7/19/2005 Bethesda, MD Panayiotis A. Kyzas, Konstantinos T. Loizou, John P. A. Ioannidis Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 97, No. 14, 1043-1055, July 20, 2005 Background: Nonreported and selectively reported information and the use of different definitions may introduce biases in the literature of prognostic factors. We probed these biases in a meta-analysis of a prognostic factor for head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) mortality that has drawn wide attention—the status of the tumor suppressor protein TP53. Methods: We compared results of meta-analyses that included published data plus unpublished data retrieved from investigators; published data; and only published data indexed with "survival" or "mortality" in MEDLINE/EMBASE, with or without standardized definitions. We also evaluated whether previously published meta-analyses on mortality predictors for various malignancies addressed issues of retrieval and standardized information. All statistical tests were two-sided. Results: For the 18 studies with 1364 patients that included published and indexed data, we obtained a highly statistically significant association between TP53 status and mortality. When we used the definitions preferred by each publication, the association was stronger (risk ratio [RR] = 1.38, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.13 to 1.67; P = .001) than when we standardized definitions (RR = 1.27, 95% CI = 1.06 to 1.53; P = .011). The addition of 13 studies with 1028 subjects that included published but not indexed data reduced the observed association (RR = 1.23, 95% CI = 1.03 to 1.47; P = .02). Finally, when we obtained data from investigators (11 [...]

7/19/2005 Washington, DC Eva A. Sylwester ScienceDaily (www.sciencedaily.com) New research reaffirms the potential value of green tea as a natural substance able to stop cancer before it starts. "What we do in our conference every year is focus on what the scientists are talking about," said Jeffrey Prince, vice president for education and communications of the American Institute for Cancer Research. Prince and others spoke at a news briefing at AICR's annual International Research Conference on Food, Nutrition and Cancer in Washington. He said this year's conference includes six separate presentations on the benefits of green tea -- and no tea companies were involved in the research. The AICR also released the "New American Plate Cookbook," featuring recipes designed to promote smaller portion sizes and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables. "The American Institute for Cancer Research recommends a mostly plant-based diet to people concerned with reducing cancer risk," Prince said. Many plant-based foods are rich in anti-oxidants, which limit damage to cells and tissues that toxins and pollutants cause by slowing the rate of certain chemical reactions. The active ingredient in green tea is a compound called epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG, a stronger anti-oxidant than is contained in either vitamin C or E, according to an AICR fact sheet. Green tea is made from the same plant as black tea and oolong tea, but the leaves are not fermented during processing, which apparently preserves the plant's cancer-fighting compounds. In a study using cancer cells in mice, Thomas Gasiewicz, a [...]

7/19/2005 Germany S Rohde et al. Radiologe, July 15, 2005 Background: Modern treatment concepts for patients suffering from oral and oropharyngeal cancer include more and more adjuvant therapeutic options. Local chemotherapy offers the possibility to apply an extremely high drug concentration at the tumor site while minimizing possible side effects by systemic neutralization at the same time. Patients and Methods: A total of 289 patients with histologically proven carcinoma of the oral cavity and the oropharynx underwent neoadjuvant intra-arterial chemotherapy with high-dosage cisplatin within a multimodal therapeutic setting. Concerning the TNM classification, more than 70% of the patients were classified as stages III and IV. The mean age at the time of intervention was 60 years, and 71% of the patients were male. Results: After the first cycle 19.3% of the patients presented with complete remission (grade I); 35.4% and 41.5% showed partial remissions (grade II) or stable disease (grade III), respectively. The mean observation time after treatment was 28 months (median: 24.2 months). Of the 137 patients who completed the full multimodal therapeutic scheme, 11% developed local recurrence, and 12.4% developed lymph node or distant metastasis. At the time of evaluation, 72,5% of these patients were still alive. Conclusion: Intra-arterial chemotherapy is a safe and highly effective procedure that should be considered as an important option in multimodal therapeutic concepts for oral and oropharyngeal cancer. Authors: S Rohde, A F Kovacs, F E Zanella, J Berkefeld, and B Turowski Authors' affiliation: Institut für Neuroradiologie, Klinikum der Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/Main,

