12/3/2006 Detroit, MI S Milberger et al. Tob. Control, December 1, 2006; 15 Suppl 4: iv17-iv26 Background: In the late 1990s and the early part of this decade, the major US cigarette manufacturers admitted, to varying degrees, that smoking causes cancer and other diseases. Objective: To examine how tobacco manufacturers have defended themselves against charges that their products caused cancer in plaintiffs in 34 personal injury lawsuits, all but one of which were litigated between the years 1986 and 2003. Methods: Defence opening and closing statements, trial testimony, and depositions for these cases were obtained from the Tobacco Deposition and Trial Testimony Archive (http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/). All available defence-related transcripts from these cases were reviewed and a content analysis was conducted to identify common themes in the defendants' arguments. Results: After review of the transcripts, defendants' arguments were grouped into seven categories: (1) there is no scientific proof that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer; (2) the plaintiff did not have lung cancer as claimed; (3) the plaintiff had a type of lung cancer not associated with cigarette smoking; (4) the plaintiff had cancer that may have been associated with cigarette smoking or smokeless tobacco use, but tobacco products were not to blame in this particular case; (5) the plaintiff had cancer that may have been associated with cigarette smoking, but the defendant's cigarette brands were not to blame; (6) the defendant's cigarettes (or smokeless tobacco) may have played a role in the plaintiff's illness/death, but other risk factors were present that negate [...]

12/3/2006 Milan, Italy Daniela Alterio, M.D. ASTRO, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, Feb. 1, 2006 Doctors in Italy are studying whether a new type of mouthwash will help alleviate pain for patients suffering from head and neck cancer who were treated with radiation therapy, according to a study published in the February 1, 2006, issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of ASTRO, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology. Fifty patients, suffering from various forms of head and neck cancer and who received radiation therapy as part of their treatment, were observed during the course of their radiation treatment. Mucositis, or inflammation of the mucous membrane in the mouth, is the most common side effect for these patients yet no additional therapy has been identified that successfully reduces the pain. All of the patients experienced some level of pain related to their cancer treatment and this study sought to discover if a mouthwash made from the local anesthetic tetracaine was able to alleviate the discomfort associated with head and neck cancer and if there would be any negative side effects of the mouthwash. The doctors chose to concoct a tetracaine-based mouthwash instead of a lidocaine-based version because it was found to be four times more effective, worked faster and produced a prolonged relief. The tetracaine was administered by a mouthwash approximately 30 minutes before and after meals, or roughly six times a day. Relief of oral pain was reported in 48 [...]

12/3/2006 internet web article staff CancerConsultants.com According to an article recently published in the Archives of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, long-term use of aspirin may reduce the risk of developing head and neck cancer among some patients. Head and neck cancer originates within the head or neck. The most common type of head and neck cancer is squamous cell, which refers to the type of cell where the cancer originated. Because head and neck cancer is often associated with a decline in quality of life due to side effects of standard therapies as well as with suboptimal outcomes once the cancer has spread from its site of origin, prevention of this cancer is an active area of research. Researchers from the Roswell Cancer Park Institute in New York recently evaluated data among 529 patients who were diagnosed with and treated for head and neck cancer between 1982 and 1998. The data from these patients were compared to data from hospital patients who did not have head and neck cancer. - The use of aspirin was associated with a 25% reduction in the risk of head and neck cancer. - The risk of head and neck cancer was reduced further with frequent and prolonged use of aspirin. - Individuals who were aspirin users and had moderate exposure to either smoking or alcohol demonstrated a 33% reduced risk of head and neck cancer. - Individuals who were heavily exposed to either smoking or alcohol did not benefit from aspirin use. - Women [...]

11/30/2006 Toronto, Ontario, Canada Carolyn Abraham GlobeandMail.com At any other moment in Brad Thompson's life it might have sounded too strange. But when University of Calgary researchers approached the entrepreneur in 1998 about the potential of using a common stomach bug to fight cancer, their timing was uncanny. Dr. Thompson had lost his mother to lung cancer that year, his uncle to esophageal cancer and he himself had been diagnosed with melanoma. "I was open to thinking about cancer, and thinking about it in a new way," said the microbiologist, who was working with a biotech firm on bowel diseases at the time. "I'm awfully glad they came to see me." Eight years later, Dr. Thompson, now CEO of Calgary-based Oncolytics Biotech, is in the vanguard of one of the more promising, if unconventional, approaches to treating cancer patients: deliberately infecting them with viruses. Cancer cells, it so happens, are particularly vulnerable to viral invasion and the century-old concept has cured laboratory mice, pushed some end-stage cancer patients into long-term remission and raised hopes for a new generation of cancer therapies. Hundreds of patients in clinical trials in Canada, the United States and Europe have volunteered to catch a cold, a stomach bug, a mutant form of herpes and even a chicken flu. Researchers have found cancer cells lack the defences that healthy cells have to protect themselves from infection. Flipped into overdrive, a cancer cell never shuts down the pathway that allows a viral intruder to waltz in, replicate [...]

