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Showing posts with label cancer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cancer. Show all posts

Planned test ID cancer cells in the blood

NEW: will be at least five years prior to the test on the market, saysJohnson doctor and Johnson and Massachusetts General Hospital have teamed up upThe test can be used as a diagnostic tool and research

(CNN)--Johnson & Johnson will collaborate with Massachusetts General Hospital to develop and market a blood test that could find a single cell that circulates in the blood cancer of a person, the company said Monday.

Researchers hope that the test will be used by oncologists as a diagnostic tool designed to discover haste if a cancer has spread, as well as by researchers at coming up with new drug therapies.

Dr. Mehmet Toner, Director of the Center resources BioMicroElectroMechanical Systems at the center of the Massachusetts General technology in medicine, says while it will take at least five years before the test is on the market, is another step towards personalized medicine and the consequences for patients is important. "It is too big. Has the potential to transform the cancer in a chronic diseases, because we keep track of individual patients and to respond to treatment for the genetic makeup of their cancer. "

Toner says the test is like a damp biopsy and seeks almost all solid cancers--cancers found solid organs such as the breast or prostate. Will be analyzed cells cancer finds and genetic makeup is determined, something which would be useful to patient follow-up and targeted treatments for this person.

Veridex, a Johnson and Johnson company, announced a partnership in a statement saying implies Ortho Biotech Oncology Research and development, a unit of Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical research and development.

"This new technology has the potential to facilitate an easy-to-manage, noninvasive blood test that will allow us to count cells that volume, and to characterize the biology of cells," said Robert McCormack, Chief Veridex strategy and technological innovation. "The use of the information contained in these cells in a clinic setting in vitro could allow Editing tools to select and monitor how responding patients".

Veridex launched the first commercial test using technology cell traffic volume in 2004, the company said. Describes traffic volume as cells cancer cells that have been cut from a volume and located at very low levels in the bloodstream. Recording and counting those cells can provide information about patients and doctors prognoses with certain types of metastatic cancer, said the Declaration.

"The value recording and counting CTCs evolve as collected more data survey about the utility of these indicators to monitor the progression of the disease and the guidance potentially personalized cancer therapies," the statement said Veridex.

Toner said it is possible to find a single cell volume traffic across the cells blood 5–10 billion was settled. In reality, one tube of blood taken during the annual examinations will have only a few CTCs.

"The challenging objective of sorting extremely rare traffic volume cells from blood requires continuous technological, biological and clinical innovation to explore fully the utility of these precious cells in Clinical Oncology," said toner. "We have developed and continue to develop a wide range of technologies that are evolving what we know about cancer and cancer care."

The American company cancer said the reinvestigation is exciting, but it is important to remember is simply another step in the scientific process. "Researchers working on this and similar technologies for some time, and others have drawn up a day when we will be able to diagnose cancers before otherwise visible from current techniques," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the Group's Deputy Chief Medical Officer. "It is appropriate to view announcements like the one today with enthusiasm, but recognizes that we must temper this excited with the realization that there is still a substantial amount of research to be done to determine the actual effect of this on the treatment of patients with cancer."CNN Jennifer Bixler contributed to this report.

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Good: The downside of a cancer study praised CT scans

 


Stuart Bradford


Are lung cancer scans really ready for prime time?


News that annual CT lung scans can reduce the risk of lung cancer death among former and current heavy smokers was celebrated by national heath officials this month. A major government study found the screening scans saved the life of one person for every 300 current or former smokers who were scanned.


But now cancer and screening experts are worried that the limited findings will be used by private screening centers to promote the test to a broader group than was studied. That, in turn, could lead to thousands of unnecessary lung scans, causing excess radiation exposure and unnecessary biopsies and surgery.


Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said he was stunned to hear a radio advertisement for an Atlanta screening center cite the study just a few days after the government had announced the results. The wording of the ad seemed to be aimed at a broad group, ranging from heavy smokers to women who had never smoked, Dr. Brawley said.


“We really need to weigh the harms associated with screening,” he said. “The scientific community still needs to digest this. To take a trial that involves people at high risk for lung cancer and to extrapolate it and say it’s good for people with intermediate or low risk is not appropriate.”


