Early findings from the phase III RESONATE study indicate that ibrutinib (Imbruvica) produces durable tumor responses and marked improvement in survival over standard ofatumumab (Arzerra) for patients with relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). “With ibrutinib, about 80% of patients...
A patient-centered educational and behavioral program focusing on self-care strategies appears to be an effective way to reduce the risk of lymphedema in survivors of breast cancer, according to the results of a prospective study by Fu et al at New York University. These findings, reported in the...
In a recent study by the Lung Cancer Mutation Consortium (LCMC), investigators incorporated tumor genotyping into therapeutic decision-making for patients with lung adenocarcinomas. An oncogenic driver was detected in 64% of tumors from patients in this study. According to data from this study...
An analysis of the metabolic profiles of hundreds of ovarian tumors has revealed a new test to determine whether ovarian cancer cells have the potential to metastasize. The study, which was published in Molecular Systems Biology, also suggests how ovarian cancer treatments can be tailored based on...
In a safety communication notice issued yesterday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discouraged the use of laparoscopic power morcellation for the removal of the uterus (hysterectomy) or uterine fibroids (myomectomy) in women because, based on an analysis of currently available data, it...
Scientists have identified two unlikely partners found in macrophages that work together in response to cancer drugs to increase inflammation in a way that may alter tumor growth. The study by Lowe et al was published in Cancer Research. These partners are the p53 protein that suppresses tumors...
The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital–Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project has identified new mutations in pediatric high-grade gliomas. The findings by Wu et al were published in Nature Genetics and may lead to improved outcomes for children with these brain...
The activity of four transcription factors appears to distinguish the small proportion of glioblastoma cells responsible for the aggressiveness and treatment resistance of the deadly brain tumor. The findings by Suvà et al, published online in Cell, support the importance of epigenetics in...
Using comprehensive genomic analysis, researchers have sorted low-grade brain tumors into three categories, one of which has the molecular hallmarks and shortened survival of glioblastoma multiforme, the most lethal of brain tumors. The findings were reported at the American Association for Cancer...
Loss of the tumor suppressor PTEN was a frequent cause of resistance to the investigational drug BYL719, which blocks the activity of the PI3K-alpha protein, in a small sample of women with breast cancer that progressed after initially responding to BYL719 treatment, according to results presented...
Among patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with the investigational immune checkpoint inhibitor MK-3475, those whose tumors had high levels of the protein PD-L1 had significantly better outcomes, according to results of a phase I clinical trial presented at the American...
A new genetic signature to identify prostate cancer patients who are at high risk of their cancer recurring after surgery or radiotherapy has been developed by researchers in Canada, according to a study presented at the 33rd Conference of the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology in...
The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital–Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project found mutations in the tumor-suppressor gene TP53 in 90% of osteosarcomas, suggesting the alteration plays a key role early in development of the bone cancer. The study by Chen et al was...
Population-based screening with full-field digital mammography is associated with lower recall and biopsy rates than screen-film mammography, suggesting that full-field digital mammography may reduce the number of diagnostic workups and biopsies that do not lead to diagnosis of breast cancer,...
In a series of studies involving 140 American men and women with liver tumors, researchers at Johns Hopkins have used specialized three-dimensional (3D) MRI scans to precisely measure living and dying tumor tissue to quickly show whether highly toxic chemotherapy is working. The investigators said ...
Scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, and Houston Methodist, Houston, have found that a gene previously unassociated with breast cancer plays a pivotal role in the growth and progression of the triple-negative form of the disease. The research by Chen et al, published in Nature,...
“Use of e-cigarettes does not discourage, and may encourage, conventional cigarette use among US adolescents.” This was the conclusion of a cross-sectional analysis of survey data from a representative sample of middle and high school students who completed the National Youth Tobacco...
While many cancer researchers believe that predictive somatic genomic testing holds the potential to usher in the era of precision medicine for patients with cancer, research by Gray et al suggests that not all physicians are eager to embrace the technology. The variation in attitudes was in part...
Both obesity and diabetes have adverse effects on outcomes in breast cancer patients who receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy, according to research presented at the 9th European Breast Cancer Conference. Although a high body mass index (BMI) is known to have a negative impact on cancer development and ...
Genetic analyses of results from 1,125 postmenopausal women being treated for estrogen-responsive breast cancer have shown that some of them are more likely than others to have a late recurrence of their cancer and might benefit from 10 years of hormone therapy rather than 5 years. Women who had...
The overexpression of Hedgehog family proteins contributes to the development of many cancers. Research by Konitsiotis et al has found that blocking the function of the Hedgehog acyltransferase (Hhat) enzyme slows the growth and spread of pancreatic cancer. Targeting inhibition of the Hedgehog...
A simple questionnaire that rates breathing difficulties on a scale of 0 to 3 may be able to predict survival in patients with chronic graft-vs-host disease, according to a study by Palmer et al published in Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. Although a poor National Institutes of Health ...
Immunotherapy for ovarian, breast, and colorectal cancer has so far had limited success, primarily because the immune system often can’t destroy the cancer cells. According to a report published in Oncotarget, researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified genes that have been repressed through ...
A common compound known to fight lymphoma and skin conditions actually has a second method of action that makes it particularly deadly against certain aggressive breast tumors, according to a study reported by Xia et al in PLOS ONE. The compound, psoralen, is a natural component found in foods such ...