11/30/2006 Boston, MA Pascal Pommier et al. MedicalNewsToday.com Proton beam radiation therapy, a very precise type of radiation treatment, may be an effective treatment for advanced adenoid cystic carcinoma that has spread to the cranial base, according to a study from the Francis H. Burr Proton Therapy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). In the November issue of Archives of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, the research team describes results from 11 years of using proton therapy to treat this tumor, which can be dangerous when it spreads into the complex structures at the base of the skull. "We are very encouraged by our results, in which local tumor control of advanced adenoid cystic carcinoma of the cranial base compared very favorably with results reported from traditional radiation therapy," says Annie Chan, MD, MGH Radiation Oncology, who led the study. Frequently originating in the salivary glands, adenoid cystic carcinoma is an indolent but aggressive tumor that is usually treated surgically if diagnosed at an early stage. However, when it originates in or spreads into the cranial base - a complex area involving the cranial nerves, the eyes and critical brain structures - it is impossible to remove the tumor safely. Traditional radiation therapy has had limited success in controlling the tumors' growth, largely because the sensitive adjacent structures sharply limit the ability to deliver a strong enough dose. Proton therapy takes advantage of an inherent quality of the positively charged atomic particles. As they travel through tissues, protons release [...]

11/29/2006 Canberra, Australia Vesna Poljak and Gemma Daley Bloomberg.com Australia's government agreed to add Merck & Co.'s Gardasil vaccine to its subsidized health program, reversing an earlier decision to exclude the shots which protect against viruses causing 70 percent of cervical cancer. Prime Minister John Howard said Australia will spend A$436 million ($342 million) making the vaccine free for women aged 12 to 26. The turnabout followed an agreement by its distributor CSL Ltd. to cut the price by 27 percent, and criticism from the Australian university where it was developed. "Gardasil will be available for a nationwide vaccination campaign commencing next year," Howard told reporters in Canberra today. "This remarkable Australian drug can be made cheaply available to women." Cervical cancer kills about 250,000 women annually, making it the second-biggest cause of death among female cancer patients globally, according to the World Health Organization. It is caused predominantly by human papillomavirus, or HPV, a virus carried by about 440 million people. Shots protecting against the sexually transmitted virus should be mandatory for preteen girls and available worldwide, researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore wrote in the scientific journal Nature Reviews Cancer in September. Gardasil is the first vaccine aimed at preventing cervical cancer. It is "an immense innovation," Didier Hoch, president of Sanofi Pasteur MSD, the vaccine joint venture between Merck & Co. and Sanofi-Aventis SA, said this week. European Union-member states should lead other governments by making the vaccinations mandatory for all girls aged 11-12 years, the [...]

11/28/2006 Buffalo, NY Vijayvel Jayaprakash, MBBS et al. Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2006;132:1231-1236 Objective: To evaluate the chemopreventive potential of aspirin against head and neck cancer. Design: Hospital-based case-control study. Setting: National Cancer Institute–designated comprehensive cancer center. Patients: Individuals who received medical services at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, between 1982 and 1998 and who completed a comprehensive epidemiologic questionnaire. Main Outcome Measure: Aspirin use among 529 patients with head and neck cancer and 529 hospital-based control subjects matched by age, sex, and smoking status. Results: Aspirin use was associated with a 25% reduction in the risk of head and neck cancer (adjusted odds ratio, 0.75; 95% confidence interval, 0.58-0.96). Consistent risk reductions were also noted in association with frequent and prolonged aspirin use. Further, a consistently decreasing trend in risk was noted with increasing duration of aspirin use (Ptrend = .005). Risk reduction was observed across all 5 primary tumor sites, with cancers of the oral cavity and oropharynx exhibiting greater risk reduction. When analyzed by smoking and alcohol exposure levels, participants moderately exposed to either showed a statistically significant 33% risk reduction (adjusted odds ratio, 0.67; 95% confidence interval, 0.50-0.91), whereas participants exposed to both heavy smoking and alcohol use did not benefit from the protective effect of aspirin. The reduction in risk was relatively more significant in women. Conclusions: Aspirin use is associated with reduced risk of head and neck cancer. This effect is more pronounced in individuals with low to moderate exposure to [...]

