7/22/2003 Scripps Howard News Service This is an editorial opinion, not a news article The best is enemy of the good, the ancient Greeks told us, and the meaning of the saying is hardly a puzzle: By insisting on something ideal but extraordinarily difficult to achieve, you may exclude a significant improvement that's much more likely of accomplishment, if also short of ideal. And that thought brings us to the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., which is asking the Federal Trade Commission if it would be OK to put out an ad recommending a change from cigarettes to something called Revel, described by the Associated Press as "a tobacco-filled packet, like a tea bag, which consumers suck on." The pitch of this ad would be that Revel includes no objectionable secondhand smoke. A year ago, the company had a bigger idea, since abandoned. It wanted to promote snuff and chewing tobacco as less a health risk than smoking cigarettes. Anti-smoking groups aren't having any of either proposal. Smokeless tobacco can kill, too, they say, and smokers need to quit, not switch. There's no question that smokeless tobacco can be addictive. It's a vile, dirty habit. It's a contributing factor to oral cancer and other diseases. Its use, as the anti-smoking groups are quoted as saying, can be fatal. Nevertheless, it is not as dangerous as smoking, and a scientist whose research is financed by the tobacco company is right: Some people who cannot force themselves to break loose of tobacco's hold [...]

7/21/2003 Baltimore MD Shalmali Pal The International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, and Physics The standard of care for the treatment of esophageal cancer advanced significantly at the close of the 20th century, including the increased use of esophageal ultrasound and a combination of chemoradiation and surgery. "These changes reflect a continual progression of technology into routine clinical practice, as well as a wider acceptance of the results of large randomized trials supporting the role of combined-modality therapy in the management of this disease process," wrote lead author Dr. Mohan Suntharalingam from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, and Physics (July 2003, Vol. 56:4, pp. 981-987). The paper compared the latest trends in treatment and care to earlier data from the nationwide Patterns of Care Study (PCS). The latter was started in 1971 in an effort to improve the quality and accessibility of radiation oncology in the U.S. The present retrospective study was designed to evaluate patients who received radiotherapy for esophageal cancer from 1996 to 1999 and compare these numbers to PCS data obtained between 1992 and 1994. Suntharalingam’s co-authors are from the American College of Radiology and the University of Pennsylvania, both in Philadelphia; the Community Medical Center in Toms River, NJ; Boston University School of Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston; the Cancer Center at St. Agnes in Fresno, CA; and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. For this study, site visits took [...]

7/13/2003 Cambridge, MA Advanced Magnetics Combidex, an investigational MRI iron oxide nanoparticle contrast agent manufactured by Advanced Magnetics of Cambridge, MA, has shown encouraging results in the non-invasive diagnosis of metastatic lymph nodes. In two presentations at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, the product was determined to be a useful tool in characterizing cancerous lymph nodes. The first presentation, by Dr. Mukesh Harisinghani, an assistant radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, offered data on the use of the contrast agent for characterizing lymph nodes in patients with breast cancer. Harisinghani found that the product had advantages in assisting physicians in staging cancers. The second presentation, by Dr. Ralph Weissleder, director of the Center for Molecular Imaging Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, concluded that Combidex is a useful MRI contrast agent for characterizing lymph nodes in patients with prostate cancer, and that Combidex-enhanced images alone may suffice for lymph node characterization. The contrast agent is the lead product in the firm’s development pipeline, and has received an approval letter, subject to certain conditions, from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in the diagnosis of metastatic lymph nodes. Advanced Magnetics is continuing to work with the FDA to resolve the outstanding issues from the approvable letter in an effort tobring Combidex to the market, according to the company.

7/12/2003 Sarasota, Florida Brad Rodu, D.D.S. The Sarasota Herald Tribune OCF Note: This article only appears here because of the absurdity of its author’s perspective. This is an editorial comment By Brad Rodu DDS, which appears in this paper. It is not a news article. See OCF editorial note at end. Dr. Richard Carmona, the U.S. surgeon general and the Bush administration's primary adviser on the nation's public health, demonstrated that he is sadly ill informed about the nation's No.1 health problem, cigarette smoking, during testimony at a recent House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing. Carmona's first blunder was his contention that "There is no significant scientific evidence that suggests smokeless tobacco is a safer alternative to cigarettes." Carmona rejected decades of published research and the prestigious British Royal College of Physicians, who reported last year that smokeless tobacco products are "on the order of 10 to 1,000 times less hazardous than smoking." Surely Dr. Carmona knows that cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for lung and other cancers, heart diseases and emphysema, resulting in 440,000 deaths annually in the United States. But he doesn't seem to appreciate that smokeless tobacco use carries no risk for lung cancer, heart disease, or emphysema. The only consequential risk for long-term smokeless use is mouth cancer. Fifty years of research prove that even this risk is very low (less than half that associated with smoking). In fact, smokeless tobacco use is about as safe as automobile use. That's 98 percent safer than [...]

