4/9/2005 Baltimore, MD Kristi Birch Johns Hopkins Magazine April 2005 In the war against cancer, molecular biomarkers hold out tantalizing promise. It doesn't look good, at least not judging from the body count: Cancer kills more than 1,500 Americans a day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's one of every four deaths, or more than half a million people a year. And it gets worse. More than 30 years after President Nixon declared the War on Cancer in 1971, the American Cancer Society reported in January that despite some advances in treatment and prevention, cancer surpassed heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States for people under the age of 85. Tell all that to leading Johns Hopkins cancer expert Bert Vogelstein, and he'll tell you something different. Over the last 25 years, Vogelstein's seminal discoveries have helped establish cancer as a genetic disease — and earned him status as the most highly cited scientist in the world. If we're losing a war, our general doesn't seem to know it. "When I went to medical school, cancer was a black box. Now that has completely changed," Vogelstein says. "There has been a revolution." The revolution is a whole new understanding of the molecular biology of cancer that should enable doctors to detect and remove cancers in their earliest stages, when the cancer is still curable. Specifically, they'll use a new generation of diagnostic tests that look for defective molecules. At the heart [...]

4/9/2005 Lexington, KY Jim Warren Lexington Herald-Leader Researchers at the University of Kentucky and Ohio State University are hoping that one of America's favorite fruits also might prove to be a preventive for oral cancer. They plan to test their theories in a trial at Ohio State this summer by using a purplish gel -- made from freeze-dried black raspberries -to treat selected patients who have precancerous lesions in their mouths. Patients will apply the gel topically. Once oral lesions become cancerous, disfiguring facial surgery may be the only treatment option. Tumors, however, often recur. Even when doctors surgically remove early, precancerous lesions, about half of them also recur with the potential of becoming life-threatening tumors. But if the raspberry gel can prevent, or at least slow, the transformation of lesions into tumors, the medication could become an important new tool against oral cancer. "Obviously we'd like to see these lesions completely disappear, but I think everyone would be happy just to see the whole process slowing down," said Russell Mumper, an associate professor of pharmaceutical science at the University of Kentucky who is working on the project. "Ninety-nine percent or more of these lesions will advance to cancer." Oral cancers, which cause up to 8,000 deaths each year, generally are associated with alcohol and tobacco use, particularly when the two are combined. People who use both tobacco and alcohol face a 38-fold increase in risk, according to Ohio State. Until recently, most victims were men in their 60s or [...]

4/7/2005 Rita Rubin USA Today (www.usatoday.com) A vaccine against the virus that causes cervical cancer and genital warts cut long-lasting infection by 90%, according to a pilot study out Wednesday. Study co-author Eliav Barr of Merck Research Laboratories says his company expects to apply to the Food and Drug Administration late this year for permission to sell the vaccine, which would be the first against cancer. Merck is now testing the vaccine in more than 25,000 women and children, up to one-third of them in the USA, in an expanded trial whose findings will be submitted to the FDA, Barr says. Up to 70% of sexually active women will become infected with human papillomavirus, or HPV, during their lifetime, Barr and his collaborators write in an article posted online by The Lancet Oncology, a British medical journal. More than 90% of cases clear up on their own. More than 35 types of HPV infect the genital tract, but four dominate, according to the article, the first about a vaccine against all four dominant types. Two types, 16 and 18, are linked to 70% of cases of cervical cancer, diagnosed in 470,000 women worldwide each year but rare in the U.S., thanks to widespread screening. These types are also linked to less common cancers: About 80% of cancers of the anus or vulva are associated with HPV 16, and about half of penile cancers are linked to either 16 or 18, says Luisa Villa, lead study author and biologist with the [...]

