Cancer
Version of Scorpion Venom Delivers Radioactive Iodine to Brain Tumors
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A new method of delivering a dose of radioactive iodine - using a man-made version of scorpion venom as a carrier - targets deadly brain tumors called gliomas without affecting neighboring tissue or body organs. After a Phase I clinical trial conducted in 18 patients showed the approach to be safe, a larger Phase II trial is underway to assess the effectiveness of multiple doses.
Adam N. Mamelak, M.D., a neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute, led the Phase I trial and is first author of an article in the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The key ingredient is TM-601, a synthetic version of a peptide, or protein particle, that naturally occurs in the venom of the Giant Yellow Israeli scorpion. TM-601 binds to glioma cells and has an unusual ability to pass through the blood-brain barrier that blocks most substances from reaching brain tissue from the bloodstream.
Researchers identify potential ovarian cancer stem cells
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Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have identified potential ovarian cancer stem cells, which may be behind the difficulty of treating these tumors with standard chemotherapy.
Understanding more about the stem-like characteristics of these cells could lead to new approaches to treating ovarian cancer, which kills more than 16,000 U.S. women annually and is their fifth most common cause of cancer death.
The report will appear in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Researchers isolate rare cancer stem cells that cause leukemia
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Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston and their colleagues have isolated rare cancer stem cells that cause leukemia in a mouse model of the human disease.
The leukemia stem cells isolated proved to be surprisingly different from normal blood stem cells—a finding that may be good news for developing a drug that selectively targets them.
Cancer stem cells are self-renewing cells that are likely responsible for maintaining or spreading a cancer, and may be the most relevant targets for cancer therapy. The discovery provides answers to the longstanding questions of whether cancer stem cells must be similar to normal stem cells, and what type of cell first becomes abnormal in leukemia, the most common form of cancer in childhood. The journal Nature has posted the study’s findings online in advance of print publication.
Melanoma May Be Over-Diagnosed
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Exercise Instructor Back on the Job Five Days After Minimally Invasive Lung Cancer Surgery
Diagnosed with a carcinoid tumor, Barbara Wolfe underwent surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to have the upper lobe of her right lung and the lymph nodes in her chest removed. But the 54-year-old exercise instructor lost little time before going back to work, thanks to the minimally invasive procedure performed by thoracic surgeon Robert McKenna Jr., M.D.
“I went home (from the hospital) the next day, and the fifth day I was back at the gym teaching my Power Pump class with 50 people,” says the Camarillo resident, referring to an aerobic workout that employs weights, bands and a step. A fitness instructor for nearly 25 years, she did not use the weights in that first workout. Even so, her boss, who was teaching another class nearby, quickly intervened to be sure she was really OK.
Strategy for Creating Actively Programmed Anti-Cancer Molecules Unveiled
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The new study, which was published July 5 in an advanced, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, achieved a significant enhancement of the treatment of metastatic breast cancer in animal models. The study showed the new hybrid compound remained in circulation for a week. In comparison, the small molecule drug was cleared in a matter of minutes.
“Although the study focused specifically on breast cancer, these new findings could have broad application in the treatment of a number of other cancers, potentially increasing the efficacy of a number of existing or undeveloped small molecule therapies,” said Subhash C. Sinha, Ph.D., associate professor in the Scripps Research Department of Molecular Biology and the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, who led the research with Scripps Research President Richard A. Lerner, M.D., Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Immunochemistry, Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Chair in Chemistry, and a member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology.
In the study, the scientists created what is known as a “chemically programmed antibody” by using small cell-targeting molecules and a non-targeting catalytic monoclonal aldolase antibody in a novel self-assembly strategy.
Women students unaware of lifestyle links to cancer
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Most female students are unaware that lifestyle factors can influence their risk of developing breast cancer, according to a survey released on Monday.
A poll of more than 10,000 students in 23 countries showed more than half knew heredity was a risk factor. But less than five percent realised that eating and drinking too much alcohol and not getting enough exercise also had an impact.
“It is very worrying that information about being overweight, having a high alcohol intake and taking little exercise has simply not been effectively communicated to young women in any of the countries we surveyed,” Professor Jane Wardle, of the charity Cancer Research UK, who headed the research team, said.
European study supports hair dye-lymphoma link
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Using hair dye may increase the risk of a type of cancer known as lymphoma, a European study shows.
“Our data suggest that personal use of hair coloring is associated with a small increase in lymphoma risk, particularly among women who started using hair coloring products before 1980,” Dr. Silvia de Sanjose of the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Barcelona and colleagues write in the July 1 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Past research has suggested a link between coloring one’s hair and lymphoma risk, de Sanjose and her team note. They sought to investigate the association by analyzing results from a large study of lymphoma patients and matched healthy controls, including a total of 4,719 people from six European countries. About three quarters of women reported using hair dye, while 7 percent of men did.
HPV testing improves cervical cancer screening
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Testing for human papillomavirus (HPV) may be a useful first step for cervical cancer screening in women younger than 35 years, preliminary findings indicate.
Testing for HPV is better than standard cell testing at picking up pre-cancerous changes, but it is also more likely to yield false results. This is particularly true among young women, where there is a higher rate of infection, Dr. Guglielmo Ronco explained in comments to Reuters Health.
