New research suggests that restricting calories for a defined period of time may improve the success of cancer treatment, offering valuable new data on how caloric intake may play a role in programmed cancer cell death and efficacy of targeted cancer therapies. Study results were published online...
A new way of analyzing data acquired in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) appears to be able to identify whether or not tumors are responding to antiangiogenesis therapy, which may help physicians determine the most appropriate treatments for patients. In a report published online in Nature...
A telomerase RNA component gene called TERC, which is responsible for regulating the length of caps on the ends of DNA molecules and believed to be involved in the aging process, has been linked to the development of multiple myeloma, according to a study published in Nature Genetics. Researchers...
In a study reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Anthony V. Moorman, PhD, of Newcastle University, and colleagues compared outcomes in children and adolescents with B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and intrachromosomal amplification of chromosome 21 (iAMP21) in a trial in...
Intrachromosomal amplification of a region of chromosome 21 (iAMP21; three or more extra copies of RUNX1 on an abnormal chromosome 21) is a recently identified recurrent genomic abnormality associated with poorer outcome in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). In a study reported in Journal of...
For the two-thirds of lung cancer patients with locally advanced or metastatic disease, tumor size is not used currently to predict overall survival times. However, a new study led by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center has shown that even in advanced stages total tumor size can have ...
In a study reported in Lancet Oncology, Timothy Key, PhD, of Oxford University, and colleagues in the Endogenous Hormones and Breast Cancer Collaborative Group analyzed data from seven prospective studies to determine associations between sex hormones and risk of breast cancer in premenopausal...
Although small clinical studies of adoptive T-cell therapy in the treatment of advanced forms of leukemia have shown positive results, including putting some patients into complete remissions, progress in the development of this type of immunotherapy is limited by the lack of readily available,...
Minimal data are available on outcomes of second allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation from unrelated donors after first hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in patients with hematologic relapse of acute leukemia. In a study reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Maximilian...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved the first rapid human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) test for the simultaneous detection of HIV-1 p24 antigen as well as antibodies to both HIV-1 and HIV-2 in human serum, plasma, and venous or fingerstick whole blood specimens. Approved for...
Researchers from Indiana University, the University of Michigan, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified and validated a biomarker accessible in blood tests that could be used to predict which stem cell transplant patients are at highest risk ...
Patients with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) often receive allogeneic transplants that effectively “reboot” their own immune defenses, which then attack and potentially cure the hard-to-treat disease. However, there is a high rate of relapse in these patients, and the...
Deciphering the body's complex molecular pathways that lead to disease when they malfunction is highly challenging. Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute now have a more complete picture of one particular pathway that can lead to cancer and diabetes. In a study published in...
The contribution of purging of peripheral blood stem cells to outcome of autologous stem cell transplantation in high-risk neuroblastoma has not been defined. In a trial (COG A3973) reported in Lancet Oncology by Susan G. Kreissman, MD, of Duke University Medical Center, and colleagues, children...
Blocking dietary sugar and its activity in tumor cells may reduce cancer risk and progression, according to researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. The study, conducted in fruit flies and published in the August issue of Cell, provides insight as to why...
In a report in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sonali M. Smith, MD, of University of Chicago Hospitals, and colleagues analyzed outcomes in a large cohort of autologous or allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation recipients with the most common T-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma histologies. Their ...
Scientists studying acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have discovered that rather than displacing hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow as previously believed, the cancer is in fact inhibiting production of downstream hematopoietic cells, effectively putting them to sleep. The findings were...
Intratumoral injections of plasmid DNA encoding interleukin-12 (IL-12), facilitated in its delivery by electroporation, results in tumor regression in patients with both metastatic melanoma and Merkel cell carcinoma, according to findings reported at the 2013 World Cutaneous Malignancies Congress...
An analysis of data from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) of the height measurement at enrollment of 144,701 postmenopausal women and the risk of all cancers combined has found that 20,928 of the women had a diagnosis of one or more invasive cancers during a median follow-up of 12 years....
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have used digital versions of a standard molecular biology tool to detect a common tumor-associated mutation in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with brain tumors. In a report published in Molecular Therapy – Nucleic Acids, the...
Low-dose aspirin (100 mg) taken every other day may reduce a woman’s risk of developing colon cancer, according to an observational study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The findings are based on a large long-term study of 38,876 healthy women enrolled in the Women’s...
Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that nerves play a critical role in both the development and spread of prostate tumors. Their findings, using both a mouse model and human prostate tissue, may lead to new ways to predict the aggressiveness of...
Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have discovered that a protein used by cancer cells to evade death also plays a vital role in heart health. This dual role complicates efforts to develop cancer drugs that target the protein, but may lead to new therapies for heart muscle...
A second large, prospective study by scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has confirmed the link between high blood concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids and an increased risk of prostate cancer. Study Details Published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the...
Scientists have successfully targeted a malfunctioning immune system enzyme to kill diseased cells from patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a precursor to acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Reporting their results in Cancer Cell, researchers say their successful laboratory tests in human MDS...
