2/18/2005 Medical News Today (www.medicalnewstoday.com) In a new study of 5,887 middle-aged smokers with mild lung disease, those who were randomly assigned to a quit-smoking program had a lower death rate than those assigned to usual care, even though only 21.7 percent of them actually quit smoking. The annual death rates were 8.8 per 1000 participants in the quit-smoking program and 10.4 per 1000 in the usual care group. The annual death rates for those who actually quit was even more positive: 6.0 per 1000 patients compared with 11.0 per 1000 in those who did not quit smoking. Overall, the death rate of those in both groups who were able to quit smoking was 46 percent lower than those who did not quit. The study, "The Effects of a Smoking Cessation Intervention on 14.5-year Morality," is the first experimental study to show that stopping smoking adds years to life. It is published in the Feb. 15, 2005, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The findings were based on data from the Lung Health Study. Randomized trials like the Lung Health Study are widely regarded as the gold standard for proof among clinical studies. "We know that people who smoke should quit smoking," said one of the study authors, John E. Connett, PhD, professor of biostatistics of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. "This study showed that with very simple lung function tests -- spirometry -- we can find people who can benefit the most from an intensive quit-smoking [...]

2/18/2005 Kansas City, Paul Recer Kansas City Star (www.kansascity.com) Detecting illegal drug use may one day become as simple as testing spit on a sponge. Researchers on Thursday said techniques now being developed for analyzing saliva may in the future replace many of the blood and urine tests that now are used to detect drug abuse and disease. Some law enforcement agencies in Europe already test drugged drivers using saliva and the technique is gaining acceptance in the U.S., said Edward Cone, a Maryland researcher developing equipment for using oral fluids to screen for drug abuse. "There are a lot of advantages to using oral fluid or spit," he said Thursday at a news conference of the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "It is easily accessible, noninvasive and not embarrassing. You don't have to greet an employee with a urine cup." Most people produce more than a quart of saliva a day. Researchers have found the oral fluids accurately mirror the proteins that are found in blood and urine. This means that simple spit could provide a diagnostic window on the body in tests not requiring a needle or the embarrassing collection of urine. Cone said experiments have already shown that spit can be even more reliable than urine tests for drug use screening. "Drug users have learned how to beat the urine test in a variety of ways," said Cone, an organic chemist who heads up firm near Annapolis, Md. "We haven't found [...]

2/17/2005 Yael Waknine Medscape (www.medscape.com) Orphan Drug (Proxinium) for Advanced, Recurrent Head and Neck Cancer On Feb. 3, the FDA approved orphan drug status for Proxinium (formerly known as VB4-845, made by Viventia Biotech, Inc.), allowing its use in the treatment of advanced, recurrent head and neck cancer. The product is intended to target tumor cells while avoiding healthy tissue. Proxinium is made up of a humanized single-chain antibody fragment recombinantly fused with a protein cytotoxic agent. The antibody fragment binds to an epithelial cell surface antigen found on the surface of most head and neck tumor cells, allowing its internalization and delivery of the cytotoxic component. The approval was based on the results of a phase 1 trial showing that treatment with Proxinium yielded an objective response rate of 43% in 14 patients with progressive disease. All patients had head and neck tumors expressing the target antigen and a majority had failed prior courses of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. Of the 14 patients, tumor regression was significant in two patients and minor in four others. In an additional four patients, their disease stabilized after treatment. Tumor growth control was therefore achieved in 71% of treated lesions. Treatment-related adverse events were mild, such as injection-site pain. A second phase-1 trial is currently under way to assess the safety and tolerability of the product using a more intensive dosing schedule than that previously studied. The product is also being evaluated for use in bladder cancer.

2/15/2005 Youngstown, OH Len Rome WYTV News (www.wytv.com) How are your New Year’s resolutions coming along? Have you forgotten them yet? Some of the most popular can help cut your risk of cancer. Let's list the five best ways to do that. If you vow to quit smoking, for example, you’ll be doing your body a huge favor. It’s the number one way to cut your risk for cancer, and much more than just lung cancer. “Bladder cancer, cervical cancer, colon cancer, throat cancer, mouth cancer…they’re all associated with cigarette smoking,” says Dr. Electra Paskett of Ohio State University. Number two, if you exercise, not only might you lose weight, you can cut your risk of colorectal cancer in half and breast cancer by a third. Number three, yes, you are what you eat. So eat more fruits and vegetables. Number four, you’ll want to keep in mind when the summer sun returns to watch your exposure to avoid the most common kind of cancer, skin cancer. And finally, remember your annual screenings. Studies show that if we all got the screenings we need, the five-year survival rate for most major cancers would jump to 95 percent. Okay, one more is to control your stress. High levels of stress can actually affect how quickly a cancer progresses.

2/15/2005 Phoenix, AZ The Business Journal Phoenix Zila Inc. has been granted an additional U.S. patent for its Zila Tolonium Chloride product, the company announced Tuesday. The patent covers certain compounds within the Zila Tolonium Chloride product and the use of these compounds in detecting a type of tissue which has been shown in testing to be a potential precursor to cancer. Zila officials also said the company expects to receive patent protection in 15 European countries under an additional patent titled "Method and Prepackaged Swab for Epithelial Cancer Screening." The European patents will cover the use of a prepackaged swab saturated with Zila Tolonium Chloride for performing routine screening procedures to detect cancer. The use of Zila Tolonium Chloride as a screening agent to detect oral cancer has previously been approved by certain European regulatory agencies, and is currently pending regulatory review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Phoenix-based Zila Inc. develops and markets preventative health care technologies and products.

