Cancer
Projections of cancer care costs in the US: 2010-2020
|
|
The estimated total cost of cancer care in the United States in 2020 is expected to be $158 billion assuming the most recent observed patterns of incidence, survival, and cost remain the same. This represents a 27% increase from 2010 due only to the projected aging and growth of the US population, according to a study published online January 12th in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. However, the authors also note the cost of cancer care could rise even more quickly under some reasonable assumptions such as a 2% annual increase in costs of the initial and final phases of cancer care.
Cancer disproportionately affects the elderly population, which is expected to increase from 40 million in 2009 to 70 million in 2030. With changes in risk factor prevalence and stage at diagnosis, and development of new diagnostic tools and treatments for cancer in the 1990s, in general cancer incidence declined and survival improved, but cancer care became more expensive. Under a different scenario of continuing trends in cancer incidence, survival, and costs of care, the total cost of cancer care in 2020 is expected to be $173 billion, an even larger increase (39% from 2010).
To estimate the national medical cost of cancer care through the year 2020 for 13 cancers in men and 16 cancers in women, Angela Mariotto, Ph.D., and colleagues from the National Cancer Institute, analyzed data on cancer incidence (the rates of newly diagnosed cancer in any given year) and survival from the (SEER) Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database http://url.health.am/80/ and Medicare expenditures associated with cancer from the linked SEER-Medicare database http://url.health.am/79/.
Device Promising for Detecting Metastatic Breast Cancer Cells
|
|
Research by engineers and cancer biologists at Virginia Tech indicate that using specific silicon microdevices might provide a new way to screen breast cancer cells’ ability to metastasize.
An image of their work provided to Biomaterials was selected as one of the 12 best biomaterials-related images published in the journal’s 2010 catalogue. http://www.elsevierscitech.com/pdfs/Biomaterials_2010.pdf
The Virginia Tech researchers are: Masoud Agah, director of Virginia Tech’s Microelectromechanical Systems Laboratory (MEMS) Laboratory in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Jeannine Strobl, a research professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Mehdi Nikkhah of mechanical engineering; and Raffaella DeVita of engineering science and mechanics and the director of the soft biological systems laboratory. Nikkhah was Virginia Tech’s Outstanding Doctoral Student in the College of Engineering for 2009.
Protein wields phosphate group to inhibit cancer metastasis
|
|
By sticking a chemical group to it at a specific site, a protein arrests an enzyme that may worsen and spread cancer, an international research team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports in the January issue of Nature Cell Biology.
In addition to highlighting a novel anti-cancer pathway, the team found that the same deactivation of the enzyme called EZH2 is necessary for the formation of bone-forming cells from the stem cells that make them and other tissues.
“EZH2 is overexpressed in aggressive solid tumors and tied to cancer progression and metastasis,” said the paper’s senior author, Mien-Chie Hung, Ph.D., professor and chair of MD Anderson’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology. “We have found that another protein, CDK1, deactivates EZH2.”
Rituximab Maintenance Significantly Improves Progression-Free Survival In Patients With Follicular Lymphoma
|
|
Patients with follicular lymphoma, a slow-growing common type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, who are given 2 years of rituximab-maintenance therapy after immunochemotherapy, have significantly better progression-free survival (PFS) and higher response rates compared with patients who do not receive this intervention. These findings from the largest randomised trial of follicular lymphoma to date, published Online First in The Lancet, support rituximab-maintenance therapy as a first-line treatment option for these patients.
Most patients with follicular lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, respond well to initial treatment, but relapse is common. Over the past decade, the monoclonal antibody rituximab has shown considerable benefit in patients with the disease. Rituximab plus chemotherapy induction regimens have improved overall survival and have become the standard first-line treatment for follicular lymphoma. But the potential benefit of continuing rituximab treatment after completion of chemotherapy is not known.
