1/5/2007 Raleigh, N.C. Sabine Vollmer The NewsObserver (www.newsobserver.com) New test results suggest that a GlaxoSmithKline drug awaiting regulatory approval to treat late-stage breast cancer also has potential to corral the disease early on, before tumors spread. Scientists who studied Tykerb in women unresponsive to other therapies concluded that the GSK treatment shows promise as an early-stage tumor buster. GSK controlled the study and paid for it. Outcomes of the study, which was halted early because results in patients with late-stage breast cancer were so promising, were published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Early GSK research on Tykerb indicated that the drug could be a powerful cancer treatment with few side effects, said Dr. Neil Spector, a cancer drug researcher who oversaw the drug's clinical testing before joining Duke University last year. "This is great," Spector said of the conclusions. "The good news is there's so much interest. Everybody is moving very quickly in what will be a much more rapid development." Scientists associated with Harvard Medical School began a clinical trial last summer to study Tykerb in early-stage breast cancer. The conclusions from the GSK study "accelerate and reaffirm our expectations with Tykerb," said Dr. Paul Goss, a professor of medicine at Harvard and the director of the breast cancer program at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston. Goss and his colleagues control the study but GSK is paying for it. Results are expected in 2009 or 2010. GSK plans to use the study's results [...]

1/5/2007 Reston, VA Barbara Kram DotMed News (www.dotmed.com) "PET/CT in Cancer Patient Management" is the subject of a special supplement to the January issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. SNM, the largest molecular imaging and nuclear medicine association, is publishing a unique collection of articles that explore the role of 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging in patient screening, cancer diagnosis, initial treatment planning, treatment monitoring and detection of early recurrence. "Oncologists, internists, general practitioners, radiologists and nuclear medicine physicians are frequently overwhelmed by the need to select-from among the different imaging modalities-the one that best serves the needs of their patients," notes the supplement's guest editor Johannes Czernin, the director of the Nuclear Medicine Clinic and professor and vice chair of molecular and medical pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Despite the impressive growth of PET/CT, there is no consensus on the optimum clinical use of PET/CT and its implementation into patient management," he added, thereby prompting the publication of this exceptional resource. “Selecting the ‘best’ PET/CT protocol for a given clinical problem adds another layer of complexity for referring physicians and practicing imaging specialists who need to avoid redundancies in diagnostic tests that frequently involve radiation,” said Heinrich Schelbert, who is editor in chief of JNM, the most prominent peer-reviewed journal in nuclear medicine, molecular imaging and allied disciplines. Doctors use positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT) scans as standard imaging tools to pinpoint disease states in the body. When PET is used to image cancer, [...]

1/5/2007 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada press release Emediawire.com The cancer-fighting abilities of berries have been put under the microscope at leading universities over the past decade, and researchers at Ohio State are putting them to the test again. Black raspberries are being used in a four-year study that began in July to see if they can slow or stop the return of oral cancer, which has one of the highest rates of recurrence. The study, funded by the American Cancer Society, will analyze the effects freeze-dried black raspberries have on 120 oral cancer patients. Initial short-term patient studies have shown promise, continuing the trend started by Dr. Gary D. Stoner in previous OSU research that found a diet rich in black raspberries slowed and reduced the growth of colon and esophageal tumors. At the heart of these studies is continued evidence of the health benefits found not just in black raspberries, but blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, red raspberries and strawberries. Mounting data are showing that the properties found in dark-skinned berries can have a positive effect on the body. The antioxidant and other health-friendly properties of these berries are a theory that has long been promoted by Berry Health Inc. founder Dr. Paul Gross, an expert on antioxidant drugs and founding member of the International Berry Health Association. "This effect from black raspberries, blackberries and strawberries has been seen only in laboratory animals to date, but is promising enough that Dr. Stoner has begun human clinical trials," said Dr. Gross, a [...]