11/26/2006 Louisville, KY Miranda Hitti WebMD.com Tests on Mice Suggest Vaccine for Lung Cancer Might Be Possible, but Long Way Off It might be possible to make a cancer vaccine using embryonic stem cells, University of Louisville scientists report. Their prediction is based on early lab tests on mice. No such vaccine exists for humans yet. But results from mouse tests suggest the "exciting possibility" that embryonic stem cell vaccines might prevent cancer, write researcher John Eaton, PhD, and colleagues. Their findings were presented yesterday in Prague, Czech Republic, at a joint symposium of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). "At present, all I can say is that so far it looks good, and that, unless something unexpected happens, this strategy might someday be applied to humans at high risk for development of cancer," Eaton says in an EORTC news release. Eaton is a professor of medicine and pharmacology/toxicology and the Brown Chair of Cancer Biology at the University of Louisville's medical school. Eaton's team used embryonic stem cells taken from mouse embryos to make two experimental vaccines against mouse lung cancerlung cancer. One of the vaccines contained only embryonic stem cells. The other vaccine contained embryonic stem cells plus a growth factor to boost immune response. The scientists split the test mice into three groups. One group of mice got the vaccine containing only stem cells. A second group got the vaccine [...]

11/24/2006 Italy staff Xagena Medicine (www.xagena.it) Taking a vitamin A derivative called Isotretinoin (Accutane/Roaccutane) did not reduce the risk of second primary tumors or improve survival in patients with stage I or II head and neck squamous cell cancers (HNSCC). In addition, current smokers had an increased risk of second primary cancers and death. HNSCCs are the fifth most common cancers and sixth leading cause of cancer related death today. In 2002, there were 600,000 new cases diagnosed worldwide. Some studies have suggested that vitamin A derivatives called retinoids may halt or even reverse growth of head and neck tumors. A clinical trial of high doses of a retinoid called isotretinoin, widely used to treat cystic acne, in patients with HNSCC found that those receiving isotretinoin developed fewer second primary tumors, particularly smoking-related tumors. However, there were substantial side effects among those who received the high-dose isotretinoin, and subsequent studies of the compound have shown mixed results. To assess the effect of lower, more tolerable doses of isotretinoin on the development of second primary tumors and survival among patients with early-stage HNSCC, Fadlo R. Khuri, of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and colleagues conducted a randomized clinical trial of 1190 patients diagnosed with stage I or II HNSCC. Patients were randomly assigned to receive low-dose Isotretinoin (30 mg/day) or a placebo for 3 years. Researchers continued to monitor the patients for 4 or more years after treatment. This clinical trial is the largest chemoprevention study to date [...]

11/24/2006 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Catherine F. Poh et al. Clinical Cancer Research Vol. 12, 6716-6722, November 15, 2006 Purpose: Genetically altered cells could become widespread across the epithelium of patients with oral cancer, often in clinically and histologically normal tissue, and contribute to recurrent disease. Molecular approaches have begun to yield information on cancer/risk fields; tissue optics could further extend our understanding of alteration to phenotype as a result of molecular change. Experimental Design: We used a simple hand-held device in the operating room to directly visualize subclinical field changes around oral cancers, documenting alteration to fluorescence. A total of 122 oral mucosa biopsies were obtained from 20 surgical specimens with each biopsy being assessed for location, fluorescence visualization (FV) status, histology, and loss of heterozygosity (LOH; 10 markers on three regions: 3p14, 9p21, and 17p13). Results: All tumors showed FV loss (FVL). For 19 of the 20 tumors, the loss extended in at least one direction beyond the clinically visible tumor, with the extension varying from 4 to 25 mm. Thirty-two of 36 FVL biopsies showed histologic change (including 7 squamous cell carcinoma/carcinomas in situ, 10 severe dysplasias, and 15 mild/moderate dysplasias) compared with 1 of the 66 FV retained (FVR) biopsies. Molecular analysis on margins with low-grade or no dysplasia showed a significant association of LOH in FVL biopsies, with LOH at 3p and/or 9p (previously associated with local tumor recurrence) present in 12 of 19 FVL biopsies compared with 3 of 13 FVR biopsies (P = [...]