7/17/2005 Chicago, IL John Easton Medical News Today (medicalnewstoday.com) Adding low doses of angiostatin -- a naturally produced substance that inhibits the formation of new blood vessels -- to standard radiation therapy dramatically improves the response to cancer treatment in animal models without increasing toxicity, report researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and Northwestern University in the July 16 issue of Nature. Human angiostatin alone produced only a modest decrease in tumor growth when given to mice with large tumors. Radiation therapy alone produced a slightly greater response. The combination of angiostatin and radiation, however, caused significant growth inhibition, demonstrating a powerful synergistic effect, even in mice with very large tumors. "Our finding suggests that radiation therapy, already a standard of cancer care, could be dramatically improved by simultaneous administration of relatively small doses of angiostatin," said Ralph Weichselbaum, M.D., professor and chairman of radiation oncology at the University of Chicago and director of the study. "This combination could make radiation much more effective at providing local control of cancer, a crucial part of treatment for many tumors, including prostate, brain, head and neck and other cancers. It could even expand the use of radiation therapy to some forms of metastatic disease without requiring high doses." The researchers also studied the combination of radiation plus mouse angiostatin against human cancers of the brain, head and neck, and prostate that had been transplanted into mice. Once again, the combination was far more effective than the combined [...]

7/17/2005 Middleton, PA Jo Ciavaglia Bucks County Courier Times The mouth pain was so easily ignored that Jerold Wilck doesn't remember when he first noticed it. He saw the sore, but figured he had bitten his tongue. Weeks passed; the sore didn't heal. Strange, Wilck thought. As a longtime dentist, he knew oral abnormalities are fairly rare and usually are nothing troubling. Colleagues looked at his mouth, and none suspected a problem. "That is what happens with most people," he said. It's the reason most people with oral cancer die. Wilck could have been one of them, but a doctor in his Middletown dental practice suggested he get a biopsy. Now, he's spreading the word about the importance of early detection of this common, yet often ignored, cancer. An oral cancer screen should be part of every routine dentist visit, he and other medical experts say. Every year, 30,000 new cases of oral cancer are diagnosed - more cases than leukemia and cancers of the stomach, pancreas and kidney. At 8,000 deaths a year, oral cancer kills more people than melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer. If caught early, as Wilck's was, the survival rate is 80 percent to 90 percent, according to the Oral Cancer Foundation, based in Newport Beach, Calif. But about 75 percent of oral cancers are diagnosed in the advance stages - a year or two after the symptoms are noticed. By that time, survival rates drop to less than 20 percent. "It's much [...]

7/16/2005 Washington, DC Denise Grady New York Times The government warned yesterday that painkilling skin patches could cause drug overdoses and said it was investigating reports of serious side effects and 120 deaths that might have resulted. The patches, containing the narcotic fentanyl, are marketed under the name Duragesic by Janssen, a company owned by Johnson & Johnson. A generic version was put on the market in February by Mylan Laboratories. Duragesic had sales of more than $2 billion in 2004. The patches are intended for people with moderate to severe chronic pain that requires treatment around the clock for an extended period of time and that cannot be controlled by other narcotics alone, the F.D.A. and the manufacturer say. Only those already tolerant of narcotics, as some cancer patients are, should use the patches. People recovering from surgery, or suffering from short-term pain for other reasons, should not. A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration said the 120 deaths had occurred since Duragesic was first approved in 1990 and added that the investigation was still going on and that it was not known whether the product actually caused the deaths and other problems reported in users. Describing fentanyl as a "very strong narcotic," the F.D.A. issued a public health advisory stating that some patients and doctors might not be fully aware of its dangers. An overdose can cause a person to stop breathing; taking off the patch will not reverse the effects because the drug has already built [...]

7/15/2005 Bangalore, India Baby Manoj Express Pharma Pulse (www.expresspharmapulse.com) Biocon’s head and neck cancer drug molecule TheraCIM - developed in association with the Cuban firm CMAB—has entered into phase II-B clinical trials. A phase-II B clinical trial is a typically single-arm study aimed at deciding whether a new treatment is sufficiently promising, relative to a standard therapy, to include in a large-scale randomised trial ‘‘As far as our cancer molecule is concerned, the development is progressing as per our expectations; we should be able to market it as per schedule,’’ Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Biocon chief told this correspondent. It may be recalled that this newspaper had earlier reported Biocon’s cancer drug would reach market at the end of the financial year 2005-06. However, company officials denied further details. Developing a successful cancer drug would catapult an R&D based pharmaceutical company like Biocon into the zeniths of profits. Almost all the large sized pharma companies (both allopathic and ayurvedic) in India— like their more well equipped counterparts in the developed countries—are actively pursuing research in cancer. With the increasingly changing food habits (read fast food culture), life-style and more over a rapidly changing environment by the adverse human activities can definitely be linked to cancer, experts say, making R&D in cancer, a lucrative business proposition. Globally, about nine million new cancer cases are diagnosed every year (of which over half are fatal), it is learnt. In India, half a million new cases of cancer are reported annually with nearly 250,000 deaths, [...]