The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital–Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project has identified the most common genetic alteration ever reported in the brain tumor ependymoma and evidence that the alteration drives tumor development. The findings were published online in...
New research from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and Georgia Regents University has found that a protein that regulates an inflammatory pathway does not turn off in breast cancer, resulting in an increase in cancer stem cells. This finding may provide a potential target for...
A simple tool called “phi” appears to be able to identify which patients assigned to active surveillance for prostate cancer are more likely to require treatment. Phi, or the prostate health index, is calculated from three serum measurements: PSA, free/total PSA, and a new measurement,...
The most common genetic subtype of lung cancer, which has long defied treatment with targeted therapies, has had its growth halted by a combination of two already-in-use drugs in laboratory and animal studies, setting the stage for clinical trials of the drugs in patients. The study, published in...
A study by Almendro et al analyzed breast cancer tumors before and after treatment for important characteristics, including chromosome copy number, the presence or absence of certain protein markers, and their proliferative capacity. The scientists then used the data to develop computational models ...
A large-scale genetic analysis of women with ovarian cancer with no known family histories of breast or ovarian cancer has found that one-fifth of them had inherited alterations in genes known to be associated with these cancers. The findings could lead to the development of better screening...
The drug metformin, which is approved for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, has been tested in clinical trials as a tumor suppressor in different cancers due to its role in activating the AMPK signaling pathway. However, a new study by Liu et al published in Proceedings of the National Academy of...
Among older women with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer, it is reasonable to omit whole-breast radiation therapy after breast-conserving surgery and neoadjuvant hormone therapy if the patient’s tumors have high levels of estrogen receptor expression, but radiation should remain...
Bevacizumab (Avastin) failed to extend invasive disease–free survival when added to trastuzumab (Herceptin)-directed adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer in the phase III BETH trial. Although not specifically designed to answer this question, BETH also...
A new class of drugs reduced the risk of patients contracting a serious and often deadly side effect of bone marrow transplant treatments, according to a study by Choi et al published in The Lancet Oncology. The study, the first to test this treatment in humans, combined the drug vorinostat...
PARP inhibition appears to be an effective way to shrink PTEN-deficient endometrial tumors with low levels of estrogen but is ineffective in those with high levels of estrogen, according to preclinical study results reported by Janzen et al in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. The findings suggest...
Approximately 50% of metastatic melanomas harbor the BRAF mutation, and although most of these melanomas respond dramatically to treatment with BRAF inhibitors, such as vemurafenib (Zelboraf) and dabrafenib (Tafinlar), nearly all develop resistance to the drugs within 7 to 8 months. While previous...
Results of a Johns Hopkins study may explain why cyclophosphamide prevents graft-vs-host disease in people who receive bone marrow transplants. The experiments point to an immune system cell that evades the toxic effects of cyclophosphamide and protects patients from a lethal form of graft-vs-host...
Advanced imaging techniques may be able to distinguish which patients' tumors will respond to treatment with antiangiogenic drugs and which will not. In a report published online in PNAS, researchers studied patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma who were treated with the antiangiogenic agent...
A new educational tool for oncologists may enhance compliance with quality care standards and improve the value of cancer care, ultimately resulting in big cost savings for health-care systems, according to Karen Fields, MD, and colleagues from H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute,...
Both pemetrexed (Alimta) and gefitinib (Iressa) are standard second-line treatments for advanced nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in East Asia. In a phase II trial (CTONG 0806) reported at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer’s 15th World Conference...
Men with short-ended chromosomes in the immune cells in their blood were at increased risk for aggressive prostate cancer compared with men with long-ended chromosomes in blood immune cells, according to results presented at the 12th Annual AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer...
A functional biomarker that can predict whether BRAF-mutant melanomas respond to drugs targeting BRAF could help guide the treatment of patients with these cancers, according to results presented at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics, held...
A new diagnostic platform to detect BRAF mutations in melanoma and other cancer types is faster and more accurate compared with the standard method currently used in clinics, and this could help accelerate diagnosis and treatment, according to results presented at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International...
Two drug combinations that simultaneously block two major signaling pathways downstream of the protein KRAS, which is aberrantly active in most pancreatic cancers, may provide a new treatment option for patients with this disease, according to preclinical results presented at the AACR-NCI-EORTC...
Approximately 50% of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients who develop resistance to inhibitors of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) have acquired a second mutation, T790M, which no current EGFR inhibitors target. This may change if the AstraZeneca investigational compound...
A simple blood test that measures serum free fatty acids and their metabolites may detect early-stage lung cancer and its recurrence, according to a study from The Cleveland Clinic presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY™ 2013 Annual Meeting in San Francisco (Abstract A4267). The study was presented ...
An optical imaging technique that measures metabolic activity in cancer cells can accurately differentiate breast cancer subtypes, and it can detect responses to treatment as early as 2 days after therapy administration, according to a study published in Cancer Research. “The process of...
Use of existing, well-established hypertension drugs could improve the outcome of cancer chemotherapy by opening up collapsed blood vessels in solid tumors. In a report published in Nature Communications, investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) described how the angiotensin...
A new study from researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Proton Therapy Center found that the use of feeding tubes in patients with oropharyngeal cancer treated with intensity modulated proton therapy decreased by more than 50% compared to patients treated with intensity modulated...
Researchers have discovered why multiple myeloma frequently recurs after an initially effective treatment that can keep the disease at bay for up to several years. The study, published in Cancer Cell, was a collaboration between researchers at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, Mayo Clinic in...