1/11/2005 Karen Pihl-Carey BioWorld Online (www.bioworld.com) Providing new hope for breast cancer patients, Abraxane soon will offer the antitumor benefits, without the toxic solvent side effects, of paclitaxel. The FDA approved the product developed by American Bioscience Inc., of Santa Monica, Calif. It will be manufactured and marketed through the company's 70 percent-owned subsidiary American Pharmaceutical Partners Inc. (APP), of Schaumburg, Ill. "What this means to the breast cancer patient and to the physician is they can now provide the full potential of this drug paclitaxel," said Patrick Soon-Shiong, chairman, president and CEO of privately held American Bioscience and executive chairman of APP. Abraxane is indicated to treat breast cancer after failure of combination chemotherapy for metastatic disease or relapse within six months of adjuvant chemotherapy. With the approval, the FDA has designated a new group of protein-bound particle drugs in which Abraxane is the first in the class. The product consists of albumin-bound paclitaxel nanoparticles, which are one-hundredth the size of a single red blood cell. "What is exciting now about Abraxane is it is the first of a new class of drug products, and second, it is the first taxane that is free of solvent," Soon-Shiong told BioWorld Today. "As a result, it can be given without premedication and without a black box warning of severe hypersensitivity reactions. "It can be given at a 50 percent higher dose of chemotherapy," he said, "and the outcome is an almost doubling of the response rate when compared to Taxol." Another [...]

1/11/2005 London, England Rebecca Smith London Evening Standard (as reported in www.thislondon.co.uk) A man has received almost £200,000 after being wrongly told that he had throat cancer and had 12 months to live. Alan Brant was "devastated" when doctors told him he had to undergo surgery to remove most of his gullet. The mistaken diagnosis cost him his relationship and he almost lost his job. Complications left him dangerously ill and he has long-term side-effects as a result of the treatment. Tests carried out after the surgery revealed Mr Brant, 54, had never had cancer. He has been given £192,000 in compensation after doctors owned up to making a horrendous mistake. "I have gone through all this for nothing and for about six months I was suicidal," he said. "The effect on my life has been devastating." Complications during surgery meant Mr Brant's spleen had to be removed and he developed pneumonia and a dangerous abscess in his lung. After further treatment he cannot eat proper meals. He has to eat small snacks and cannot have food and drink together. He also has problems with stomach acid coming up into his mouth. Mr Brant, from Woking, said his relationship broke down under the stress and his job as a commercial kitchens designer suffered. His ordeal began when he experienced difficulties swallowing. His GP referred him to a consultant gastroenterologist at St Peter's Hospital in Chertsey, Surrey, who said there was an obstruction and took a biopsy. Then doctors told Mr [...]

1/10/2005 Lexington, Kentucky Ohio State's James Cancer Hospital as reported by Lex18.com The next time you're in the grocery store, try to find fresh black raspberries. Even when they're in season they can be hard to find, which is too bad, because scientists say black raspberries may be a potent cancer fighter. So how can you get the benefits of the berries year-round? The answer might be in America's love of snacking. Researchers at Ohio State's James Cancer Hospital have already shown that black raspberries may help prevent colon and esophageal cancers. Now, their latest studies suggest the berries may help battle oral cancer as well. In lab tests, the berries reduced tumors in the mouth by 44 percent. But there's just one problem. "For us, we would need to eat about four cups of fresh black raspberries a day," said Chris Weghorst, PH. D, of the James Cancer Hospital. So, Weghorst set out to concentrate the benefits of the berries into something easy to eat. Something like cancer-fighting lozenges. Now, for the first time, researchers will test these lozenges on oral cancer patients. Doctors will take a sample of tissue from their tumors once, and then do it again after patients have consumed the lozenges for up to three weeks. "We could evaluate the expression patterns in those two pieces of tissue and identify genes that were specifically responding to a black raspberry treatment," Dr. Weghorst said. Chef Renee Bean likes that idea. She has had oral cancer, and [...]

1/10/2005 New Brunswick, NJ The Cancer Institute of New Jersey Help us find out by joining a study being conducted at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, the state’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center dedicated to cancer research, prevention, treatment and education, in cooperation with the New Jersey Dental School. Mouth Cancer is the most common cancer in the head and neck region of the body and is often fatal. Mild or moderate dysplasia, which may appear as white or grey patches, is a potentially pre-cancerous condition in the mouth. A clinical trial is underway to see the effects of green tea on these white or grey patches. If you have been diagnosed with mild or moderate dysplasia or have white or grey patches in your mouth, talk to your dentist or contact The Cancer Institute of New Jersey to determine your eligibility for this study. If eligible, you will be asked to consume lozenges 8 times a day for 12 weeks and your participation will last for 24 weeks. If interested in participating, please call 1-866-654-9898

1/10/2005 New Brunswick, NJ The Cancer Institute of New Jersey ---------------------------------------------------------- Have You Seen Patients with Oral Leukoplakia or Other Pre-Malignant Oral Lesions? Learn More About a Study of Green Tea in Oral Leukoplakia at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey and The New Jersey Dental School ----------------------------------------------------------- The Cancer Institute of New Jersey 195 Little Albany Street New Brunswick, NJ 08903-2681 (732)-235-CINJ www.cinj.org

