Robot-assisted surgery to remove cancerous prostate glands is effective in controlling the disease for 10 years, according to a new study led by researchers at Henry Ford Hospital. The study by Diaz et al, published in European Urology, also suggested that traditional methods of measuring the...
Although somatostatin analogs are commonly used to treat symptoms associated with hormone hypersecretion in neuroendocrine tumors, data on their antitumor effects are limited. In the phase III CLARINET trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Caplin et al found that somatostatin...
Researchers at UC Davis, University of Massachusetts, and Harvard Medical School have developed a combination drug that controls both tumor growth and metastasis. By combining a cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 inhibitor, similar to celecoxib, and a soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) inhibitor, the drug...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted Genentech’s supplemental Biologics License Application and granted Priority Review for bevacizumab (Avastin) plus chemotherapy in the treatment of women with persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer. The designation...
New research raises the prospect of more effective treatments for cachexia, a profound wasting of fat and muscle occurring in about half of all cancer patients, raising their risk of death, according to scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In a study reported in Nature, Spiegelman et al...
A new analysis has found that rates of testicular cancer have been rising dramatically in recent years among young Hispanic American men, but not among their non-Hispanic counterparts. Published early online in Cancer, the findings indicate that greater awareness is needed concerning the increasing ...
Key genetic variants may affect how cancer patients respond to radiation treatments, according to a study recently published in Nature Genetics. The research team, which included researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, found that variations in the TANC1 gene are associated with...
Researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and other centers have identified novel mutations in a well-known cancer-causing pathway in lung adenocarcinoma, the most common subtype of lung cancer. Knowledge of these mutations could potentially identify a...
Invading glioblastoma cells may hijack cerebral blood vessels during early stages of disease progression and damage the brain’s protective barrier, preclinical study published in Nature Communications indicated. The finding by Watkins et al could ultimately lead to new ways to bring about the ...
Invasive breast cancers with skin involvement, regardless of size or lymph node involvement, are automatically classified as stage III locally advanced tumors, which suggests that they are a relatively serious form of cancer with poor survival. In a study published in the Journal of the American...
According to a new study, a cascade of molecular events in the bone marrow produces high levels of inflammation that disrupt normal blood formation and lead to potentially deadly disorders including leukemia. The discovery, published by the journal Cell Stem Cell, points the way to potential...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy status to CTL019, an investigational chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy for the treatment of pediatric and adult patients with relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The Breakthrough Therapy filing...
CASI Pharmaceuticals, Inc, announced that its investigational agent ENMD-2076 has received orphan drug designation from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. ENMD-2076 is an orally active Aurora A/angiogenic kinase inhibitor with a unique...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted accelerated approval to belinostat (Beleodaq), a histone deacetylase inhibitor, for the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma, a rare and fast-growing type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). “This is...
A research collaboration between Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital has utilized nanomedicine technologies to develop a drug-delivery system that can precisely target and attack cancer cells in the bone, as well as increase bone strength and volume to prevent...
HIV-infected people diagnosed with cancer are two to four times more likely to go untreated for their cancer compared to uninfected cancer patients, according to a large retrospective study from researchers in Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to blinatumomab for adults with Philadelphia chromosome–negative relapsed/refractory B-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a rapidly progressing cancer of the blood and bone marrow....
Surgical resection markedly improved survival among metastatic melanoma patients whose disease is isolated to a few areas in the liver, according to new study findings published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. These results mark a departure for melanoma, which is most often...
The new combination agent TAS-102 can improve overall survival compared to placebo in patients whose metastatic colorectal cancer is refractory to standard therapies, researchers reported at the ESMO 16th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer in Barcelona (Abstract O-0022). “Around 50%...
Researchers found that three-dimensional (3D) mammography (also known as digital breast tomosynthesis) detected significantly more invasive cancers than a traditional mammogram alone and reduced call-backs for additional imaging. Published in JAMA, this is the largest study reported to...
The addition of the novel agent MM-398 to standard treatment improved overall survival in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who have already received gemcitabine, according to a phase III trial reported at the ESMO 16th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer in Barcelona (Abstract...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) voted 11 to 2 that current evidence from clinical studies does not support an accelerated approval for use of olaparib as a maintenance treatment for women with platinum-sensitive relapsed ovarian cancer who have...
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital announced the appointment of James R. Downing, MD, as its new CEO, effective July 15, 2014. Dr. Downing most recently has served as the Deputy Director, Executive Vice President and Scientific Director of the hospital. He succeeds William E. Evans,...
Researchers from Case Western Reserve and Dartmouth have shown that a class of small antioxidant molecules carries promise for suppressing colon cancer associated with colitis. These preclinical findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, offer hope that physicians ultimately will ...
Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical commonly used in plastics, appears to increase the proliferation of breast cancer cells, according to Duke Medicine researchers presenting at ICE/ENDO 2014, the annual joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society in Chicago. The ...
Despite some success in treating patients with Hodgkin lymphoma, many patients may experience late effects of radiation therapy and chemotherapy treatment, including the possible onset of breast cancer or heart disease. A study by Hoppe et al from the University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute...