The study, called the National Lung Screening Trial, focused on a specific high-risk group: 53,000 current and former heavy smokers, aged 55 to 74, who had smoked for at least 30 pack-years. That means someone who smoked one pack a day for 30 years, two packs a day for 15 years or three packs a day for at least 10 years would qualify for the study.


Former smokers who had accumulated 30 pack-years were included only if they had stopped smoking within the previous 15 years.


The smokers and former smokers were given either annual CT lung scans or chest X-rays. Compared with conventional X-rays, the CT, or computed tomography, scans create a detailed three-dimensional image of the lungs. The study was stopped when it was found that the scanning group had a 20 percent lower risk of dying from lung cancer than those being screened with X-rays.


But the early results also showed a downside of scanning: one of every four lung scans showed an abnormality, which often led to additional worry, radiation exposure from follow-up scans and, sometimes, lung biopsies and even risky surgery. But because the study was stopped early, a full analysis of the harms caused by screening scans is still months away.


Reading the scans is tricky because harmless nodules can be misinterpreted as suspect lesions. In the study, even experienced radiologists at major cancer centers had a high rate of false positives, suggesting that the rate would be even higher in the real world.


“There is a learning curve to reading spiral CTs,” Dr. Brawley said. “I’m concerned that some radiologists might be early in that learning curve and some patients may be harmed because of it.”


While the study found a benefit to scanning a specific group of high-risk smokers, that doesn’t mean other groups will get the same benefit, says Dr. Peter B. Bach, a pulmonologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. In lower-risk groups, for instance, it’s likely that thousands of people would need to be exposed to the risks of screening before a single life was saved. And it’s possible that many of those scanned unnecessarily could be seriously harmed.


“The aggregate harms to all the people’s lives who are not saved have to be taken into account,” Dr. Bach said. “Even in these highly controlled settings, about 1 percent of the people had surgery or a part of their lung removed for something they thought was cancer and it wasn’t.”


Low-dose CT scans expose patients to about the same radiation levels as mammograms.


For now, most consumers who want a scan will have to pay for it themselves, although it is expected that insurance companies eventually will approve scanning for those in high-risk groups. (Medicare officials have indicated that they will soon reconsider paying for the screening tests.) The government has estimated the cost at about $300 a scan, but some centers may charge $1,000 or more.


The day the government announced the study results, Westside Medical Imaging of Beverly Hills, Calif., issued a press release saying that the study “should once and for all settle the controversy” about whether CT lung scans save lives.


In the release, Dr. Norman E. Lepor said the scans were an “indispensable” part of annual exams for patients who have smoked for 10 years.


In an interview, Dr. Lepor said that he only offers lung scans to those at high risk, and that he turns people away who are at low risk but want the scan anyway because “they just want to know.”


Dr. Lepor said it would be “imprudent” not to incorporate the latest study data into his practice right away.


“There are people who, with good conscience and their take of the data, say it’s not ready for prime time, and there are people who look at the same data and they come to other conclusions,” Dr. Lepor said. “This is not the first study that has supported screening. We know from our own anecdotes that we have saved a lot of lives.”


Dr. Lepor said that he had just met a woman who had smoked for 50 years and was concerned about her risk. “She’s the poster person for this test,” he said.


Dr. Brawley said he’s worried that the few early press releases and radio advertisements are just the beginning of widespread promotion of screening lung scans.


“It was sort of ominous to be working Sunday evening in my home office and this thing comes on the radio,” he said. “A lot of people run out when there is a new announcement and get the new test. We’re very frightened some people are going to be harmed because of this.”

A version of this article appeared in print on Nov. 16, 2010, on page D5 of the New York edition of The Times.

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Vital signs: Study ties ovarian cancer and hormone therapy

More bad news about post-menopausal hormone therapy: a new European study reported that, to take hormones significantly increased risk of ovarian cancer are's women rarely but often deadly.

Findings from the European prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition that some 126,920 post-menopausal women included, were at a Conference of the American Association for cancer research presented this week in Philadelphia.

After nine years follow-up 424 ovarian cancer had diagnostiziert.Sogar after controlling for body mass index, smoking and several other risk factors, the researchers found that women, post-menopausal hormone therapy had 29 percent higher risk of ovarian cancer than women not using hormones.