New evidence suggests that using advanced genetics technologies to monitor for remaining cancer cells after treatment may soon become an effective tool to inform treatment decisions and ultimately predict patient outcomes for patients with a particularly aggressive form of acute lymphocytic...
Timothy Henrich, MD, Associate Physician in the Division of Infectious Disease at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, reported that two patients with long-standing HIV infections have no detectable levels of the disease in their blood cells, even though they stopped taking their...
A study of more than 1,800 men aged 52 to 62 suggests that African Americans diagnosed with very low-risk prostate cancers are much more likely than white men to actually have aggressive disease that goes unrecognized with current diagnostic approaches. Although prior studies have found it safe to...
Although Burkitt’s lymphoma remains one of the most highly aggressive forms of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, a recent study published in Blood has found a marked improvement in patient survival over the past decade, especially ...
A new study by an international team of scientists provides the first statistically based guidelines for determining whether a stem cell transplant is appropriate for older patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), the most common blood disorders in people over 60 years of age, and frequently...
The 17p deletion in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is associated with worse outcome in patients receiving standard chemotherapy. The Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor ibrutinib has shown durable antitumor activity in high-risk CLL. Adrian Wiestner, MD, PhD, of the National...
Researchers have found that antibodies against the human papillomavirus (HPV) may help identify individuals who are at greatly increased risk of HPV-related cancer of the oropharynx, In their study, at least one in three individuals with oropharyngeal cancer had antibodies to HPV, compared to...
It has been shown that CD4 and CD8 tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in follicular lymphoma have impaired function and suppressed recruitment of critical signaling proteins to the immunologic synapse, and a number of studies have indicated the prognostic importance of the immune microenvironment in...
Many men with low-risk, localized prostate cancers can safely choose active surveillance or watchful waiting instead of undergoing immediate treatment and have better quality of life while reducing health-care costs, according to a study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and...
Crizotinib (Xalkori), a multitargeted receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor, is the only agent currently available for treating ALK-rearranged non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). CH5424802 is a novel selective oral ALK inhibitor with activity in tumor cell lines harboring ALK alterations,...
A protein used by embryo cells during early development, and recently found in many different types of cancer, may serve as a switch regulating metastasis, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. The findings were ...
An Indiana University cancer researcher and his Canadian collaborator have discovered how normal breast precursor cells may be genetically vulnerable to developing into cancer. David Gilley, PhD, Associate Professor of Medical and Molecular Genetics at the IU School of Medicine and a researcher at ...
Surveillance appears to be sufficient for men with stage I seminoma treated with orchiectomy, sparing patients from side effects of adjuvant radiation or chemotherapy. In a long-term study presented at the 2013 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 4502), 99.5% of men followed by surveillance alone...
The FDA has approved initiation of a multicenter trial of the DigniCap System, a scalp-cooling device for chemotherapy-related hair loss. The trial is the second and final phase of study for the DigniCap System. A pilot study previously conducted by researchers at the University of California San...
A genomic profiling study of African American women with breast cancer found that about one in five carries an inherited abnormality in at least 1 of 18 genes associated with breast cancer susceptibility. Such mutations were more prevalent among women with aggressive triple-negative breast cancer,...
Low-dose weekly administration of paclitaxel resulted in equal progression-free survival but reduced overall toxicity compared to every-2-week dose-dense administration for women with higher-risk early-stage breast cancer who have undergone surgery, according to a phase III randomized trial....
Ten years of adjuvant treatment with tamoxifen reduces breast cancer recurrence and mortality among women treated for early-stage estrogen receptor (ER)–positive breast cancer, according to results of the British phase III aTTom study. These findings, presented at the 2013 ASCO Annual Meeting ...
A randomized phase III study found no improvement in overall survival after the addition of bevacizumab (Avastin) to standard first-line chemoradiation for glioblastoma. Patients who received bevacizumab also experienced more side effects compared to those treated with chemoradiation alone. The...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved two new drugs, dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist), for patients with advanced or unresectable melanoma, the most dangerous type of skin cancer. Dabrafenib, a BRAF inhibitor, is approved to treat patients with melanoma whose tumors...
Frequent heartburn was positively associated with cancers of the throat and vocal cord among nonsmokers and nondrinkers, and the use of antacids, but not prescription medications, had a protective effect, according to data published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of...
Survival rates have increased significantly among patients who received blood stem cell transplants from both related and unrelated donors, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study authors attribute the increase to several factors, including advances in HLA...
Under conditions of oxygen starvation often encountered by tumors, the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) sends signals that thwart the development of tumor-suppressing microRNAs, an international team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center discovered. The...
Treating pediatric leukemia patients with a liposomal formulation of anthracycline-based chemotherapy at an intensified dose during initial treatment may result in high survival rates without causing any added heart toxicity, according to the results of a study published online in Blood, the...
Beta-blockers, normally used for high blood pressure, could enhance the effectiveness of chemotherapies in treating neuroblastoma, according to a new study published today in the British Journal of Cancer. Early Results Promising Researchers from the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia...
A large study reports that the vast majority of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma relapses are detected based on symptoms, abnormal blood tests or abnormal findings on physical exam, suggesting that CT scans, which are currently a routine part of follow-up, may be unnecessary. Researchers found that...