The PRIMA study was designed to assess the effect of 2 years of rituximab-maintenance therapy on the outcome of patients with follicular lymphoma. 1217 patients with previously untreated follicular lymphoma were enrolled from 223 centres across 25 countries and given an induction regimen of rituximab plus chemotherapy. After induction, 1019 eligible patients who achieved a complete or partial response were then randomly assigned to 2 years of rituximab maintenance (505 patients) or no treatment (513).
Factors linked to speech/swallowing problems after treatment for head and neck cancers
|
|
Most patients with locally advanced head and neck cancers who successfully complete treatment with chemotherapy and radiation manage to do so without losing the ability to speak clearly and swallow comfortably, according to researchers at the Duke Cancer Institute.
“This is good news,” said Joseph K. Salama, MD, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at Duke and the corresponding author of the study. “I hope it brings some comfort to newly-diagnosed patients who are understandably worried about what long-term effects treatment might involve.”
The study findings appear in the Dec. 20 issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology & Head and Neck Surgery.
A possible cause – and cure – for genital cancer in horses?
|
|
The problem of cervical cancer in humans has been considerably reduced by the development of an efficient and cheap vaccine. Horses also suffer from genital cancer but surprisingly we are only now taking the first steps towards learning what causes the disease. Work by Sabine Brandt and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna – together with the British pathologist Tim Scase and with Alastair Foote and his group from Rossdale’s Equine Hospital and Diagnostic Centre in Newmarket – provides strong evidence that a novel papillomavirus is involved and may thus pave the way for the development of a cure. The initial results are published in the current issue of the Equine Veterinary Journal.
Horses are prone to develop genital cancer, especially as they grow older. Male horses are more commonly affected than mares but both sexes suffer from the condition, which is extremely difficult to treat and may result in the animals’ death. Because of the similarity of the disease to human genital cancer it seemed possible that a similar agent might be responsible. Several human genital cancers, including cervical tumours, are known to be caused by a papillomavirus infection, so Brandt and her coworkers used genetic techniques to look for papillomavirus DNA in tissue samples from horses bearing genital squamous cell carcinomas (SCC).
Pomegranate juice components inhibit cancer cell migration; in vivo testing planned
|
|
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), have identified components in pomegranate juice that seem to inhibit the movement of cancer cells and weaken their attraction to a chemical signal that has been shown to promote the metastasis of prostate cancer to the bone, according to a presentation today at the American Society for Cell Biology’s 50th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.
The researchers in the UCR laboratory of Manuela Martins-Green, Ph.D., plan additional testing in an in vivo model for prostate cancer to determine dose-dependent effects and side effects of the two components.
The effect, if any, of pomegranate juice on the progression of prostate cancer is controversial.
Pertuzumab and trastuzumab combination improved efficacy for women with HER2-positive breast cancer
|
|
The combination of pertuzumab and trastuzumab had superior antitumor activity in women with early HER2-positive breast cancer, according to Phase II study results of the NeoSphere neoadjuvant trial.
Details of these study results were presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 8-12.
“The findings establish that the addition of pertuzumab to trastuzumab and the chemotherapy drug docetaxel has an impressive rate of tumor eradication (46 percent), which is 50 percent more than achieved with docetaxel and trastuzumab, the standard therapy,” said Luca Gianni, M.D., director of medical oncology at the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Tumori di Milano.
CTCs predict poor outcome from blood stem cell transplantation therapy for metastatic breast cancer
|
|
Metastatic breast cancer patients who had circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in their blood before or after high-dose chemotherapy (HDCT) followed by autologous stem cell transplantation had poor outcomes, according to researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Patients with CTCs in their blood before chemotherapy treatment had reduced survival and those with these cells in their blood after the stem cell transplant recurred faster and died earlier. These findings were presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec 8-12.
While it has been known that CTCs in metastatic breast cancer are linked to cancer recurrence and lower survival, this study adds several new insights, the researchers said. One is that the process of collecting hematopoietic progenitor cells appears to recruit CTCs from bone marrow into the blood, and the other is that these CTCs are likely to be responsible for cancer recurrence.