Women hit, facing an increased risk of 63 percent over estrogen used only hormone therapy, after a hysterectomy, not consumers during the increased risk of ovarian cancer in women, with a combination of estrogen and progestin not statistical significance.

Yet, said study author, Konstantinos k. Tsilidis, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Oxford's cancer epidemiology in England, it was a clear increase in the risk for current user all hormones, but only if you had used hormones for at least five years.

"" It is important that the message out to women ", said Dr. Tsilidis."This is a very fatal cancer."

The number of women hormone therapy dropped after a large trial funded by the national institutes of health, find that hormones has increased the risks of stroke and blood clots, and that the combination therapy increases the risk of breast cancer and heart attacks. many women still, hormones use to treat menopausal symptoms, although you get the lowest dose for as short a period a time as possible to take.


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Novartis halts lung cancer trial

Novartis AG, said he abandons the late phase clinical trials for a candidate drug treat lung cancer because the trial was unlikely to suit your company.

This entry was posted on 12 November 2009 at 8: 30 pm and is filed under health. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. you can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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Books of the times: cancer as old foe and goad to science

"This book is a biography in the truest sense of the word," he says from the outset. It is "An attempt, the spirit of the immortals disease to understand his personality, to demystify enter his behavior." He ventures further in the area of the impossible if he promises to these two questions: "Cancer's end is possible in the future?""Is it possible for eradicating this disease from our body and companies?"

With objectives so huge, and a nice title, "The Emperor of all maladies" is ready to win a serious and significant readership.It is an informative, researched Studie.Aber it is good in any way a biography of anyone or anything, and Dr. Mukherjee winds so much recognition before his book about is.

He pointed out that there is both the folly and scientific partiality in the treatment of "Cancer, a shape-shifting disease of colossal diversity" as "a single, monolithic entity."

Also follow questions whether cancer eventually can be eradicated against hard reality. "Cancer is a bug in our growth, but this error is deep in us," the book says. "We can rid ourselves of cancer, then, only as much as we the processes in our physiology can free ourselves, which depend on growth - aging, regeneration, healing, reproduction."

How allowed his otherwise demanding book Dr. Mukherjee as reductive presented? It is an all too fitting error, since the same kind of simplification is the bane of cancer theory long since. "The Emperor of All Maladies" summarizes the various ways in which cancer in different eras, from the Greeks idea was understood that it was caused by black bile, one of the four liquid humors convinced 19 that would result in the drastic and disfiguring surgery the best cure. He writes about fund-raising, Nixon era idea the war against cancer to lead, faced as an enemy at the battle were disease.

The biographical aspects of "The Emperor of all maladies" have more to do with the personalities of anti cancer fighters with fabricated one for cancer itself. This book pays considerable attention pioneering figures such as William Stewart Halsted, Attorney at law in the 1870s and 1880s extreme breast operations; Sidney Farber, which in the 1940s major breakthroughs in treating leukemia, childhood with dangerous toxic chemicals put;and min Chiu Li, who lost his job at the National Cancer Institute for deploying chemotherapy for patients whose Symptome withdrew in the 1950s, although this advanced therapy meant the first chemotherapy treatment of cancer in adults.

In a maneuver as transparent as the call of his book biography glib, Dr. Mukherjee adds also occasional insights in his own patients, whose experience gained are clearly overdramatized.("It was 9: 30 a.m. now.") ("The city of us had completely awake gerührt.Die door closed behind me as I left and woooosch air me out and sealed Carla in blew.") But none of this personal material is as compelling as the history of the phases like cancer research by so many different is advanced.

Here Dr. Mukherjee's letter to his most candid and gloomy.The overarching point is his story that the whole issue of cancer is frighteningly complex.Statistics on mortality are difficult, because so much of the researchers think about the prevalence of cancer depends on depends, as you progress messen.Und distinctive effect our progress in curing other previously deadly diseases, cancer that most commonly found in older patients, more widespread than ever to make.

