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...
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...
In a UK phase III trial (NCRI Myeloma X Relapse [Intensive] Trial) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Cook et al found that high-dose melphalan plus salvage autologous stem cell transplantation significantly prolonged time to progression vs cyclophosphamide in patients with relapsed multiple myeloma...
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...
A heparin derivative differentiated cancer cells and caused neuroblastomas to regress without causing severe bleeding, according to the findings of a preclinical study presented in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Knelson et al identified novel roles for heparan sulfate proteoglycans in...
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...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Hedditch et al found that expression of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter genes of the A subfamily (ABCA) had a significant impact on outcome in epithelial ovarian cancer. High ABCA1, Low ABCA5 Expression Analysis of gene...
Some data indicate an increased risk for cancer in patients receiving tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha antagonists (eg, infliximab [Remicade], adalimumab [Humira], certolizumab pegol [Cimzia]) for rheumatoid arthritis. Studies with follow-up of ≤ 1 year have not found increased risk in patients ...
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 ...
Although cancer immunotherapy with adoptive transfer of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes represents an effective treatment for patients with metastatic melanoma, the antigen targets recognized by these effective tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes remain unclear. According to a new study, a novel...
Obesity is associated with poorer outcome in women with operable breast cancer. In the LISA study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Goodwin et al found that a 24-month telephone-based intervention was effective in reducing body weight in postmenopausal breast cancer patients receiving...
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...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Zhong et al assessed factors associated with use of immediate breast reconstruction after treatment or prophylaxis for breast cancer among women in the Canadian universal health-care system. Immediate breast reconstruction was more likely in...
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is likely to improve insurance coverage for young adults. In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Aizer et al examined the association between insurance status and cancer outcomes among young adults, finding that the uninsured...
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 ...
In a UK phase III trial (UKALL 2003) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Vora et al found that augmented postremission therapy provided an event-free survival benefit at the cost of increased toxicity in children and young adults with clinical standard- or intermediate-risk but minimal residual...
The oral fluoropyrimidine S-1 is standard treatment for locally advanced gastric cancer in Japan. In a Japanese phase III trial (SAMIT) in locally advanced disease reported in The Lancet Oncology, Tsuburaya et al found that sequential paclitaxel plus tegafur and uracil or S-1 did not improve...
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...
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....
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Pollack et al found antigen-specific immune responses and evidence of clinical activity with glioma-associated antigen (GAA) peptide vaccination in children with newly diagnosed malignant brainstem and nonbrainstem gliomas. Study Details In ...
A study by researchers from Danbury Hospital Biomedical Research Institute in Connecticut has found that patients with ovarian cancer who relapse shortly after neoadjuvant chemotherapy to shrink their tumor prior to surgery have high levels of expression of HGF and c-Met proteins. The...
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...
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,...
Childhood and adolescent cancer survivors often face ongoing health problems that require frequent and long hospital stays many years after their cancer diagnosis and treatment, according to a new study by Kirchhoff et al published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. Survivors of...
A study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute by Stout et al suggests that the switch from film to digital mammography screening in the United States has produced a small health benefit at increased cost and with an increased false-positive rate. Biennial digital screening...
There may be significant genomic differences between patients with invasive lobular breast cancer and those with invasive ductal breast cancer, according to the results of a study presented by Sawyer et al in PLOS Genetics. This finding may lead to further insights into the biology of lobular...
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...
As reported in JAMA Ophthalmology, McCannel and colleagues identified three cases of subfoveal neurosensory retinal detachment among patients receiving MEK inhibitor therapy for metastatic cancer in clinical trials requiring ophthalmologic examination at their institution. In all cases, the toxic...
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...
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...
Ibrutinib is an irreversible inhibitor of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase that was recently approved for treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients who have received at least one prior therapy. A small proportion of CLL patients have been observed to relapse during ibrutinib treatment, ...
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...