Protein protects cancer cells from oxidative stress
|
|
High levels of a protein called thioredoxin-like 2 helps protect cancer cells from the oxidative stress that they generate as they grow and invade tissues throughout the body, said a consortium of researchers led by those at Baylor College of Medicine (http://www.bcm.edu) in a report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (http://www.jci.org).
When Dr. Ning-Hui Cheng, an instructor at the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center (http://www.bcm.edu/cnrc/) at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, and his colleague Dr. Xiaojiang Cui (then at BCM and now at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, Calif.) looked for the protein in human breast cancer cells, they found it exists there at high levels.
When they removed the protein from the cancer cells, the levels of oxidative stress (called reactive oxygen species or ROS) increased and an important signaling activity called NF-kB were reduced. As a result, the cells ceased growing and invading.
New Brain Tumor Vaccine to Be Tested in Humans
|
|
For patients with low-grade gliomas, or slow growing brain tumors, a shot in the arm might soon lead to a new treatment therapy. A groundbreaking, first in humans vaccine will be tested in an early phase clinical trial that will soon begin at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Eighteen patients will be the first in the world to receive it.
“This study is looking at a very new form of treatment called a preventative brain tumor vaccine. The idea is to treat the low-grade glioma and to prevent it from growing back,” said Edward Shaw, M.D., a radiation oncologist. “In this early phase study, we are looking to see whether the patient develops an immune response against this kind of brain tumor, a necessary step for the vaccine to work.”
The trial is a bi-institutional pilot study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, and shared with the University of Pittsburgh (UP). Wake Forest Baptist and UP will enroll nine patients each. The vaccine will be administered to adult patients who have been diagnosed and had surgery for the removal of a low-grade brain tumor. They will receive the vaccine every three weeks for six months. A simple blood test will determine whether an immune response has developed.
Bayer expands research work to fight cancer in Asia
|
|
Bayer AG said on Thursday it had entered into five projects with scientists in Singapore to work on earlier diagnosis and treatment of cancers that are most prevalent in Asia.
Senior researchers at the German pharmaceutical giant also said they had identified five compounds which they hope can fight liver, stomach and colorectal cancer.
“Five compounds that have survived early identification fit into these three cancers with high prevalence in Asia,” Ludger Dinkelborg, head of Bayer’s diagnostic imaging research, said in an interview.
No family link seen between Parkinson’s, melanoma
|
|
Research has suggested that families affected by melanoma skin cancer may also have a higher-than-average rate of Parkinson’s disease—but a large new study found no evidence of such a link.
This doesn’t mean no genetic link exists, the authors of the new study say. But it does suggest that such a link might not have very important effects.
Melanoma is the least common, but most serious, form of skin cancer. The disease sometimes runs in families, and people with two or more close relatives who have had melanoma are considered to be at higher-than-average risk.
Combined imaging technologies may better identify cancerous breast lesions
|
|
By combining optical and x-ray imaging, radiologists may be better able to distinguish cancer from benign lesions in the breast, according to a new study published in the online edition and January issue of Radiology.
Researchers at Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston helped develop a combined optical/x-ray imaging system capable of obtaining both structural and functional information of the breast.
The two technologies used were digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT), a three-dimensional application of digital mammography, and diffuse optical tomography (DOT), which measures levels of hemoglobin concentration, oxygen saturation and other cellular characteristics, based on how light from a near-infrared laser is absorbed and scattered within tissue.
Study finds gene links to common lymphoma cancer
|
|
Scientists have found three new gene variations linked to the development of Hodgkin lymphoma, one of the most common cancers in young adults, and say the findings should help in the development of better treatments.
Around a quarter to half of all cases of Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer originating from white blood cells called lymphocytes, are thought to be triggered by infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), but the disease can also develop in patients who have never been exposed to the virus.
Scientists had suspected genetic factors might be involved, since having a family history of the disease increases risk, but until now they had not been able to identify any specific genetic risk factors.
