2/4/2004 HELEN R. PILCHER Annals of Oncology, 15, 338 - 345, (2004) Fewer people in Europe are dying from cancer now than a generation ago, according to two recent surveys. But while survival is on the up, so too is the number of new cancer cases, prompting calls for further research funding. In Britain there are 12% fewer cancer-related deaths than there were 30 years ago, according to data from Cancer Research UK. The good news holds for a range of different cancers — the female death rate from breast cancer is down by 20%, and the male death rate from testicular cancer has fallen by 37%. Deaths from stomach cancer are down by about half in most of Europe, according to research from the Institut Universitaire de Médecine Sociale et Préventive in Lausanne, Switzerland1 — a finding echoed by the Cancer Research UK study. The reduced death rates are due to a combination of factors, says Peter Selby, director of the Cancer Research UK Unit at St James's University Hospital in Leeds. Antibiotics and better sanitation are helping to rid the world of Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium thought to cause stomach cancer. Screening programs help to catch breast and cervical cancer early, when treatments may be more effective. Therapies have also improved. Surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are commonly used to remove tumors and keep re-growth at bay. People are tending to smoke less and eat more healthily. Smoking, for example, is responsible for around 90% of all lung-cancer cases. [...]

2/3/2004 Alton Josh Stockinger The Telegraph Looking at 6-year-old Morrisan Henson, you would never know she’s sick. The Alton first-grader bounces into the kitchen and slides to a sock-footed stop at the base of the refrigerator. Her tiny, 3-foot frame is cloaked in a fluffy, red sweatshirt and black pajama bottoms. Morrisan scales the monstrous appliance with her eyes. Looking up, her shoulder-length, light-blond hair falls away from her face, and a slow grin stretches from one fair cheek to the other. "Can I have some pudding?" she asks. Morrisan dances with relentless energy, scooting back and forth, anticipating a response from her grandmother. Pudding and soup are two of the only foods Morrisan can eat these days. "Yes." A smile replaces the grin. In seconds, Morrisan cradles a container of chocolate pudding in her hands. Her eyes sharpen intensely as she pulls back the tin-foil covering. Thhhwiiiikk! Morrisan scampers back to the living room to play with her sister. "She’s an eater," says Sharon Connolly, Morrisan’s grandmother and legal guardian. The refrigerator door swings back, closing the appliance -- on it, a calendar. The page reads "January." Connolly can’t help noticing the calendar out of the corner of her eye. Messages like "Surgery" and "Call Oncologist" fill the boxes, now a timeline of the family’s terrifying ordeals of the past month. "We’re going to fight," Connolly says with a catch in her throat. Finding Out In January, Morrisan became the youngest documented person to be diagnosed with a common [...]

2/1/2004 By Sid Kirchheimer , Reviewed By Michael Smith, MD WebMD Medical News (see below) But More Work Is Needed as 1,500 Americans Will Die Each Day. Although more people are being diagnosed, death rates for most major cancers continue to fall, the American Cancer Society says. Since 1930, overall cancer deaths have declined 11% among men and 14% among women. The biggest decrease has been in stomach cancers, which have dropped 86% in men and 91% in women -- largely because of improved hygiene and food storage and a lower rate of infection of the H pylori bacteria among Americans. "Cancer is not an inescapable fact of life," says Michael J. Thun, MD, an author of the report. "There are things that we do, in our culture and with social policies and practices, that make a difference in cancer occurrence." While news is good regarding deaths from cancer, there is still much work to do. The ACS estimates that cancer will kill more than 1,500 Americans each day this year -- more than 560,000 in all -- and account for one of every four deaths in the U.S. Cancer will continue to be the No. 2 killer behind heart disease. About one-third of these deaths will result from lifestyle factors such as poor diet, obesity or lack of exercise, while smoking will claim about 180,000 lives. In its new report, Cancer Facts & Figures 2004, the American Cancer Society projects that some 1.4 million Americans will be diagnosed with [...]

2/1/2004 Snyder et al Public Library of Science Biology Restoring p53 protein function in mouse cancer models eliminates tumors and increases survival of the animals, according to a new study. Because a p53 mutation is one of the most common events in the development of cancer, the results could have implications for a wide variety of tumors. Cancer often begins with mutations in tumor suppressor pathways. Tumor suppressor genes—such as p53—arrest cell growth and induce apoptosis (programmed cell death) in response to cellular stress, such as chromosomal damage. Cells with p53 mutations can escape these constraints, leading to the uncontrolled growth characteristic of "immortal" cancer cells. Nearly all types of tumors have mutations in the p53 pathway, many of them in the p53 gene itself. Steven Dowdy, of the University of California at San Diego, and colleagues introduced modified p53 peptides (parts of the protein) into cancer cells. p53 works as a "transcriptional" activator that binds to specific gene sequences and triggers apoptosis in response to DNA damage. One region of the p53 protein, the C-terminal domain, facilitates DNA binding. In cancer cells, synthesized peptides (called p53C') derived from this region can induce apoptosis by restoring function to p53 proteins with DNA-binding mutations. To get p53C' peptides into cancer cells, the scientists used a technique pioneered by Dowdy that delivers proteins into the cell interior. Testing the effectiveness of the peptide therapy on mouse strains that model human metastatic disease, the scientists found that mice treated with the p53C' peptide [...]