7/11/2003 Baltimore, MD The American Cancer Society says there will be about 30,000 new cases of oral cancer diagnosed this year. Nearly one-third will be cancers of the throat. Surgery is standard treatment. Now, a special light can kill the cancer. Two years ago, Allison Jaccard was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. Although this type of cancer is usually thought to be in people who have smoked for years, Jaccard was never a smoker or a drinker. She had surgery, but it didn’t get all the cancer. Then Jaccard was offered an alternative treatment at the University of Maryland using laser light therapy. “It is extremely exciting, I will tell you, for several reasons, not the least of which it’s working,” says Paul Castellanos, M.D., a head and neck surgeon at University of Maryland. Dr. Castellanos uses a light-sensitive drug activated by a laser to destroy cancer cells. Through this device, the laser is directed to the cancer cells, killing them while healthy cells survive. The laser activates the drug to produce a toxic form of oxygen that kills the cancer. He says, “It’s allowing us to take care of cancers of the throat and oral cavity without having to do ablations of those tissues that can have a devastating effect on the patient’s voice.” In a University of Maryland study of people with early stage cancers of the mouth, throat and larynx, after one treatment, nearly 90 percent showed no evidence of the disease. It worked for Jaccard. [...]

6/6/2003 Sendai, Japan Daniel DeNoon Personality Types Unrelated to Risk of Developing Cancer When it comes to cancer, it doesn't matter how outgoing, emotional, aggressive, or conformist you are. Your personality doesn't affect your risk of cancer, a new study suggests. Some -- but by no means all -- earlier studies have found links between cancer and certain personality types. These included being extroverted, having a "type 1" personality, and lacking emotion. These studies had various weaknesses. They tended to focus on small numbers of people. And they often failed to control for important cancer risk factors, such as smoking. Now, a research team led by Yoshitaka Tsubono, MD, of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, has solved those problems. The researchers gave personality tests to 30,277 people living in northern Japan. Seven years later, they looked at who got cancer and who didn't. Four Personality Traits Tsubono's team used a test called the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. It uses four measures to analyze personality: *Extroversion-Introversion. Extroverts are very social people. They have lots of friends and must talk with other people a lot. They like excitement, take risks, and act on the spur of the moment. Introverts are quite and studious. They plan ahead, don't easily lose their tempers, and value ethical standards. *Neuroticism. People with high "N" scores tend to be very emotional and overactive. They have trouble calming down. They complain about vague physical problems and tend to be worried, anxious, and irritated. *Psychoticism (Tough-Mindedness). People with high "P" [...]

6/5/2003 Chicago Charlene Laino In a finding that some physicians say could transform the management of people with locally advanced head and neck cancer, researchers have found that adding paclitaxel to the standard chemotherapy regimen completely wipes out tumors in about one third of patients, extending lives. Patients given the paclitaxel combination are also more likely to retain the ability to speak and swallow, resulting in improved quality of life, said Ricardo Hitt, MD, PhD, an oncologist at the Hospital 12 de Octubre in Madrid, Spain, and the chief investigator of the new study. Based on results of a phase II trial pitting paclitaxel plus the standard regimen of cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) against the standard regimen alone, the researchers hypothesized that the triplet would shrink more tumors, extending survival. Which is just what happened, Dr. Hitt reported here at the 39th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. In the prospective, randomized phase III study of 384 patients with locally advanced head and neck cancers, mostly tumors of the oropharynx, larynx, and oral cavity, patients were randomly assigned to receive either 100 mg/m2 of cisplatin on day 1 plus a continual infusion of 1 g/m2 of 5-FU for five days every three weeks, or the same drugs plus 175 mg/m2 of paclitaxel on day 1 of each cycle. About 35% of the patients, whose median age was 56 years, had resectable disease. Three quarters had a performance status of 1, and 84.1% had stage IV disease. Tumors [...]