4/7/2005 Tasmania, Australia Claire Konkes The Mercury State News COLES supermarkets in Tasmania have become the first major stores in the country to end cigarette promotion by covering cigarette displays. This week's move comes as quit-smoking campaigners say a confronting picture on cigarette displays is working. Other Tasmanian stores have taken cigarettes off display after it became mandatory for Tasmanian retailers to display the graphic poster of mouth cancer last year. Coles Myer -- Australia's biggest retailer -- is the first large company to voluntarily cover cigarette displays with plastic or cardboard blockers. QUIT Tasmania executive director Michael Wilson said the response to the cancerous mouth poster was extraordinary. "This is a forerunner to the response of putting the picture on the packets," he said. "We are going to be extremely busy as people start to quit." Smoke Free Tasmania convener Kathy Barnsley said the "yucky picture" of a man's mouth riddled with cancer was having an effect. But she said the perception of cigarettes as "tacky", personal choice and an attraction to thieves also had contributed to the move away from displays. Ms Barnsley commended Coles for showing "outstanding corporate governance" by taking cigarettes out of sight. With most smokers already addicted to their favourite brand, moving tobacco out of sight would mean children were not constantly exposed to advertising and displays, she said. Coles Myer corporate communications manager Caroline Lawrey said the decision was the best solution to the dilemma of offering adults the choice to smoke but [...]

4/7/2005 England Ben Townley uk.gay.com A new vaccine for the virus that leads to anal cancer in gay men and cervical cancer in women has seen dramatic results in clinical studies. The vaccine, which targets variants of the human papillomavirus (HPV), recorded a 90% reduction in infection rate, according to results published in the online journal Lancet Oncology. It was also 100% effective against cancerous lesions. Developed by pharmaceutical giant Merck, the vaccine could be used to protect gay men from anal cancer, although researchers are primarily focussing on cervical cancer in women. A recent study in the US suggested that as many as a third of gay men could be carrying the virus, which does not always lead to cancer and can be transmitted through sexual contact. The virus can also result in genital and anal warts. The trial looked at 1,158 women aged between 16-23 from across Europe and the USA. In a statement to Gay.com UK, Cancer Research UK's Dr Anne Szarewski welcomed the news of the vaccine. "This is further evidence that work on HPV vaccines is showing great promise," she said. "With any disease caused by a virus, the best way to stop it is to prevent it with a vaccine." Earlier this year Dr Szarewski predicted a vaccine could be on the market in the next five years. GlaxoSmithKline is also working on a product to help protect against the HPV virus although, again, this is thought to be focusing on cervical cancer. However, [...]

4/6/2005 New York, NY Anthony J. Brown, MD Reuters Health (via abcnews.go.com) In a study of patients with head and neck cancer, use of vitamin E supplements was associated with an increased risk that their cancer would return or that they'd develop a new cancer. However, during the second phase of the study when supplementation was discontinued, former vitamin E takers had a lower risk of cancer than their counterparts who had been given an inactive "placebo." As a result, by the end of the 8-year study, both groups had comparable cancer risks, according to a report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "We were surprised by the findings," Dr. Francois Meyer, from Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada, told Reuters Health. "When we started the study, we had hoped that vitamin E supplementation would reduce or delay the risk of second primary cancer." "If we would have stopped the study after the first phase, we might have concluded that vitamin E supplementation" had a true effect on cancer risk, Meyer noted. However, the fact that the elevated risk was not seen in the second phase suggests that such use may simply have had a screening effect — leading to earlier detection of cancers, he explained. The findings are based on a study of 540 patients with head and neck cancer who were treated with radiation therapy and randomly selected to receive vitamin E, beta-carotene, or placebo for three years. Because the results of another trial had linked beta-carotene [...]

4/6/2005 Toronto, Ontario, Canada press release Newswire Canada (newswire.ca) The new Vitamin E study published in the April issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute has the potential to cause unfounded fears among healthy individuals. The study's isolated findings applied to a patient group who had latent cancer or were at a high risk of developing cancer. Authors of the study admitted that "there is some concern about the generalization of the study results on individuals in the general population who are at low risk of a first cancer." Of the 540 volunteers, all had been previously treated for head and neck cancer and were at high risk of developing another cancer. At the end of the eight-year study, the percentage of patients who developed cancer were the same in the Vitamin E and placebo groups. It is therefore misleading to conclude that the results seen in this study would translate to the general population. The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) noted in a statement issued March 15th that there are several clinical trials currently underway, including one that involves more than 34,000 men and is evaluating the benefits of Vitamin E and selenium for reducing the risk of prostate cancer. CRN noted that major clinical trials like this one are underway because researchers and study sponsors have confidence in the safety and potential benefit of Vitamin E. "Jamieson Laboratories have complete confidence in Vitamin E supplementation. Vitamin E is an essential antioxidant and most people do not [...]

