12/20/2004 Austin, TX press release PRNewswire.com Introgen Therapeutics, and the Board of Regents of The University of Texas System announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued to The Board of Regents U.S. patent number 6,830,749 entitled "Recombinant p53 adenovirus methods and compositions." Introgen Therapeutics is the exclusive licensee of this patent. David L. Parker, Ph.D., J.D., Introgen's vice president of Intellectual Property said, "This patent now brings to 18 the total number of U.S. patents that cover aspects of our Advexin product candidate. Furthermore, this patent is of particular importance in that it is our broadest adenoviral p53 patent to date, covering any adenovirus carrying the p53 gene under the control of any promoter." About Advexin: There are two Phase 3 trials of Advexin therapy currently underway in recurrent squamous cell cancer of the head and neck. Introgen has received FDA Fast Track designation for Advexin therapy and Advexin has been designated as an Orphan Drug for the treatment of head and neck cancer under the Orphan Drug Act. Advexin supplies the tumor suppressor p53 protein in very high concentrations in cancer tissue to selectively kill cancer cells. p53 is a normal constituent of cells and is known as a tumor suppressor because it inhibits the growth of tumor cells. One of the major roles of this protein is to eliminate cancerous cells by recognizing when the cell has been damaged by mutations and stopping cell growth to initiate repair. If the cell is damaged [...]

12/19/2004 Tasmania, Australia Ellen Whin Graphic posters featuring images of a man with mouth cancer will be displayed at all tobacco retail outlets in Tasmania from this week. Letters will be sent to Tasmania's 1200 licensed cigarette sellers advising them of the requirement to display the poster. The full-colour image shows a man with cancer invading his lip, mouth and teeth. Tobacco sellers will be required to display it prominently alongside their cigarettes and tobacco products, or risk a $5000 fine. Director of Public Health Roscoe Taylor said the posters would also contain a message encouraging people to contact the Quit health line. "It's a fairly confronting image," Dr Taylor said. The image had been obtained as part of national research into the dangers of smoking and was part of a series from the University of New South Wales, he said. "That particular image was shown by researchers to have the highest impact and it is the image that is scheduled to appear on cigarette packets in the future," Dr Taylor said. He said the aim of the image was to educate people that smoking caused a range of illnesses including cancers and heart disease. "Too many people simply associate smoking with lung cancer but it is an unfortunate fact that tobacco smoke is a poison that causes a whole range of problems starting at the mouth," he said. On January 1, new smoking restrictions come into effect in Tasmania. Smoking will be banned in gaming rooms, cabarets and nightclubs. [...]

12/19/2004 Raleigh, North Carolina Kayce T. Ataiyero newsobserver.com Anti-tobacco push targets baseball When Paul Turner conjures up an image of baseball, he sees a player on the field, his eyes trained on the ball, his mouth chomping on chewing tobacco like a cow with cud. But like an artist with a shiny new set of paintbrushes, Turner, director of the National Spit Tobacco Education Program, is eager to create a different picture of baseball, one in which its players and coaches are tobacco-free. On Saturday, Turner spoke at the N.C. Baseball Coaches Association Conference to encourage coaches to keep their players from using snuff. He pleaded with the audience to help get out his message: Smokeless does not mean harmless. "A lot of people think [snuff]'s safer because the [tobacco] industry uses the term 'smokeless.' What we are trying to say is that any tobacco is bad," he said. "Coaches are great influences; they are role models. We want them to educate their athletes and parents." The National Spit Tobacco Education Program is funded by the N.C. Health and Wellness Trust Fund, which was created in 2000 by the state General Assembly to allocate some of the state's share of the national tobacco settlement to health initiatives. The program works to prevent all spit tobacco use, but Turner said he focuses on baseball because it is so closely associated with the practice. According to the National Cancer Institute, it is estimated that 40 percent to 50 percent of minor league [...]