"The Emperor of All Maladies" is the most honest describe the push pull dynamics of scientific progress.Dr. Mukherjee combines a decline of chemotherapy to the fact that patients was less passive extremely to punish.(He credits much of this passion of AIDS activists.)He describes the conflicting interests of surgeons and Chemotherapists.Die most hot he writes about the effects of genome mapping scientists ability to understand how cancer is called progress, and the similar ways in which genetic distances within mutant cells erstellen.Er is different types of cancer or confounding fair in writing, that "this is either very good or bad news."

Late in "The Emperor of All Maladies" Dr. Mukherjee is particularly apt to describe the Red Queen of Lewis Carroll's "through the looking glass", the willingness metaphors for something so hard to begreifen.Er need to move research cited: "It takes all the operations you can do to keep in the same place."He describes a patient's keeping maneuver with their condition as "locked like someone in a chess game"And he says that the patterns in cancer research, repeated as well as Geschichte.Unter constants in this struggle are "the hypnotic drive for universal solutions" and "the queasy pivot between defeatism and hope."


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Prescriptions: Prostate cancer drug gets lukewarm review

There is only "moderate" evidence that the newly approved Provenge prostate cancer drug helps patients, according to an analysis for Medicare, released on Wednesday. "

The analysis is part of the controversial review by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, whether for Provenge, the cost of $93.000 per patient and extended life of about four months in clinical trials to zahlen.Medicare meet consultants on Wednesday to discuss by Dendreon the drug, a Seattle-based biotechnology company was developed.

Provenge is the first so-called therapeutic cancer vaccine - i.e., it works by training patient's immune system against the tumour - f.d.a permission to gewinnen.Die handled for each patient in his own blood. sales have been small, because Dendreon production capacity was limited.

While Medicare generally for drugs that the food and drug administration pays, has the debate about the payment for Provenge expressed concern some cancer patients, physicians and investors who say shot send the Government of an alert is that it does not automatically for high-priced medicines pay.

"Not only is CMS's action contrary to the intention of Congress beneficiary access to drugs and Biologicals used in an anti-cancer chemotherapy treatment, but it threatens to future innovation and cancer research for the coming years," Dr. Al B. Benson III, President of the Association of Community Cancer Center, said in a comment, CMS presented. "

But others say that cannot afford health care system, continued high prices to pay for all treatments, in particular cancer drugs to prolong the life of only a few months.

With expensive medicines a dual licensing system, especially with private insurers type already exists.First f.d.a must get a drug approval and then a manufacturer must often go through a lengthy process to convince to pay insurer for the drug.

Medicare should not consider price in the determine whether a drug to cover.

Some analysts have assumed that Medicare will pay for Provenge, for patients who's using those label - advanced prostate cancer, specified in the drug therapy is resistant to hormone deprivation, but if you experience no or minimal symptoms.

The Medicare review may be more off-label use of the drug expensive, as for example to limit already be scanned.the designed symptoms for patients review for Medicare said, there was insufficient evidence to assess whether Provenge would work if off-label uses.

The f.d.a declined, Provenge in 2007, approve setting from the protests of patients and investors in Dendreon.Nachdem Dendreon a further study confirms a survival benefit in the treatment is performed Provenge April of this year was approved.

But the analysis for Medicare said that there were issues such as the studies was, it was difficult, how effectively Provenge really judge designed wurde.Ein problem was, that used the placebo in the control group not really inert.

"Robyn Karnauskas said biotechnology analyst at Deutsche Bank in a note to clients Wednesday that the assessment of the moderate evidence to support the Provenge well for reimbursement boded."Historically, moderate means that CMS will reimburse the product for its on label indication, "she wrote.

Dendreon's shares rose in trading after the end of the market.

The evaluation was a technology test group with the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association on behalf of the Government Agency for healthcare research and quality done.


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CT scans cut lung cancer deaths, study finds

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The findings represent to enormous advance in cancer detection that could potentially save thousands of lives annually, although at considerable expense. Lung cancer will claim about 157,000 lives this year more than the deaths from colorectal, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers combined.Most patients discover their disease too late for treatment, and 85 percent from it.

No. screening method had proved effective at reducing mortality from the disease.Four randomized controlled trials done during the 1970s showed that chest x-rays, while they helped catch cancers at an earlier stage, had no effect on overall death rates.Since then, researchers have suggested that CT scans, which use coordinated x-rays to provide three dimensional views--could detect lung tumors at at even earlier stage than x-rays.