1/3/2007 Berkeley, CA press release UCBerkeley News (www.berkeley.edu) While a newly marketed vaccine promises to drastically reduce human papilloma virus (HPV) infections, the major cause of cervical cancer, a new discovery by University of California, Berkeley, researchers could some day help the millions of people already infected and at constant risk of genital warts and cancer. One study found that 75 percent of sexually active men and women under 50 have, or have had, an HPV infection, while 10,000 women annually develop cervical cancer, more than 90 percent of which is caused by HPV. Four thousand women die of cervical cancer each year. In upper photo, the chromosomes of a dividing epithelial cell (red) have more than a hundred hitchhikers — DNA plasmids of the human papilloma virus (green). Treating a cell with a special peptide created by UC Berkeley researchers kicks the hitchhikers off (lower photo), and could lead to a drug that will prevent spread of the virus. (Photos courtesy Botchan lab/UC Berkeley) Once infected, it's difficult to rid oneself of the virus because it hides as a latent DNA in cells of the epithelial tissue, such as skin and the lining of the vagina and cervix, and spreads as these cells divide. The UC Berkeley team created a protein fragment, or peptide, that successfully prevents the virus from hitching a ride on a cell's chromosomes as the cell divides. If such a peptide - or more likely, a drug that mimics the action of the peptide - [...]

1/2/2007 web-based article staff Life Science News (news.biocompare.com) A research team at UT Southwestern Medical Center has for the first time identified several genes whose expression is lost in four of the most common solid human cancers – lung, breast, prostate and colon cancer. The findings, which researchers say could form the basis for a new early detection screen for certain cancers, are published today in the online journal Public Library of Science Medicine. The expression of genes that inhibit cancer development, so-called tumor suppressor genes, is often lost in tumor cells. This can occur through a mutation in the gene's DNA sequence or through deletion of the gene. Loss of tumor suppression function also can occur in a process called methylation, where a chemical called a methyl group is attached to a DNA region near the gene and prevents it from being activated, essentially "silencing" the gene. "These results show the power of studying tumors on a genome-wide basis, looking at many genes at the same time," said Dr. John Minna, the study's senior author and director of the W.A. "Tex" and Deborah Moncrief Jr. Center for Cancer Genetics and the Nancy B. and Jake L. Hamon Center for Therapeutic Oncology Research at UT Southwestern. In an effort to identify new tumor-suppressor genes that might be important to lung and breast cancer development, the UT Southwestern team examined which genes are active in those kinds of tumors and compared them to gene expression profiles from normal lung epithelial cells. [...]

1/2/2007 College Park, MD press release University of Maryland, Greenbaum Cancer Center University of Maryland researchers have begun testing “Trojan peptide” vaccines to treat squamous cell carcinoma, a common type of head and neck cancer. The goal is to learn whether the vaccines, which target specific proteins made by tumors, can stimulate the body’s immune system to destroy the cancer. Made from peptides, or fragments of proteins found in select tumor cells, the vaccines being used in this Phase I clinical study are designed to slip into cells with the help of a “chaperone” that carries the bulky protein molecules through dense cell membranes, much like a “Trojan horse” bringing soldiers behind enemy lines before a surprise attack. “We hope that these vaccines will stimulate the patients’ T cells, or immune cells, to recognize the proteins as invaders and seek out and kill the cancer cells throughout the body that produce the same proteins,” says Scott E. Strome, M.D., professor and chairman of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the lead investigator of the study. Both vaccines being tested target proteins linked to squamous cell cancers of the head and neck, most commonly seen in the mouth, throat and other parts of the upper digestive tract. The proteins are human papillomavirus (HPV) 16 and MAGE-A3. HPV 16 is also linked to cervical cancer. Dr. Strome, who helped to develop these unique peptide vaccines, says that the vaccines are experimental and [...]

1/2/2007 Cambridge, MA Kevin Bullis Technology Review (www.technologyreview.com) The first in a new generation of nanotechnology-based cancer treatments will likely begin clinical trials in 2007, and if the promise of animal trials carries through to human trials, these treatments will transform cancer therapy. By replacing surgery and conventional chemotherapy with noninvasive treatments targeted at cancerous tumors, this nanotech approach could reduce or eliminate side effects by avoiding damage to healthy tissue. It could also make it possible to destroy tumors that are inoperable or won't respond to current treatment. One of these new approaches places gold-coated nanoparticles, called nanoshells, inside tumors and then heats them with infrared light until the cancer cells die. Because the nanoparticles also scatter light, they could be used to image tumors as well. Mauro Ferrari, a leader in the field of nanomedicine and professor of bioengineering at the University of Texas Health Science Center, says this is "very exciting" technology. "With chemotherapy," Ferrari says, "we carpet bomb the patient, hoping to hit the lesions, the little foci of disease. To be able to shine the light only where you want this thing to heat up is a great advantage." Although several groups are now working on similar localized treatments, Naomi Halas and Jennifer West have led the way in this area, and their work is the farthest along. (See "Nano Weapons Join the Fight Against Cancer.") Nearly ten years ago, Halas, professor of chemistry and electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, developed a precise [...]