In an online report in the journal Cancer, a team of University of Chicago cancer specialists have described the first tool—11 questions, assembled and refined from conversations with more than 150 patients with advanced cancer—to measure a patient’s risk for, and ability to...
Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited announced today that it has voluntarily decided to end the development program for orteronel (TAK-700), an investigational oral, nonsteroidal, selective inhibitor of 17,20-lyase, for prostate cancer. The decision follows the results of two phase III...
A study by Black et al from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, found that the use of sentinel lymph node biopsy to stage early breast cancer increased in both black and white women from 2002 to 2007, but the rates remained lower in black than white patients, a disparity...
New research published online in Blood suggests that the diversity of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract of patients receiving stem cell transplants may be an important predictor of their post-transplant survival. Potential Connections Previous studies have shown that the intensive treatment...
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine have completed the first comprehensive survey of e-cigarettes for sale online, and the results, they believe, underscore the complexity in regulating the rapidly growing market for the electronic nicotine delivery devices....
A unique public-private collaboration among the National Cancer Institute (NCI), SWOG Cancer Research, Friends of Cancer Research, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), five pharmaceutical companies (Amgen, Genentech, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and AstraZeneca’s global...
Women who begin menstruation at an older age have a significantly increased risk of developing a brain tumor, a Moffitt Cancer Center study shows. The results are part of a large multicenter study to determine potential risk factors associated with the development of glioma and meningioma. The...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved a new use for technetium 99m tilmanocept (Lymphoseek Injection), a radioactive diagnostic imaging agent used to help doctors determine the extent to which squamous cell carcinoma has spread in the body’s head and neck region. In 2013,...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a new indication for gadobutrol (Gadavist) injection for intravenous use with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the breast to assess the presence and extent of malignant breast disease. The approval is based on priority review of two multicenter...
Barbara L. McAneny, MD, a practicing oncologist from Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been re-elected to the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association (AMA) and will assume the position of Board Chair when the trustees gather for their first postelection meeting. Dr. McAneny, who has...
In the past 30 years, since mammography was introduced, late-stage breast cancer incidence has decreased by 37%, a new study published in Cancer has found. The analysis by Helvie et al took into account an observed underlying trend of increased breast cancer incidence present since the 1940s....
Stopping statin therapy is safe for patients with cancer who have a life expectancy of less than 1 year, according to a randomized study reported at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago (Abstract LBA9514). Discontinuing statins did not shorten survival and provided a number of important...
Adding goserelin (Zoladex) to standard chemotherapy may be an effective method of preserving fertility among women with early-stage hormone receptor–negative breast cancer, according to findings from a federally funded phase III clinical trial. In the S0230/POEMS study, reported at the 2014...
Introducing a palliative care support program for caregivers of patients with advanced cancer at or near the time patients are diagnosed provides greater benefits than delayed palliative care services, according to results of the ENABLE III study reported at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago...
The androgen receptor inhibitor enzalutamide (Xtandi) has been shown to prolong survival in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer with progressive disease after chemotherapy. In the phase III PREVAIL trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Beer et al found that...
Findings from a phase III randomized study suggest that women with breast cancer and bone metastasis who have received at least nine doses of zoledronic acid over the previous year can safely scale back dosing from every 4 weeks to every 12 weeks without compromising the effectiveness of the...
According to a phase II study, customizing radiation doses based on response to induction chemotherapy and other prognostic factors may allow lower doses of radiation therapy to be administered to some patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive oropharyngeal cancer without compromising...
Concurrent treatment with ipilimumab (Yervoy) and nivolumab resulted in a 2-year survival rate of 79% for patients with advanced melanoma. “While this is a small trial, that is very impressive 2-year survival data,” noted Mario Sznol, MD, at a press briefing on progress in immunotherapy ...
Findings from a large phase I study of 411 patients with advanced melanoma show that the PD-1–targeting antibody pembrolizumab (MK-3475) produced responses in 34% of patients, including 28% of patients whose disease progressed on prior treatment with ipilimumab (Yervoy). Among those who...
Adjuvant therapy with ipilimumab (Yervoy) for patients with high-risk stage III melanoma significantly improved recurrence-free survival, the primary endpoint of the phase III EORTC 18071/CA 184-029 study. Patients randomly assigned to receive ipilimumab had a 9-month absolute improvement in...
Around a quarter of smokers who carry a mutation in the BRCA2 gene will develop lung cancer at some point in their lifetime, a large-scale, international study reveals. Scientists described a previously unknown link between lung cancer and a particular BRCA2 mutation, which occurs in around 2% of...
The combination of two investigational oral drugs, the PARP inhibitor olaparib and the antiangiogenic drug cediranib, significantly extended progression-free survival and increased the overall response rate compared to olaparib alone in a phase II study among women with recurrent,...
A phase III, multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled study found that the oral targeted drug lenvatinib is highly effective among patients with differentiated thyroid cancer resistant to standard radioiodine therapy. “The main result is an extraordinary improvement in progression-free...
In a phase I study, ceritinib (Zykadia) was found to shrink tumors in patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), regardless of whether patients had received previous treatment with an ALK inhibitor. The study was presented at the 2014 ASCO...