5/28/2003 Thousand Oaks, Calif. Amgen Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN), announced today that rHu-KGF decreased the duration and incidence of severe oral mucositis in a phase 3 study of patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation treatment for hematologic malignancies such as lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and leukemia. Natural keratinocyte growth factor stimulates the growth and development of epithelial cells, including the cells that line the gastrointestinal tract. Amgen is studying a recombinant human keratinocyte growth factor (rHu-KGF) to protect epithelial cells from injury caused by anti-tumor treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy. Mucositis is a painful and debilitating condition in which patients experience severe mouth ulcerations that can make swallowing difficult or impossible. Preliminary results from the Phase 3 randomized, double blind trial were positive on all end-points showing highly significant decrease in both the duration and incidence of severe mucositis. The trial also showed that KGF was well tolerated. Roger Perlmutter, Amgen's executive vice president of research and development, said: There is no currently approved therapy to treat oral mucositis, a sometimes devastating complication of cancer chemotherapy. We are looking forward to discussing our phase 3 results that address this critical unmet medical need with regulatory agencies in the near future. Amgen will now investigate the efficacy and safety of KGF in other patient populations who suffer from high rates of mucositis associated with their anti-tumor treatments. OCF NOTE: OCF is excited about Amgen bringing this product to market and investigating is efficacy in the treatment of oral mucositis, a considerable problem for [...]

5/27/2003 London, United Kingdom CNN Europe A renowned chef who was told by doctors to stop working and enjoy life after being diagnosed with secondary cancer is hoping his new recipe book will help others. Guiseppe Iacaruso, known as Pino, went through major facial surgery in 1996 to beat a second attack of mouth cancer against all the odds and is still free of the disease seven years on.The esteemed Harbury chef has now combined his talents with food, words and watercolours in his first book, Flavours of Rosello, with a share of the profits going to the Get A-Head charity appeal. The 55-year-old of Penelope Close said: "It's wonderful. I never expected it to look so lovely." Mr Iacaruso has cooked for several members of the royal family including the Queen, the late Princess Margaret and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, has served in the kitchens of the Italian and Finnish Embassies and worked in some of the best hotels in the country during his career. The book is based on his childhood memories of the little Italian village of Rosello in the 1950s and 60s, and is introduced by Princess Michael of Kent. Packed with recipes and illustrated by Mr Iacaruso's own watercolours and sketches by friend George Corbett, the enchanting book offers a month-by-month account of what life was like as he grew up in the Abruzzo region famed for its chefs. The idea for the memoirs came from his wife, Caroline, who he married in [...]

5/10/2003 New York Karla Gale Reuters Health News British researchers report that positron emission tomography (PET) can measure levels of thymidine in tumors, an indicator of patient response to chemotherapy with agents that inhibit thymidylate synthase. Their findings, published in the May 7th issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, show that PET can be used broadly to "track cancer treatment efficacy without the need for repeated tissue biopsies," coauthor Dr. Pat M. Price told Reuters Health. Not only will individual treatment assessment permit early recognition of treatment failure, such strategies should accelerate the rate at which clinical trials can be completed, she added. Thymidylate synthase inhibitors such as 5-fluorouracil, 5-fluorodeoxyuridine and nolatrexed dihydrochloride (AG337; Agouron Pharmaceuticals, San Diego) target a key enzyme in the biosynthetic pathway of thymidine nucleotides used in the synthesis of DNA, Dr. Price and colleagues explain. Resistance to these agents involves a salvage pathway by which depleted thymidine levels are reversed by increasing exogenous thymidine uptake, which makes thymidine a valuable marker of tumor proliferation. Plasma levels of deoxyuridine, which increase following thymidylate synthase inhibition, do not reflect thymidylate synthase inhibition in specific tissues. Dr. Price, of Christie Hospital NHS Trust in Manchester, UK, and her associates set out to evaluate PET scanning with radiolabeled thymidine as a means of measuring tumor thymidine incorporation, an indicator of thymidylate synthase inhibition. They conducted PET scanning in patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancer. Five patients enrolled in a phase I trial of AG337 were scanned 4 [...]