Cancer
Scattered light rapidly detects tumor response to chemotherapy
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New technology developed by Duke University bioengineers can help clinicians more precisely detect whether specific cancer drugs are working, and should give basic researchers a powerful new tool to better understand the underlying mechanisms of cancer development.
By interpreting how beams of light scatter off of tumor cell samples, researchers can determine if cancer cells are responding to chemotherapeutic agents within a matter of hours.
Most chemotherapy drugs work by forcing cancer cells to commit cellular suicide, a process known as apoptosis. As cells undergo this process, bodies within the cell, such as the nucleus or mitochondria, go through structural changes. Using the new approach, researchers can analyze the light scattered by these bodies to detect the apoptotic changes in real time.
“The new technology allowed us to detect the tell-tale signs of apoptosis in human breast cancer cells in as little as 90 minutes,” said Adam Wax, associate professor of biomedical engineering and senior member of the research team. “Currently, it can take between six and eight weeks to detect these changes clinically. It appears that this approach has the potential to be helpful in both clinical and laboratory settings.”
End-of-life care differs by race: study
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The way that older adults with advanced cancer live out their last days seems to vary based on race, a US study suggests.
Researchers found that of nearly 41,000 older Americans with terminal cancer, black and Asian patients were less likely than their white or Hispanic counterparts to be enrolled in a hospice program.
On the other hand, they were more likely to be hospitalized frequently or admitted to an intensive care unit near the end of their lives. They were also more likely than whites or Hispanics to die in the hospital, according to the study findings published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Mobile phone use not linked to eye cancer
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German investigators have reversed their previous finding that the use of mobile phones appears to be associated with an increased risk of developing melanoma of the eye (uveal melanoma); new results indicate that the association does not exist.
“We recently reported an increased risk of uveal melanoma for subjects who reported frequent use of mobile phones at work,” Dr. Andreas Stang, of Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg, and colleagues note in the current Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
“However, this study suffered from incomplete exposure assessment and relatively low statistical power due to low exposure prevalence, which triggered some discussion about the validity of these findings,” they add.
Experimental Therapy Turns on Tumor Suppressor Gene in Cancer Cells
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Researchers at Mayo Clinic have found that the experimental drug they are testing to treat a deadly form of thyroid cancer turns on a powerful tumor suppressor capable of halting cell growth. Few other cancer drugs have this property, they say.
In the Feb. 15 issue of Cancer Research (available online Jan. 20), they report that RS5444, being tested in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial to treat anaplastic thyroid cancer, might be useful for treating other cancers. The agent is also known as CS-7017.
From previous research, the investigators knew that RS5444 binds to a protein known as PPAR-gamma, a transcriptional factor that increases the expression of many genes. They had found that human anaplastic thyroid tumor cells treated with RS5444 expressed a protein known as p21, which inhibited cell replication and tumor growth. But they did not understand how. They have now discovered that the agent actually forces PPAR-gamma to turn on the RhoB tumor suppressor gene, which in turn induces p21 expression.
Europeans get unequal cancer care -Swedish study
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European patients continue to receive unequal access to cancer treatment depending on where they live, according to new findings from experts at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute published on Friday.
The latest research by Nils Wilking, a clinical oncologist, and Bengt Jonsson, a health economist, updates earlier work undertaken by the two cancer specialists in 2005 and 2007.
Their analysis reveals wide gaps in relative survival rates across Europe, reflecting differing levels of access to modern - and expensive - cancer treatments.
Reduced breast cancer risk: Physical activity after menopause pays off
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Several studies had previously suggested that regular physical exercise reduces the breast cancer risk of women. However, it had been unknowned just how much exercise women should take in which period in life in order to benefit from this protective effect. Moreover, little was known about which particular type of breast cancer is influenced by physical activity.
Answers to these questions are now provided by the results of the MARIE study, in which 3,464 breast cancer patients and 6,657 healthy women between the ages of 50 and 74 years were questioned in order to explore the connections between life style and breast cancer risk. Participants of the study, which was headed by Professor Dr. Jenny Chang-Claude and conducted at the German Cancer Research Center and the University Hospitals of Hamburg-Eppendorf, were questioned about their physical activity during two periods in life: from 30 to 49 years of age and after 50.
A comparison between control subjects and breast cancer patients showed that women in the control group had been physically more active than patients. The scientists calculated the relative breast cancer risks taking account of the effect of other risk factors. Results show that the risk of developing breast cancer after menopause was lower by about one third in the physically most active MARIE participants compared to women who had generally taken little physical exercise.
Study sees no eye cancer risk from cell phones
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Regular mobile phone use does not appear to increase a person’s risk of getting a type of cancer called melanoma of the eye, German researchers said on Tuesday.
The study involving about 1,600 people detected no link between the time a person spent using a cell phone over about a decade and their chances of developing melanoma of the eye, they wrote in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The findings contradicted an earlier, smaller study by the same researchers that had raised concern about such a link.
Early-life distress may increase neuroblastoma risk
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Distress in the prenatal and neonatal period of development are associated with an increased risk of developing neuroblastoma in the first year of life, but not in subsequent years, according to a report in the International Journal of Cancer.
Neuroblastoma is a cancer that involves embryonic nerve cells of the sympathetic nervous system. It usually metastases quickly and is seen primarily in young children and infants.