"This is the first time that we have seen clear evidence of a significant reduction in lung cancer mortality with a screening test in a randomized controlled trial," said Dr. Christine Berg of the National Cancer Institute.

Cancer doctors and others predicted that the study's results would soon lead to widespread use of CT scans, in particular for older smokers who have a one in 10 chance of contracting lung cancer.

"These people are worried about lung cancer, and now there is an opportunity to offer them something," said Dr. Mary Reid, associate professor of oncology at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo.

But health officials involved in the study refused to endorse widespread screening of current or former smokers, saying more analysis of the study's results is needed to further identify who benefited most. Such an analysis is months away. And they pointed out that the study offers no Réassurance about the safety of smoking or the advisability of CT scans for younger smokers or nonsmokers.

"No. one should come away from this thinking that it's now safe to continue to smoke," said Dr. Harold E. VARMUS, director of the National Cancer Institute.

Patients wishing to get a CT lung screen will most likely have to pay roughly $300 charge themselves, since few insurers pay for such scans unless an illness is suspected.The federal Medicare program will soon reconsider paying for such screens, a Medicare official said.

The study, called the National Lung screening trial, was conducted by the American College of Radiology Imaging Network and the cancer institute. It involved more than 53,000 people ages 55 to 74 who had smoked at least 30 pack years - one pack a day for 30 years or two packs a day for 15 years. Ex-smokers who had quit within the previous 15 years were included in the group.

Each what given either a standard chest x-ray of or a low - dose CT scan at the start of the trial and then twice more over the next two years.Participants were followed for up to five years. There were 354 lung cancer deaths among those who received CT scans and 442 among those who got X rays. The $250 million study, which began in 2002, was paid for by the cancer institute and carried out at 33 sites.

Its preliminary results were announced days after an independent monitoring board determined that the benefits of CT scans were strong enough to stop the trial. The study will be published in the coming months.

The study found that for every 300 people who were screened, one person lived who would otherwise have died during the study. But one quarter of those given CT scans were found to have anomalies, nearly all of which were benign.These false signals generally led to more worry, more CT scans and sometimes to lung biopsies and thoracic surgery.

"There are economic, medical and psychological consequences of finding these abnormalities," Dr. VARMUS said.

Deaths due to all causes declined by 7 percent among study participants who received CT scans, suggesting the tests helped to detect other life-threatening diseases besides lung cancer.

Dr. Claudia Henschke, a clinical professor of radiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center and a longtime advocate for use of CT to screen for lung cancer, said the study was likely to have underestimated the benefits of CT scans because participants were screened only three times. Had the screening continued for 10 years, as many as 80 percent of lung cancer deaths could have been averted, she said. Dr. Henschke's research has been controversial because of its statistical methods and its financing, which included money from a tobacco company.She earns royalties from makers of CT machines.

"What we also have found is that low - dose CT scan gives information on cardiovascular disease, emphysema" and other pulmonary diseases, Dr. Henschke said."Those are the three big killers of older people.""There is just tremendous potential."

But Dr. Edward F. Patz, Jr., professor of radiology at Duke who helped put the study, said hey what far from convinced that a thorough analysis would show that widespread CT screening would prove beneficial in preventing most lung cancer deaths.Dr. said that Patz the biology of lung cancer has long suggested that the size of cancerous lung tumors tells little about the stage of the disease.

"If we look at this study carefully we may suggest that there is some benefit in high-risk control, but I'm not there yet," Dr. Patz said.

Since smoke 46 million people in the United States and tens of millions more once smoked, a widespread screening program could cost billions annually.Any further refinement of those most at risk could reduce those costs.Low-dose CT scans expose patients to about the same radiation levels as mammograms.Little is known about how the cumulative risks of years of such scans would balance the benefits.

The study's results could have both legal and political consequences.Suits against tobacco companies have sought to force cigarette makers to pay for annual CT screens of former smokers.But with the science uncertain, those claims have so far been rebuffed.Congress has diverted some research money to create pilot CT lung screening programs, diversions that may gain momentum now.