7/15/2005 Chicago, IL staff reporter Medical News Today (medicalnewstoday.com) Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago are unraveling the biochemical mechanism by which functional foods combat cancer. "Compounds like sulforaphane in broccoli and resveratrol in wine have been shown to prevent cancer," said Andrew Mesecar, associate professor of pharmaceutical biotechnology in the UIC College of Pharmacy. "They do that by signaling our bodies to ramp up the production of proteins capable of preventing damage to our DNA. "We now have a good idea how that signal works." The findings are published in this week's Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Two key proteins, Keap1 and Nrf2, are involved in spurring the defense against cancer when disease-preventing foods are ingested, according to Mesecar and post-doctoral researcher Aimee Eggler. Keap1, the sensor protein, detects the presence of dietary compounds like sulforaphane when they link with its cysteine residues, one of the amino acids that make up proteins. Keap1 binds to Nrf2, the messenger that turns on the genes for the protective proteins, averting DNA damage. "Earlier studies in mice suggested that natural cancer-preventing compounds worked by severing the tie between Keap1 and Nrf2, freeing Nrf2 to take action," Mesecar said. "But the signaling doesn't happen this way in humans." The scientists found that in humans the connection between the two proteins is not broken. What's important, the researchers said, is the modification of cysteines in Keap1. They found that one particular cysteine was among the most [...]

7/15/2005 washington, DC press release RedNova.com Now, more than 90 million Americans can sigh comfortably because of new relief for their bad breath. Dental experts today revealed research highlighting a new treatment option that can eliminate halitosis or chronic bad breath at the Academy of General Dentistry's 53rd Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. "Bad breath is no laughing matter and can actually be an indication of more serious health concerns such as infections," said general and cosmetic dentist, Louis J. Malcmacher, DDS, FAGD and AGD member. The research showed that using low concentrations of carbamide peroxide, an odorless ingredient used to bleach and disinfect teeth, can effectively treat chronic bad breath. Patients seeking this treatment, which costs approximately $500.00, need to first visit their dentist to have customized trays or mouth guards made to fit tightly around their teeth. A low concentration of carbamide peroxide is then placed in the tray and into the patient's mouth, where it remains for an hour. After the first treatment, patients are able to repeat this process at home for an hour everyday. After approximately three treatments, the patient will notice a significant change in their breath. Until now, dentists could only offer treatment plans that reduced, but not treat, bad breath. In the past, using various types of mouthwash and toothpaste provided a temporary solution; however, they did not stay in the mouth long enough to significantly impact bad breath. "If you are suffering from chronic bad breath it is important to work [...]

7/15/2005Newton, PANeal BelluciPharmalive.com Drugs in Development: A wealth of options in oncology With a continued investment in innovative therapies in oncology, Merck KGaA has ongoing active development programs with additional novel therapies that may offer new hope to people with cancer. The company is best known for the first-in-class EGFR-targeted monoclonal antibody, Erbitux, comprising cetuximab, that works by blocking the epidermal growth factor receptor to inhibit tumor growth and spread. Merck KGaA focuses on four therapeutic technology platforms in oncology: EGFR-targeting monoclonal antibodies that may block tumor growth; immunocytokines that may provide local stimulation of the immune system; angiogenesis inhibitors that may starve tumors of the blood supply they need to grow and spread; and cancer vaccines that may stimulate a specific immune response against tumors. "These are exciting times in oncology," says Dr. Bernhard Ehmer, VP, oncology, Merck KGaA (merck.de). "With a better understanding of the growth and spread of tumors, we are able to develop treatments that target the cancer cells and give physicians and their patients additional options with which to fight cancer. "We are particularly excited by Erbitux not only in the treatment of colorectal cancer but also in its potential in head and neck cancer, and by BLP25 Liposome Vaccine, which is showing impressive results in the treatment of nonsmall cell lung cancer. Furthermore, our humanized EGFR-targeting monoclonal antibody matuzumab is showing potential in several types of cancer." Erbitux is a first-in-class and highly active IgG1 monoclonal antibody targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor. As [...]