The natural history of this cancer suggests that there may be biological differences between tumors that spontaneously regress and undergo benign transformation, which are usually diagnosed before 1 year, and the aggressive type that do not respond to treatment and are usually diagnosed after 1 year of age, Dr. Elizabeth Bluhm from Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, told Reuters Health.
Surgery can lower cancer risk in high-risk brca1/2 carriers
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Removal of the ovaries and fallopian tubes, a surgical procedure referred to as salpingo-oophorectomy, in women who carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation, can lower their risk of breast cancer by about 50 percent and their risk of ovarian or fallopian tube cancer by roughly 80 percent, suggest the results of a review of 10 published studies.
Prior research has shown that this procedure can help prevent breast, ovarian, and fallopian tube malignancies in these high-risk patients, but the magnitude of the risk reduction was unclear, lead author Dr. Timothy R. Rebbeck, from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and colleagues explain.
To investigate, the research team searched PubMed, a large medical database, for studies that examined breast or gynecologic cancer outcomes in BRCA mutation carriers who underwent salpingo-oophorectomy. Data from 10 studies were included in the review, also referred to as a meta-analysis.
UK’s first breast cancer gene screen baby born
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The first baby girl in Britain to have been screened before conception for a genetic form of breast cancer has been born, doctors said on Friday.
While a first in Britain, the strategy has been used elsewhere across the world to screen for the cancer-related BRCA1 gene variant, and the technique has also been previously applied by British doctors to avoid the transmission of other cancers and diseases.
In the current case, doctors at University College Hospital in London (UCL) had created a number of embryos through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) for the baby’s parents and screened them for the variant BRCA1 gene.
Cancer patients’ distress often unaddressed
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Only a minority of patients with advanced cancer are referred by their cancer doctor for specialized psychological care, even if they’re clearly distressed, results of a study from Canada indicate.
Among a group of 326 patients being treated in a comprehensive cancer center for advanced lung or gastrointestinal cancer, only one third were referred for psychosocial care to a social worker, psychologist or psychiatrist, Dr. Gary Rodin and colleagues report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
“Further, more than half of those with clinically significant levels of depression were not referred for psychosocial care of any kind throughout the course of their disease,” Rodin told Reuters Health.
Family History of Prostate Cancer Does Not Affect Some Treatment Outcomes
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In a first of its kind study, a first-degree family history of prostate cancer has no impact on the treatment outcomes of prostate cancer patients treated with brachytherapy (also called seed implants), and patients with this type of family history have clinical and pathologic characteristics similar to men with no family history at all, according to a January 1 study in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology.
“This information is relevant for both physicians and patients with new diagnoses as they embark on complex treatment decisions,” Christopher A. Peters, M.D., lead author of the study and a radiation oncologist at Northeast Radiation Oncology Center in Dunmore, Pa. (chief resident at Mount Sinai School of Medicine at the time of the study), said. “Now patients with a family history of prostate cancer can be confident that they have the same outcomes as patients with sporadic disease, regardless of the treatment modality they chose.”
According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men behind skin cancer. Many patients diagnosed with prostate cancer have some type of family history of the disease and men with a family history do have an increased risk of developing the disease, but there is conflicting data on how family history impacts treatment outcomes.
Minimizing Obesity’s Impact on Ovarian Cancer Survival
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Obesity affects health in several ways, but new research shows obesity can have minimal impact on ovarian cancer survival. A study by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Comprehensive Cancer Center found ovarian cancer survival rates are the same for obese and non-obese women if their chemotherapy doses are closely matched to individual weight.
The findings contradict earlier research that shows obese women have lower ovarian cancer survival rates compared to non-obese patients. In the UAB study, such survival disparity disappeared when chemo doses were calculated by actual body weight rather than a different dosing standard, said Kellie Matthews, M.D., a UAB gynecologic oncologist and lead author on the new study.
“Often chemotherapy dosing is calculated using ‘ideal’ body weight as a guide. We found using actual body weight works best, and it wipes away much of the difference in survival rates between obese and non-obese patients,” Matthews said.
Post-cancer reproduction still low for women, men
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Strategies introduced in the late 1980s for protecting fertility in patients undergoing cancer treatment may have indeed helped boost reproduction rates modestly among survivors of certain types of cancer, new research from Norway suggests.
However, overall, female cancer survivors remain about half as likely as women who had never been diagnosed with the disease to have a child within the 10 years following their diagnosis, the researchers found. For male cancer survivors, reproduction rates were about 30 percent lower than among their healthy peers.
“There is much left to be done to improve post-diagnosis reproduction, in particular in women,” Dr. Sophie Dorothea Fossa of The Norwegian Radium Hospital in Oslo and her colleagues conclude in a report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Newly Found Enzymes May Play Early Role in Cancer
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Researchers have discovered two enzymes that, when combined, could be involved in the earliest stages of cancer. Manipulating these enzymes genetically might lead to targeted therapies aimed at slowing or preventing the onset of tumors.
“We could conceivably reactivate a completely normal gene in a tumor cell – a gene that could prevent the growth of a tumor if reactivated,” says David Jones, Ph.D., professor of oncological sciences at the University of Utah and senior director of early translational research at the university’s Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI).
“We believe this could be one of the earliest processes to go wrong in cancer,” he adds. “By manipulating these enzymes, we could possibly prevent or slow the onset of tumors.”