1/10/2005 New York, New York Dr. Frank C P. Holstege Nature Genetics (Feb. 2005) as reported by Cancerpage.com The gene expression profile of metastatic head and neck cancer is distinct from that seen with forms that have not spread, a finding that could improve the treatment of this malignancy, Dutch researchers report. For certain cancers, such as head and neck squamous carcinomas (HNSCCs), early detection of metastases to nearby lymph nodes is critical for appropriate therapy, senior author Dr. Frank C P. Holstege, from University Medical Center Utrecht, and colleagues note. Unfortunately, these metastases are often difficult to detect, resulting in inappropriate treatment for many individuals. In the present study, reported in the February issue of Nature Genetics, Dr. Holstege's team describes the identification of gene expression profiles that correlate with HNSCC lymph node metastases. In a training set of 82 HNSCCs tumors, optimal prediction was achieved using the profiles of 102 genes. In a validation set, gene profiling correctly determined the metastatic state of 19 of 22 tumors analyzed. Further testing showing that genetic profiling outperformed clinical diagnosis. "It is highly plausible that expression profiling will, in the future, improve diagnosis and treatment of oral cavity and oropharynx squamous cell carcinomas, particularly by reducing adverse side effects related to overtreatment, but also by reducing the severe risk of fatalities due to overlooked metastases in the case of 'watch and wait' strategies," the authors conclude.

1/10/2005 Providence, Rhode Island Felice J. Freyer The Providence Journal The practitioner claims the title of doctor on his Web site along with a medical degree under a charter from the governments of Liberia and Ghana. Federal agents yesterday raided the office of John E. Curran, a practitioner of "natural healing" who does not have a medical license, after the state medical board received a complaint that Curran was "posing as a doctor." Jason Simonian, a special agent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's office of criminal investigations, who was among those conducting the raid, said that the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service were also involved in the investigation. But Simonian declined to answer questions about what the agents were looking for. Thomas Connell, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente, said: "I am not in a position to explain why they were there. There is no documentation that is on the public record. There were agents of the Food and Drug Administration and the Internal Revenue Service participating in a law-enforcement initiative." Yesterday, about a dozen agents were searching the office, on the third floor of One Richmond Square, and loading boxes full of bottles and canisters, along with some equipment, into a van. One batch of canisters contained "chocolate almond protein supplement" and another was labeled "BeneFin," with Curran's name printed on the label. Curran's lawyer, Artin H. Coloian, said, "A lot of this stuff is vitamin C. . . . regular stuff, ginger, [...]

1/8/2005 Pittsburgh Jennifer Bails Science Magazine as reported by Pittsburgh Tribune-Review A team of University of Pittsburgh researchers has discovered that too much of a single protein can cause a cascade of calamitous changes in a cell leading to the formation of cancerous tumors. The findings published in today's issue of Science, a prestigious peer-review journal, could help scientists develop cancer treatments that are safer and more effective than chemotherapy, said Susanne Gollin, one of the paper's authors. "The more we understand about tumor cells and how they misbehave compared to normal cells, the more we can target our research to developing potential cancer therapies," said Gollin, a human geneticist at Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health. Gollin collaborated with Pitt biologists Nicholas Quintyne and William Saunders. They found that too much of a protein called nuclear mitotic assembly protein -- or NuMA -- disrupts cell division by interfering with a second protein called dyenin. Large amounts of dyenin help make up the mitotic spindle, an assembly of fibers and proteins used to ensure that new cells are allotted the proper number of chromosomes. Before a healthy cell divides, it duplicates its chromosomes. These chromosomes are then evenly separated by the spindle so the two new cells have equal amounts of genetic material. Normal cells have mitotic spindles with two ends, or poles, with structures at either end called centrosomes that help direct cell division. But cancer cells often have extra centrosomes, which can lead to defective spindles with too [...]

1/6/2005 Louise Fong et al. Journal of the National Cancer Institute (vol 97, no 1, pp40-50) The mineral zinc may help prevent oesophageal and oral cancers in people at high risk, suggests research on rats. A team from the Kimmel Cancer Center of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia found that rats that are deficient in dietary zinc experience increased expression of COX-2 in the oesophagus and tongue, an effect that is accompanied by a hyperplastic phenotype in these areas that is likely relevant to cancer development. Oesophageal and tongue cancers have previously been associated with dietary zinc deficiency, and these cancers often overexpress COX-2, a characteristic known to contribute to carcinogenesis. Louise Fong and colleagues report in today’s issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (vol 97, no 1, pp40-50) that COX-2 overexpression accompanies hyperplasia in zinc-deficient rats. Treating the rats with zinc or a COX-2 inhibitor reduced COX-2 overexpression and reversed the hyperplasia found in the oesophagus.

1/6/2005 Reuben Lotan Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 97, No. 1, 3-4, January 5, 2005 Retinol (the prototypic vitamin A) and its metabolites called retinoids play important physiologic roles in embryonal development, vision, maintenance of epithelial differentiation, immune functions, and reproduction (1). Many of these functions are mediated by retinol metabolites such as all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) (2). ATRA modulates gene expression by means of nuclear receptors that are members of the steroid hormone gene superfamily. These receptors, retinoic acid receptors (RARs) and retinoid X receptors (RXRs), appear in at least three subtypes, designated alpha, beta, and delta. The receptors function as ligand-activated heterodimeric DNA-binding transcription enhancing factors and regulate the transcription of various genes, which play important roles during development and in adult tissues. Abberant expression and function of specific retinoid receptors, primarily RAR, have been associated with cancer development and progression (3,4). However, recent studies have highlighted additional mechanisms for abrogation of retinoid signaling in carcinogenesis. These involve abnormalities located upstream of retinoic acid and its nuclear receptors. These defects interfere with retinol storage and its metabolism to retinoic acid and result in a localized retinoid deficiency. Interestingly, we have suggested that decreased levels of RAR may be, at least in part, caused by local vitamin A deficiency (5). Dietary retinol is stored in the liver in specialized cells and delivered to various target tissues via a retinol-binding protein (6). However, retinol is also stored in various extra-hepatic tissues including breast epithelial cells. Retinyl esters are the [...]