News on cancer breakthroughs: Curb your enthusiasm

By: Christopher Johnson, MDSource: KevinMD.comDate: July 20, 2013  Hardly a day goes by when some news outlet does not report, often breathlessly, some new breakthrough in cancer research. We need to turn a skeptical eye on most of these reports, particularly those that contain information about very preliminary research findings. The always astute Gary Schweitzer gives a good perspective on this in his HealthNewsReview.org; it’s a good site to bookmark if you follow the medical news. The key thing to remember is that many, many substances have been found to attack and kill cancer cells in the laboratory. The cartoon above, from the wonderful site xkcd, illustrates the problem. This is generally how promising anti-cancer agents are first identified: we test them against cancer cells growing in a dish. These are called in vitro (“in glass”) studies. But once a potential cancer treatment is found there is a long way to go. First of all, can the concentrations of the agent that showed cancer-killing activity in the dish be safely achieved in the body? And, if they can, does the agent still show that ability in the incredibly complex system of the body? Often such in vivo (“in life”) studies are first done in experimental animals before they are tried in humans. The testing process in humans is long and complicated. By convention it is divided into several phases. These are worth knowing about because the media will often enthusiastically report results from phase I trials, which represent very preliminary [...]

2013-07-22T12:19:54-07:00July, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Research uproar at a cancer clinic

Source: Author: Duff Wilson Two years after becoming vice president for research at the biggest hospital in this university town, Suzanne Stratton said she had finally seen enough She had clashed repeatedly with a doctor who oversaw the local patients enrolled in more than 130 federally sponsored cancer studies — work that the hospital promoted in local television advertisements but that Dr. Stratton, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, said was often putting patients and science at risk. In a meeting with Carle Foundation Hospital administrators late last year, Dr. Stratton demanded that they take action. She cited an outside audit that had found “major deficiencies” in 12 of 29 experiments being overseen by that doctor, potentially endangering patients or skewing the studies’ results. Dr. Stratton says her bosses responding by firing her, ushering her out of the hospital later that same day. But federal officials, alerted by Dr. Stratton, have corroborated many of the shortcomings she found. They are continuing to investigate — an inquiry with implications for the nation’s cancer research effort that go far beyond the Carle Cancer Center. In the last quarter century, among the hundreds of thousands of people around the nation who have enrolled in federally financed trials of cancer drugs and treatments, more than one-third have come through the doors of local medical centers like Carle. Together, these nearly 400 federally designated community research sites and the network of 3,400 participating physicians amass more evidence for cancer science than at any of [...]

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