would be less likely to attend screening after receiving the overdiagnosis information…