Some Obama administration officials f.d.a. during the debate on the health care law that patients' health was often harmed by getting too many tests and procedures that, if reduced, would improve health while reducing costs.This study suggests that, at least in lung cancer, spending more on tests saves lives.

Laurie Fenton, president of the Lung Cancer Alliance, which has lobbied for widespread CT lung screening, said the debate about the advisability of such scans is now over.

"The challenge now shifts from proving the efficacy of the method to developing the proper quality standards, infrastructure and guidelines to bring this needed benefit to those at high risk for the disease - now," Ms. Fenton said.

But Dr. Peter B. Bach, a pulmonologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said no one should rush out and get a CT scan yet because further analysis will better define whom the screening helped.

"Very soon we'll have an answer about who should be screened and how frequently," Dr Bach said, "but we don't of have that answer today."


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A direct hit brain drug to treat cancer

He had glioblastoma, a brain cancer fighting from any known treatment. The same disease Senator Edward M. Kennedy killed last year. Mr. of Sugrue's in April 2009 was cancer diagnosed and bombarded with the usual weapons: surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Within months the tumour grew back. That was when he signed up for the study of AVASTIN.

Approximately 10,000 Americans a year develop glioblastoma. Almost everyone can find that the standard treatments seem to work - for a while. And then the clock starts to run down.With the treatment, the median survival is about 15 Monate.Nur 25 percent of patients make it two years.

The disease is the focus of much research, and will be almost sure for many years. Hundreds of studies be performed brain in glioblastoma and other cancers.Among other things include vaccines and drug combinations and specific drug delivery Techniken.Fortschritt is measured in small increments - a few months of survival, more patients manage to survive two years. On paper, minute seems profits, but for patients the overtime can translate into a graduation or wedding might otherwise have missed.

There are two enormous obstacles for the treatment of glioblastomas.First, no drug is effektiv.Zweitens very even if there was such a drug, get it to the tumor would be difficult. Many drugs can press by the blood - brain barrier, a system of tightly packed cells lining capillaries in the brain. The barrier makes it difficult to treat all brain tumors.

Entered the study with repeating Mr Sugrue, for people glioblastomas, is performed by Dr. John Boockvar, a brain surgeon at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell.Doctors inject to have first a substance called mannitol temporarily open the tumor zone with Avastin.Avastin blocked blood - brain barrier, and then flood the growth of new blood vessels, which tumors. The drug is approved for glioblastoma but can tumors become resistant to it.

AVASTIN is usually dripped into a vein. But Dr. Boockvar and his colleagues wanted to try to beat cancer with a much higher dose of guiding principles tiny tubes, Microcatheters through blood vessels called the tumor site and then unleashing the drug use.

Mr Sugrue was the second patient treated with a small dose. Since then, the study has shown that higher amounts - seven times the dose received - can be safely used.

A report on the first 30 patients was published last month in the journal of neurosurgery online.Tumors shrank in some particularly those who had not AVASTIN vor.Aber a patient gives a stroke from the treatment, the weakness on one side. And it is still too early to say whether this approach survive can extend.

"" We started a year ago,"said Dr. Boockvar added early patients were very sick, and a dose of AVASTIN had."We lost about 15 or half the patients. "The rest are alive and well."

His team has begun new experiments with mannitol and Microcatheters, to provide other drugs directly into the brain. In the future, certain drugs can be combined with AVASTIN.

Dr. Keith black, was Chairman of neurosurgery in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and an expert on violations against the blood - brain barrier, said clearly that AVASTIN good enough would work to survive even when the infused directly into the brain very much to improve.Better drugs are required.

"We drugs in can get, but it's a believe in glioblastoma, for example, that even if you push the limit of drugs increase the survival, not all that much," said Dr. black."It is to have kind of like the Trojan horse before purchase, it us soldiers."

Vaccines for some patients with glioblastoma looked promising, he said.In addition research with animals suggests, viagra or levitra - medication for erectile dysfunction - can open the blood - brain barrier, especially around tumors, and let chemotherapy.In theory, the medication in the form of pill compared to mannitol could be taken.Dr. Black said he planned, study the idea among people with different types of brain tumors, including those that had spread from other sites such as the chest and lungs.Cancer from other institutions invades the brain in 100,000 Americans a year.

