Cancer
Obesity causes 100,000 US cancer cases: report
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Obesity causes more than 100,000 cases of cancer in the United States each year—and the number will likely rise as Americans get fatter, researchers said on Thursday.
Having too much body fat causes nearly half the cases of endometrial cancer—a type of cancer of the uterus—and a third of esophageal cancer cases, the American Institute for Cancer Research said.
Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the United States after heart disease. The American Cancer Society projects that 1.47 million people will be diagnosed with cancer this year and 562,000 will die of it.
CTRC, AACR and Baylor College of Medicine to Host San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium
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What:
Now in its 32nd year, the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium remains the top venue for research and discovery in breast cancer. This year’s conference will bring together delegates from all over the world. Among the expected highlights:
• Five-year results of the groundbreaking Herceptin trial.
• Definitive data on the role of bisphosphonates in breast cancer prevention.
• The role hormone therapies may play in lung cancer treatment.
• New data on the role of obesity and alcohol in breast cancer risk.
• Emerging therapies that could change the treatment landscape.
To help you plan your coverage of the conference, the program schedule is available online at http://www.sabcs.org. Although the full abstracts will not be available online until the conference begins, an electronic press kit containing the press releases and select highlighted abstracts will be available on Dec. 2, 2009 to reporters registered through the AACR and those with a subscription to Eurekalert and/or Newswise.
Low cholesterol may shrink risk for high-grade prostate cancer
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Men with lower cholesterol are less likely than those with higher levels to develop high-grade prostate cancer - an aggressive form of the disease with a poorer prognosis, according to results of a Johns Hopkins collaborative study.
In a prospective study of more than 5,000 U.S. men, epidemiologists say they now have evidence that having lower levels of heart-clogging fat may cut a man’s risk of this form of cancer by nearly 60 percent.
“For many reasons, we know that it’s good to have a cholesterol level within the normal range,” says Elizabeth Platz, Sc.D., M.P.H., associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and co-director of the cancer prevention and control program at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. “Now, we have more evidence that among the benefits of low cholesterol may be a lower risk for potentially deadly prostate cancers.”
$20 Million Stem Cell Grant for UC San Diego Cancer Research
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Researchers led by Moores UCSD Cancer Center Director Dennis A. Carson, MD, professor of medicine, and Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and director of the Cancer Stem Cell Research Program at the Moores UCSD Cancer Center have been awarded $20 million over four years to develop novel drugs against leukemia stem cells.
CIRM’s 29-member Governing Board voted to approve funding to 14 multidisciplinary teams of California researchers. The four-year grants mark the first CIRM funding explicitly expected to result in FDA approval for a clinical trial. The Disease Team Research Awards fund research teams that include basic scientists, clinicians and industry. These collaborations speed the process of establishing clinical trials by avoiding mistakes being discovered late in the process and insuring that clinically relevant issues are considered early.
“This award will fund a team – including researchers from disparate disciplines and key industry-academic partners – to develop novel therapies targeting leukemia stem cells, with the goal of moving to clinical trials in the shortest possible time frame,” said Jamieson, who was involved in a unique partnership between industry and academia that, in 2008, led to human clinical trials of a new drug for a rare class of blood diseases in just one year’s time.
Sensor biochips could aid in cancer diagnosis and treatment
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It is very difficult to predict whether a cancer drug will help an individual patient: only around one third of drugs will work directly in a given patient. Researchers at the Heinz Nixdorf Chair for Medical Electronics at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have developed a new test process for cancer drugs. With the help of microchips, they can establish in the laboratory whether a patient’s tumor cells will react to a given drug. This chip could help in future with the rapid identification of the most effective medication for the individual patient.
Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the Western world. According to the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, approximately 450,000 people develop cancer every year in Germany. Although the doctors who treat cancer have numerous cancer drugs at their disposal today, the treatment must be precisely tailored to the patient and the type of cancer in question to be as effective as possible. If it takes a second or third try to find a drug that works, the patient loses valuable time in which the tumor can continue to grow.