Using the strategy of HPV testing first, followed by cervical cell examination if needed, “we showed that it is possible to have a relevant increase” in pre-cancer detection without increasing the false results, even among young women, said Ronco, from the Centre for Cancer Prevention in Turin, Italy.
Blacks have poorer survival rate for skin cancer
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Researchers have found that among patients suffering from melanomas, those from a black or Hispanic background were more likely than whites to have the advanced stage of melanoma at the time of diagnosis.
Experts say that the skin cancer melanoma has become increasingly common in the last decade with incidence rates increasing 2.4 percent annually in the United States.
Because light-skinned individuals are at higher risk for melanoma, much of the prevention and early detection efforts have targeted white populations and this may explain improving survival rates which are up to 92 percent from 68 percent in the 1970 among whites.
Helping a Friend - and Her Children - Through an Illness
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Your friend or your sister has just learned that she has cancer. She’s more worried about her children getting through this, than about herself. How should she tell them what’s going on? How can she keep life normal for them during her treatment?
You can offer practical help, suggests Raising an Emotionally Healthy Child When a Parent is Sick (McGraw Hill, 2006). Co-authored by two Harvard psychiatrists, the book describes a decade of experience from Massachusetts General Hospital’s Parenting at a Challenging Time (PACT) program, which helps seriously ill parents of young children.
New test identifies patients who benefit from targeted cancer drugs
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The Weisenthal Cancer Group has announced that clinical data published at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) show that a new laboratory test it has developed accurately identified patients who would benefit from treatment with the molecularly-targeted anti-cancer therapies gefitinib (Iressa, AstraZeneca) and erlotinib (Tarceva, Genentech).
The new test, called the EGFRx assay, predicted accurately for the survival of patients treated with the targeted drugs. The finding is important because the EGFRx test, which can also be applied to many emerging targeted cancer drugs, could help to help to solve the growing problem of knowing which patients should receive costly, new treatments that can have harmful side-effects and which work for some but not all cancer patients who receive them.
Larry Weisenthal, M.D., Ph.D., a medical oncologist and developer of the EGFRx assay explains that the new test relies upon what he calls “Whole Cell Profiling” in which living tumor cells are removed from an individual cancer patient and exposed in the laboratory to the new drugs. A variety of metabolic and apoptotic measurements are then used to determine if a specific drug was successful at killing the patient’s cancer cells. The whole cell profiling method differs from other tests in that it assesses the activity of a drug upon combined effect of all cellular processes, using several metabolic and morphologic endpoints. Other tests, such as those which identify DNA or RNA sequences or expression of individual proteins often examine only one component of a much larger, interactive process.
Folic acid may be the new cancer prevention therapy
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According to a new study supplements of folic acid may help prevent cancer.
Italian researchers enrolled 43 patients with untreated laryngeal leucoplakia and treated them with folic acid (5mg three times a day) and evaluated the progression of leucoplakia every 30 days for six months.
Leucoplakia appears as white patches in the mucus membranes of the mouth or throat, and can contain precancerous cells.
Report links asbestos to larynx cancer
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Research has linked another cancer to asbestos, according to a report released on Tuesday that found exposure can cause cancer of the voice box, or larynx, and possibly of the colon, stomach and upper throat.
The U.S. Senate had asked the Institute of Medicine to look at the link between asbestos and cancers of several organs that are currently listed in stalled legislation to create a $140 billion asbestos injury compensation fund.
It was unclear whether the findings would compel lawmakers to further amend the bill to exclude some cancers that could not be definitively linked to asbestos.
Increased Cancer Awareness Among Holocaust Survivors Recommended
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The death rate from cancer among Holocaust survivors who live in Israel is higher than among their contemporaries who made aliyah before WWII. So asserts a new University of Haifa study, the first of its kind, which examined the incidence of cancer among Holocaust survivors in Israel.
The study was conducted by the University’s School of Public Health. Survivors who were in their childhood during the Holocaust were found to be at a higher risk for cancer than those who were at an older age during the war. Additionally survival from cancer among Holocaust survivors was slightly lower than among cancer patients who did not go through the Holocaust.
The study, the most comprehensive of its kind that has been carried out in Israel, was conducted by Nani Vine Raviv under the guidance of Dr. Micah Brachne and Prof. Shai Linn from the School of Public Health at the University of Haifa and Irena Lifschitz of the Health Ministry’s National Cancer Registry. Funded by the Israel Cancer Society, it was based on data on about two million Israelis of European origin.
Combination “smart bombs” future of cancer therapy
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Using combinations of “smart bomb” cancer drugs that target specific proteins and avoid the indiscriminate cell destruction of chemotherapy may be the wave of the future for cancer patients, experts say.
Early studies show that combining targeted treatments such as Genentech Inc.‘s breast cancer drug Herceptin with GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s experimental treatment Tykerb, may be helpful in patients who do not respond to Herceptin alone, said Dr. Jose Baselga, chief of medical oncology service at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain.
Targeted therapies act as smart bombs by crippling or knocking out deadly cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact, unlike the scorched-earth approach of chemotherapy, which kills both healthy and unhealthy cells.