1/1/2007 London, England Fionna McCrae www.dailymail.co.uk A quick and easy mouthwash test for hard-to-diagnose cancers of the head and neck is being developed by scientists. The kit - which looks for telltale signs of the disease in cells from the inside of a person's cheeks - has proved more than 80 per cent accurate at distinguishing healthy people from cancer sufferers. Such a "gargle and spit" test could prove invaluable in diagnosing the cancers which affect more than 7,000 Britons a year - and kill 2,500. High-profile sufferers of head and neck cancers have included the journalist, John Diamond, who suffered from throat cancer and George Harrison, who suffered both neck and throat cancer. They both died in 2001. The cancers, which include mouth, nose, throat, ear and eye tumours, are hard to diagnose and difficult to treat. Many are not spotted until the cancer has spread and a third of patients die within a year of diagnosis. Surgery can be disfiguring and lead to problems with speech, hearing or eating and just 40 per cent of sufferers are still alive five years after diagnosis. Early diagnosis would allow treatment to start at a time when it is most likely to be effective. The test, being developed in the U.S., picks up important genetic changes linked to head and neck cancer. The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, identified the abnormalities after studying the genetics of hundreds of cancer sufferers and healthy people. The volunteers were asked to gargle [...]

1/1/2007 Washington, D.C. Lauran Neergaard MyWay News (apnews.myway.com) Reluctant to get a second opinion? Consider this: Over half of breast cancer patients had their initial treatment changed when they sought a review at a specialty center. But the question remains whether everybody with cancer really needs to go shopping for a second opinion. And if the first two doctors disagree, do you need a tiebreaker? Better than serial doc-shopping may be what Dr. Michael Sabel, a University of Michigan breast cancer surgeon, calls the team approach. It's where specialists in different aspects of cancer care - the radiologist and pathologist, surgeon, medical oncologist and radiation oncologist - all get together, usually with the patient, to reread all the tests and hash out the best treatment. That, not run-of-the-mill second opinions, is what Sabel set out to study when he examined what happened to 149 breast cancer patients who, in one year alone, came to Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center after being diagnosed, biopsied and getting a treatment recommended from a doctor elsewhere. "This was very eye-opening," he says of the results. Now he wonders, "Is there a benefit to the multidisciplinary approach upfront, rather than seeing a surgeon, then going to the next doctor, then to the next doctor?" The study examined just recommendations for initial surgical treatment, not later chemotherapy or radiation - yet 52 percent of the women had one or more changes urged by the specialty tumor board, Sabel reported in the journal Cancer. Sometimes it was because [...]

12/29/2006 London, England Robert West British Medical Bulletin 2006 77-78(1):123-136 The history of tobacco control in the twentieth century can be summed up by the phrase ‘too little, too late’. The century saw the proliferation of the most deadly form of tobacco use: cigarette smoking. Until the 1970s, no government took serious action to protect its citizens. In fact, probably the most effective global tobacco control ‘strategies’ to date have not been motivated by health concerns: they have been inaccessible or uneconomic markets for tobacco companies and a cultural taboo on women smoking. Economic development has led to massive increases in male cigarette smoking in developing countries but even now <10% of women in non-Western countries such as China, Russia and India smoke. With ‘westernization’, this picture is changing. Without drastic action to get current smokers to stop, the annual rate of tobacco-related deaths will grow from 5 million in 2006 to 10 million in 2025. Without further action to prevent take up of smoking, the subsequent death toll will be even higher. The recently enacted World Health Organization (WHO)-initiated Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) can mitigate this impending disaster but only if it is implemented according to the spirit and not just the letter of the articles contained therein. Specific tobacco levies in every country should be the primary means of kick-starting the process, with the proceeds being used exclusively to fund other tobacco control initiatives, including product regulation. Author's affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University [...]