In the future, miniature laboratories could provide the fast help required here. A lab-on-a-chip is a device—made of glass, for example—that is just a few millimeters across and has bioelectronic sensors that monitor the vitality of living cells. The chips sit in small wells, known as microtiter plates, and are covered with a patient’s tumor cells. A robot changes the culture fluid in each well containing a chip at intervals of just a few minutes.
Bowel disease drugs increase cancer risk: study
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Some treatments for inflammatory bowel disease increase the risk of infection-related cancers, French scientists said on Monday, but the benefits of the drugs still outweigh the risks.
Thiopurine drugs—immunosuppressive medicines that inhibit the body’s immune system—are regularly used to treat inflammatory bowel disease, the researchers said, but can increase the risk of cancers linked to viral infections.
Laurent Beaugerie and colleagues at the Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris looked at more than 19,000 patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Around 30 percent of the patients were taking thiopurines, 14 percent had stopped taking them and 56 percent had never taken them.
Loss of Tumor-Suppressor and DNA-Maintenance Proteins Causes Tissue Demise
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A study published in the October issue of Nature Genetics demonstrates that loss of the tumor-suppressor protein p53, coupled with elimination of the DNA-maintenance protein ATR, severely disrupts tissue maintenance in mice. As a result, tissues deteriorate rapidly, which is generally fatal in these animals. In addition, the study provides supportive evidence for the use of inhibitors of ATR in cancer therapy.
Essentially, says senior author Eric Brown, PhD, Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the findings highlight the fact that day-to-day maintenance required to keep proliferative tissues like skin and intestines functional is about more than just regeneration, a stem cell-based process that forms the basis of tissue renewal. It’s also about housekeeping, the clearing away of damaged cells.
Whereas loss of ATR causes DNA damage, the job of p53 is to monitor cells for such damage and either stimulate the early demise of such cells or prevent their replication, the housekeeping part of the equation.
New chromosomal abnormality identified in leukemia associated with Down syndrome
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Researchers identified a new chromosomal abnormality in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that appears to work in concert with another mutation to give rise to cancer. This latest anomaly is particularly common in children with Down syndrome.
The findings have already resulted in new diagnostic tests and potential tools for tracking a patient’s response to treatment. The research, led by scientists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, also highlights a new potential ALL treatment. Clinicians are already planning trials of an experimental medication targeting one of the altered genes.
This study is published in the October 18 online edition of Nature Genetics.
“A substantial proportion of children with ALL lack one of the previously identified, common chromosomal abnormalities. Also, children with Down syndrome have an increased risk of ALL, but the reasons why are unclear,” said Charles Mullighan, M.D., Ph.D., assistant member in the St. Jude Department of Pathology. Mullighan is senior author of the study, which involved scientists from 10 institutions in the U.S. and Italy. “Our results have provided important data regarding the mechanisms contributing to leukemia in these cases,” he said.
Study charts links between mobile phones, tumors
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Studies on whether mobile phones can cause cancer, especially brain tumors, vary widely in quality and there may be some bias in those showing the least risk, researchers reported on Tuesday.
So far it is difficult to demonstrate any link, although the best studies do suggest some association between mobile phone use and cancer, the team led by Dr. Seung-Kwon Myung of South Korea’s National Cancer Center found.
Myung and colleagues at Ewha Womans University and Seoul National University Hospital in Seoul and the University of California, Berkeley, examined 23 published studies of more than 37,000 people in what is called a meta-analysis.
Tiny chip can measure estrogen in breast tissue
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A new pocket-sized device may allow doctors to check a woman’s breast cancer risk in minutes with just droplets of blood or a sliver of breast tissue, Canadian researchers said on Wednesday.
They said the microchip device can measure levels of the hormone estrogen using far smaller samples than conventional methods, making it possible to quickly screen for breast cancer risk or check to see if breast cancer treatments are working.