4/6/2005 New York, NY Amanda Gardner Forbes.com Two gospels of medicine, preached over and over during the past 40 years, have been the dangers of smoking and the benefits to health of quitting. But a footnote to that gospel is that there's never a guarantee. TV newscaster Peter Jennings, who announced Tuesday that he had lung cancer, is an ex-smoker. According to the American Lung Association, about 87 percent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, and 40 percent to 50 percent of new cases may occur in former smokers. Because most lung cancers are diagnosed at a late stage, the five-year survival rate is only 15.2 percent, compared with 63 percent for colon cancer, 88 percent for breast cancer and 99 percent for prostate cancer, according to the American Lung Association. In 2005, lung cancer will take about 163,500 American lives and will maintain its place as the number one cancer killer, outpacing deaths from the second, third, fourth and fifth most common causes of cancer deaths combined, said Dr. Bill Solomon, associate professor of medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York City. Ninety percent of people who are diagnosed with lung cancer will eventually die of the disease, added Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in Baton Rouge, La. Not everyone who smokes will get lung cancer and not everyone who quits will be protected. Why? No one knows for sure. People who smoke have a 10- to 15-fold greater [...]

4/6/2005 Marco Island, FL Virginia Wallace Marco Island Sun Times Many people perceive cigar smoking as being more "civilized" and less dangerous than cigarette smoking. Yet a single large cigar can contain as much tobacco as an entire pack of cigarettes. The secondhand smoke it gives off and that others breathe in can fill a room for hours. How are cigars different from cigarettes? A cigar is defined, for tax purposes, as "any roll of tobacco wrapped in leaf tobacco or in any substance containing tobacco," while a cigarette is "any roll of tobacco wrapped in paper or any substance not containing tobacco." Most cigars are made up of a single air-cured or dried burley tobacco. Cigar tobacco leaves are first aged for about a year and then fermented in a multi-step process that can take from three to five months. Fermentation causes chemical and bacterial reactions that change the tobacco and give cigars a different taste and smell from cigarettes. Cigars come in different sizes, some as small as a cigarette (called a cigarillo), others much larger. Large cigars typically contain between five and 17 grams of tobacco. It is not unusual for some premium brands to have as much tobacco in one cigar as in a whole pack of cigarettes. Large cigars can take between one to two hours to smoke. Who smokes cigars? Cigar smoking continues to be a popular trend in the United States, especially among young men and women. It is fueled in part by [...]

4/6/2005 Bethesda, MD Edward S. Kim, Waun Ki Hong Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 97, No. 7, 468-470, April 6, 2005 The use of natural agents as medicinal treatments has a long history. The Greek physician Hippocrates (circa 400 BCE) was one of the earliest proponents of nutritional healing. His favorite remedies were apples, dates, and barley mush (1). The term "chemoprevention," which was coined in 1976 (2), describes the use of specific natural, synthetic, or biologic agents to reverse, suppress, or prevent the development of disease. Chemoprevention is an appealing approach to treating patients with a variety of medical conditions. For instance, cardiac patients who take low-dose aspirin do so in hopes of preventing a future ischemic event. Cancer chemoprevention's best model is early-stage breast cancer, for which hormonal agents are used to prevent recurrence and contralateral disease in patients with the appropriate hormone receptor status. Both basic biologic research and clinical chemical intervention are the underpinnings of chemoprevention aimed at delaying or halting the process of carcinogenesis. The principles of chemoprevention are based on the concepts of multifocal field carcinogenesis and multistep carcinogenesis. In field carcinogenesis (3), diffuse epithelial injury results from carcinogen exposure; genetic changes and premalignant and malignant lesions in one region of the field translate to an increased risk of cancer developing in the entire field. Multistep carcinogenesis occurs through the stepwise accumulation of alterations, both genotypic and phenotypic (4–7). Arresting one or several of the steps may impede or delay the development [...]