12/19/2004 Dave Reardon StarBulletin.com You won't see that little bulge in any of their chins, that periodic tight spray of spit, that plastic cup that is not for drinking. The University of Alabama, Birmingham Blazers’ offensive coordinator and former winner of the Heisman Trophy beat the odds and cancer Some might have the urge sometimes, but none of the UAB football players, coaches or staff would ever have the nerve to dip in front of offensive coordinator Pat Sullivan. "I don't think so, not after what he's been through," Blazers head coach Watson Brown said. As far as Sullivan and Brown know, none of the UAB personnel who used smokeless tobacco in the past do anymore, not after what Sullivan went through last year. "I don't really know of anybody who does it now," Sullivan said. Sullivan, the 1971 Heisman Trophy winner as an Auburn quarterback, was diagnosed in August 2003 with squamous cell carcinoma, a form of throat cancer. He underwent surgery the next month to remove three lumps from his neck. Doctors told him he had a 65 percent to 70 percent chance of surviving. The Birmingham, Ala., hometown hero and former NFL player and TCU head coach simply said he would "whip it." And that's what Sullivan did. "It was awfully, awfully difficult. I had to go through three very strong rounds of chemotherapy and I had 33 or 34 treatments of radiation. I probably lost 60 pounds over the course of the year," said Sullivan, who [...]

12/18/2004 Medical News Editor Medical News Today Dutch researcher Laura Bungener has developed a vaccine against cervical cancer. Vaccinated laboratory animals no longer developed the disease and animals which had already developed a tumour, could be treated with the vaccine. Cervical cancer is caused by a virus. The vaccines against cervical cancer induce an immune response to proteins from this virus, rendering it harmless. Laboratory animals which had already developed a tumour, could be treated with a vaccination. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the virus responsible for cervical cancer. More than one hundred types of the virus are known. Some of these are high-risk types of HPV, which can convert healthy cells into cancer cells. Proteins E6 and E7 from the virus are responsible for this and are an ideal target for treatment because they only occur in malignant cells. The vaccine developed by Bungener, induces a specific immune response against these two proteins. To test the vaccine, Bungener administered two different vaccines to mice. The 'recombinant Semliki Forest virus' and virosomes from the flu virus. The 'recombinant Semliki Forest virus' induces the production of proteins E6 and E7. The virosomes from the flu virus contain the E7 protein. Both vaccines induced an immune response in mice against these proteins. During the immune response, the animals produce cytotoxic T-lymphocytes that are specific for E6 and E7 and prevent the tumour from growing further. Even mice that already had a tumour could be treated with a vaccination of the 'recombinant Semliki Forest [...]

12/18/2004 Medical News Editor Medical News Today Combined positron emission tomography and computerized tomography (PET/CT) can help diagnose occult (hidden) recurrent cancer, possibly a cancer patient's greatest post-treatment fear, report a team of Israeli physicians in the December issue of the Society of Nuclear Medicine's "Journal of Nuclear Medicine." PET and CT scans are standard imaging tools that allow clinicians to pinpoint the location of cancer within the body before making treatment recommendations. PET/CT involves sequential PET and CT imaging on the same device, allowing for simultaneous acquisition of functional (PET) and anatomical (CT) data. "PET/CT was found to indicate the presence of new malignancy and also precisely localize and define the extent of disease" in patients in whom recurring cancer was suspected, explained lead author and SNM member Ora Israel, M.D. The physicians asked the question, "Is FDG-PET/CT Useful for Imaging and Management of Patients With Suspected Occult Recurrence of Cancer?" Their study points to an affirmative answer, said Israel, who also noted the need for these initial results to be confirmed in large studies with more homogenous patient populations. The research team studied 36 cancer patients for whom blood tests showed increasing levels of serum cancer markers during follow-up. "PET/CT was the only test that showed whether recurrent tumors were indeed present," and since anatomic information was obtained, the type of treatment that should be applied could be determined, she said. "This is clinically important, since no treatment could be planned in these patients without the benefit of [...]

12/17/2004 Rachael Myers Lowe www.cancerpage.com Disappointing clinical trial results lead drug maker AstraZeneca to stop promoting its targeted lung cancer drug Iressa (gefitinib). The company advised patients who are currently taking the drug to talk to their doctor as soon as possible. Those who want to continue taking Iressa will continue to get it, the company said. “It is our intention to continue to provide the product” to those who want it, Mary Lynn Carver, AstraZeneca’s director of oncology information, told cancerpage.com. The company announced today that initial analysis of a large clinical trial involving nearly 1700 patients shows that Iressa “failed to significantly prolong survival in comparison to placebo” in the overall population or in patients with cancer. “This is a huge surprise to the oncology community, to the FDA and to ourselves,” Carver said. In a letter to doctors posted on the AstraZeneca USA web site today, the company suggests physicians prescribing Iressa consider other options: “In light of positive survival data with other agents including another oral EGFR inhibitor, AstraZeneca urges you to consider other treatment options in the recurrent non-small cell lung cancer patient population.” Carver said the company was moving quickly to inform doctors about the test results because of the patients they treat. “The patients they are treating are highly refractory advanced lung cancer patients with only weeks to live in some cases,” she said. In the US, Iressa was approved as a third-line treatment for advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients only after [...]