“The new device is compatible with extremely small samples—around 1,000 times smaller than the amount needed for conventional analyses,” said Aaron Wheeler of the University of Toronto, whose study appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Radiation costs vary widely by delivery, U-M study finds
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When cancer spreads to the bone, radiation treatments can help relieve the pain caused by the tumor. But how best to deliver the radiation may vary widely from one oncologist to the next.
A new analysis from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center shows cost also varies widely from one delivery method to the next. Costs can range from around $1,700 for a single treatment with conventional radiation techniques to more than $16,000 for four treatments using a system of radiation delivery called Cyberknife.
“Some of the technologies that have been shown to be safe and effective, but have not been shown to be superior, can cost up to 10 times what a single dose of conventionally delivered radiation costs,” says David D. Howell, M.D., assistant professor of radiation oncology at the U-M Medical School and medical director of radiation oncology at the Norval K. Morey Cancer Center in Mt. Pleasant, Mich., part of the U-M Radiation Oncology Network.
PMH clinicians map group at high risk for aggressive, ‘hidden’ prostate cancer
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Clinical researchers at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) can now answer the question that baffles many clinicians – why do some men with elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels who are carefully monitored and undergo repeated negative biopsies still develop aggressive prostate cancer?
The answer is hidden tumours located on the top of the prostate that evade traditional diagnostic procedures, including ultrasound-guided needle biopsy. The PMH research, published online today in the British Journal of Urology International (BJU 8938), demonstrates that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the best tool to reveal such tumours.
“Our findings identify a specific high-risk group whose tumours are difficult to diagnose because of location. These men benefit from MRI, which guides the biopsy procedure with a high degree of accuracy,” says author Dr. Nathan Lawrentschuk, Urologic Oncology Fellow, PMH Cancer Program, University Health Network. “The research team calls the clinical presentation of elevated PSA and repeated negative biopsy results in ‘prostate evasive anterior tumour syndrome’ (PEATS).”
Childhood Cancer Survivors Exercise Less, Increasing Diabetes Risk
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In a study of adults who survived cancer as children, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital investigators found that many survivors lead sedentary lifestyles and are more likely to be less physically active than their siblings. Childhood cancer survivors are at greater risk of diabetes, obesity and heart disease than the rest of the population.
Cancer treatments such as cranial radiation can damage the hypothalamus and pituitary; the result is an abnormal metabolism, which increases the risk of obesity and diabetes. Also, chemotherapy with the drug anthracycline increases the risk of heart disease; and radiation to the body can cause blood vessels to become less pliant.
“Physical activity is a key step that survivors can take to reduce the health risk of these effects,” said Kiri Ness, Ph.D., of the Epidemiology and Cancer Control department at St. Jude. “Medical center programs to encourage physical activity in adult survivors could help significantly. However, one problem is that researchers have not firmly established the factors that affect cancer survivors’ participation in physical activity.”
A relief? Lower back pain unlikely to mean cancer
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Your lower back pain may be killing you, but there’s some good news: Such pain is very unlikely to mean serious problems such as broken vertebrae or cancer, according to a study by Australian researchers.
Dr. Christopher G. Maher, from The George Institute of International Health in Sydney, and colleagues studied 1172 patients who came to general practitioners, physical therapists, or chiropractors with a new complaint of lower back pain.
The patients were monitored for 12 months to look for broken bones, infection, arthritis, or cancer was the cause.
“Watchful waiting” often works for prostate cancer
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New research indicates that over half of men who choose “watchful waiting” as the initial strategy for prostate cancer need no treatment over the long haul.
With “watchful waiting,” patients with early prostate tumors are monitored regularly and only treated if their cancer progresses.
“Patients and doctors should not assume that any/all cancer must be immediately treated,” lead researcher Dr. Martin G. Sanda, from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, told Reuters Health.