The study, Mr. Sugrue is still entered auf.Und Mr Sugrue is so.He lives with his wife, Donna, and their children in their teens, Molly and Tim in Stamford, Connecticut.Molly, senior high school is about to nursing schools anzuwenden.Herr Sugrue still receive intravenous AVASTIN regularly.(He had infused a dose in his brain.)There is no sign of tumor recurrence.

But it is not easy year gewesen.Eine infection in his cut needed many Operationen.Er has seen some peripheral verloren.Er needs no longer drives physical and Beschäftigungstherapie.Obwohl some works, he was unable to his job at a hedge fund full-time Rückkehren.Er but never lost his quick wit and sense of humor, his wife said added "what he went through a lesser man would have killed."

If he had to do it again would he enter the study?

"" Absolutely", Mr Sugrue said in a phone interview last week.""Indeed I questions Dr. Boockvar, whether there are other studies out there."


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EEOC: Employer fired woman seeking treatment for cancer

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says in a federal lawsuit that regional mental health center illegally fired an employee for taking the time to breast cancer treatments.

This entry was posted on November 10, 2009 at 1: 46 am and is filed under health. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. you can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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Alternative medicine improves quality of life for cancer patients

Although there could be many differences of opinion as to whether alternative treatments can really cure cancer, there may be a dispute over the quality of life of cancer patients can be improved with the help of workarounds.

alternative medicineThey can improve the general quality of life and reduce stress, when therapies massage as are used according to a new study presented in Clinical Oncology Society of Australia scientific annual meeting in Melbourne.

The study found that improves up 14% was observed in danger caused by symptoms, fatigue, pain, breathing, sleep, appetite and nausea.

In the study, was examined the quality of life of cancer patients 1244 that were getting alternative therapies in addition to the conventional treatments for cancer.

Investigator Dr. David Joske, admitted that he had been seen a beneficial effect of workarounds. Although he added that he couldn't say whether this was a placebo effect or an effect essential, he himself has noted mental state changes between their own patients with cancer.

It was also noted that patients become more receptive to conventional therapies due to complementary therapies were, since these were more pleasant than conventional treatments, like chemistry.


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Immune system may help cancer cells hide: study

Immune system may help cancer cells hide: study

Last Updated: 2010-10-29 11:51:11 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cancer cells may find a hideout in the body's immune system, researchers said on Thursday in a study that may help explain why tumors can come back after rounds of toxic chemotherapy.

Tests on mice showed that the stress of chemotherapy drives some tumor cells into the thymus, the gland that produces immune cells known as T-cells.

The gland bathes these rogue tumor cells with protective agents, the researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported in the journal Cell. The findings suggest that cancer treatments need to attack this hiding place.

"Successful cancer therapy needs to involve a component that kills tumor cells as well as a component that blocks pro-survival signals," MIT's Michael Hemann said in a statement.

"Current cancer therapies fail to target this survival response."

Hemann and colleagues tested mice with a type of cancer called Burkitt's lymphoma. They were treated with doxorubicin, a standard chemotherapy drug.

The drug worked, as expected -- the tumors regressed. The mice were killed and examined.

"To analyze the effect of drug treatment on specific tumor niches, we harvested all primary lymphoid organs, including peripheral lymph nodes, thymus, spleen and bone marrow, following doxorubicin treatment," the researchers wrote.

Most of these were clear, too -- except for the thymus. In fact, there were more tumor cells in the thymus after chemotherapy than there had been before.

"Thus, the thymus represents a chemoprotective niche that protects lymphoma cells from doxorubicin-induced cell death," the researchers wrote.

Mice genetically engineered to have tiny and dysfunctional thymuses survived better when infected with Burkitt's lymphoma and then treated, so it appeared the thymus was doing something to protect the tumor cells.

Lab tests suggested that the thymus secretes chemicals that protect immature cells from toxins, and the cancer cells were just taking advantage of this, Hemann said.

More tests will be required to see if the same thing happens in people, they said, but it may be necessary to attack certain immune system compounds such as IL-6 and one called Bcl2.

SOURCE: http://link.reuters.com/qeg92q Cell, online October 29, 2010.

Copyright © 2010 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.


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