12/17/2004 New York no attribution cancerpage.com Concomitant treatment with cisplatin improves locoregional control in patients undergoing hyperfractionated radiotherapy for advanced head and neck cancer, according to Swiss researchers report in the December 1st issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. For these patients, "the most effective combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy with acceptable toxicity remains to be defined," Dr. Pia Huguenin of University Hospital Zurich and colleagues note. To investigate further, the researchers studied 224 patients with squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck who given hyperfractionated radiotherapy at a median dose of 74.4 Gy over a course of 5 weeks. They were randomized to also receive two concomitant cycles of cisplatin or to radiotherapy alone. Median time to any treatment failure was 19 months in the combination group and 16 months in the radiotherapy group. However, this difference was not significant. There was also no significant difference in overall survival and late toxicity between the two groups. However, locoregional control and distant disease-free survival significantly improved in those given cisplatin. Although the researchers note that further investigation is required, they conclude that "two cycles of cisplatin monotherapy significantly prolongs time to local failure, time to locoregional failure, and time to distant metastatic relapse, with a tendency toward improved overall survival." In an accompanying editorial, Dr. K. Kian Ang of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, writes that the findings help "in defining a less toxic radiation-chemotherapy platform to which novel agents can be added." SOURCE: Journal of [...]

12/15/2004 Austin, TX no attribution news8austin.com Laryngeal and hypopharyngeal cancers start in and around the larynx, which is often known as the "voice box." The larynx contains the vocal cords, which vibrate and make sound when air is directed against them. The hypopharynx surrounds the larynx. It's part of the esophagus or food pipe. Several types of cancers can form in these two areas. About 95 percent of these cancers start from squamous cells. These are the thin, flat cells that line the larynx and hypopharynx. Squamous cell cancer does not form suddenly. It starts when the cells begin to change. Smoking and heavy alcohol drinking usually cause the changes. The cells then become pre-cancerous. Most pre-cancers will not become cancers. If the causes, such as smoking, stop, these pre-cancers usually go away. The earliest form of cancer is called carcinoma in situ. This type of cancer has not yet spread to other parts of the body. Some of these very early cancers go away on their own. Most can be cured by stripping or cutting away the lining of layers of cells. Some are destroyed by a laser beam. However, if the cancers are are not treated, they can spread. While other types of cancer can start in the glands and tissue of the larynx and hypopharynx, they are very rare. The American Cancer Society said about 10,000 people in the United States will have laryngeal cancer in 2004, and more than 3,000 will die from the disease. There [...]

12/15/2004 no attribution American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) To help cancer patients and their families better understand their treatment options before making a decision, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology has published seven patient information brochures that explain how radiation therapy is used to safely and effectively treat various cancers. Five of the brochures cover radiation therapy options for specific types of cancer, including breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, head and neck cancer, and colorectal cancer. ASTRO has also published a lengthy booklet detailing how radiation therapy works and what patients can expect during treatment as well as a brochure explaining all the healthcare professionals that work together to treat patients with radiation therapy. Each brochure contains information patients and their families can use to talk to their cancer specialists when deciding on a course of treatment. They also include information on support groups and clinical trials. The brochures are free to cancer patients and advocacy groups by visiting http://www.astro.org/patient or calling 1-800-962-7876. “Although there are literally thousands of Web sites and patient brochures out there on cancer, we felt that the sections on radiation therapy were often inaccurate or out-of-date. We thought it would be helpful to publish our own material reflecting all the exciting changes in our specialty that are helping cure patients of their cancer,” said Louis Harrison, M.D., Chair of the ASTRO Communications Committee and a radiation oncologist at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. “We hope that this [...]