2/15/2005 England BBC News World Edition Saliva tests could be used to detect tumours such as breast cancer, researchers believe. A small study on 32 patients with head and neck cancers showed promising results using a test that checks for genetic signs of cancer in saliva. The University of California Los Angeles researchers now plan a much larger study they told the journal Clinical Cancer Research. UK cancer experts said there was a need for simple, non-invasive cancer tests. Spit test Researchers have been looking at ways to pick up cancer in samples of urine, faeces and saliva for some time as an alternative to blood tests. Some have focused on detecting proteins produced by cancers. Dr David Wong and his team at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center decided instead to look at the genetic messenger for such proteins, called RNA. They recruited 32 patients with cancers of the mouth, tongue and throat and 32 healthy volunteers of the same age and sex. By testing saliva samples, the scientists were able to spot which of the study participants had cancer correctly nine times out of 10. Dr Wong said their results were good, but not good enough. "Although we were able to identify the head and neck cancer patients with 91% sensitivity and accuracy, we missed one out of 10. "With a larger study, we will move that accuracy closer to 100%," he said. Future hope His team is currently recruiting 200 patients with oral cancer to this end. "We [...]

2/15/2005 United Kingdom British Journal of Healthcare Computing and Information Management The University of Loughborough has won a grant from the Department of Health to develop new techniques for tailor-made reconstructive implants. The new techniques should help patients suffering from bone disease, oral cancer, congenital defects and traumatic injuries. The R&D team will focus its efforts on developing rapid prototyping from 3D computer-assisted design (CAD) systems integrated into medical imaging systems such as CT and MRI. The DoH’s New and Emerging Applications of Technology (NEAT) funding programme has awarded the University over £230,000 for the two-year project. It will be led by Dr Russell Harris of the University’s Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. The team are basing their development around an implant-production method called laser sintering.

2/14/2005 Toronto, Ontario, Canada Clincial Linguistics & Phonetics, Feb. 2005 as reported by Eurekalert.org 3-D ultrasound reveals effects of tongue surgery on speech New imaging research about tongue shape and volume before and after surgery should ultimately help surgeons decide how to best reconstruct tongue defects resulting from cancer surgery, says a team of researchers at the University of Toronto. Tim Bressmann, a professor in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology, and his colleague Jonathan Irish, a professor in the Department of Otolaryngology and a head and neck cancer surgeon at Princess Margaret Hospital, are the first researchers to use 3-D ultrasound to assess both normal and partially resected tongues during the production of speech sounds. By measuring the 3-D topography of the tongue's surface as each of 10 normal speakers produced a variety of speech sounds, Bressmann and Irish were able to describe basic mechanisms underlying the normal functioning of a tongue. This ultrasound data became the baseline to which partially resected tongues were compared. "We used the data from the normal speakers to model a prototypical 'Joe Canadian' tongue," says Bressmann. "This is a first step toward assessing the biomechanical impact of different reconstructive techniques on tongue movement for speech. Now, we can work toward determining what the ideal method of reconstruction is for different lesion locations and extents, so that we can ensure optimum speech outcomes for every patient." The researchers are now collecting ultrasound data from more tongue cancer patients in order to build a database for [...]

2/11/2005 as reported by Medical News Today Researchers at the University of Washington have blended the past with the present in the fight against cancer, synthesizing a promising new compound from an ancient Chinese remedy that uses cancer cells' rapacious appetite for iron to make them a target. The substance, artemisinin, is derived from the wormwood plant and has been used in China since ancient times to treat malaria. Earlier work by Henry Lai and Narendra Singh, both UW bioengineers, indicated that artemisinin alone could selectively kill cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed. The new compound appears to vastly improve that deadly selectivity, according to a new study that appeared in a recent issue of the journal Life Sciences. In addition to Lai and Singh, co-authors include Tomikazu Sasaki and Archna Messay, both UW chemists. "By itself, artemisinin is about 100 times more selective in killing cancer cells as opposed to normal cells," Lai said. "In this study, the new artemisinin compound was 34,000 times more potent in killing the cancer cells as opposed to their normal cousins. So the tagging process appears to have greatly increased the potency of artemisinin's cancer-killing properties." The compound has been licensed to Chongqing Holley Holdings and Holley Pharmaceuticals, its U.S. subsidiary, to be developed for possible use in humans. Although the compound is promising, officials say, potential use for people is still years away. In the study, researchers exposed human leukemia cells and white blood cells to the compound. While the leukemia [...]

2/10/2005 Rebekah Cin Hem/Onc Today Avoiding a painful complication of chemotherapy and radiotherapy be-fore bone marrow transplantation may be easier with an FDA approval of palifermin (Kepivance, Amgen). The approval followed a placebo-controlled, double-blind, phase-3 study that found the IV drug reduced the risk of mucositis during pre-transplant regimens. The study, which appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, also found that palifermin shortened the duration of mucositis in patients who developed the adverse effect. Mucositis development High-dose chemotherapy and radiotherapy followed by hematopoietic stem-cell support is a well-established treatment for hematologic cancers, said Ricardo Spielberger, MD, of the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif. and lead researcher of the study. Unfortunately, oral mucositis commonly develops. About 70% to 80% of patients undergoing high-dose chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hematopoietic stem-cell support experience the adverse effect. Spielberger and his colleagues predicted that palifermin would mimic naturally occurring keratinocyte growth factor by stimulating cells on the surface layer of the mouth to grow. This would lead to fast replacement of the cells killed by the cancer treatments as well as accelerating the healing process of mouth ulcers. Mucositis alleviated Researchers enrolled 212 eligible patients with leukemia or lymphoma who received high doses of chemotherapy and radiation treatments associated with bone marrow transplantation. The patients were randomized to two treatment arms. In one group, 106 patients received IV palifermin for three days before treatment. In the other group, 106 patients received a placebo in place of palifermin. Ninety-eight percent of [...]