UAB study shows how brain tumor cells move and damage tissue, points to possible therapy

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have shed new light on how cells called gliomas migrate in the brain and cause devastating tumors. The findings show that gliomas — malignant glial cells — disrupt normal neural connections and hijack control of blood vessels. The study provides insight into the mechanisms of how glioma cells spread throughout the brain as a devastating form of brain cancer, and potentially offers a tantalizing opportunity for therapy. Read more here.

For cancer patients, new tool predicts financial pain

Along with the distress that comes with a cancer diagnosis and the discomforts of treatment, more patients now have to deal with "financial toxicity," the expense, anxiety and loss of confidence confronting those who face large, unpredictable costs, often compounded by decreased ability to work. In Cancer, a team of University of Chicago cancer specialists describe the first tool — 11 questions, assembled and refined from conversations with more than 150 patients with advanced cancer — to measure a patient's risk for, and ability to tolerate, financial stress. The researchers named their patient-reported outcome measure COST (COmprehensive Score for financial Toxicity). Read more here.

A new tool to confront lung cancer

Huntsman Cancer Institute investigators report that misregulation of two genes, sox2 and lkb1, drives squamous cell lung cancer in mice. The discovery uncovers new treatment strategies, and provides a clinically relevant mouse model in which to test them. “This is the most exciting thing we’ve done,” said senior author Trudy Oliver, Ph.D., an assistant professor of oncological sciences at the University of Utah and Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator. “Now that we have a model it unleashes so many questions we can ask to gain a better understanding of the disease.” Read more here.

Report calls for new approach to Ontario's breast and colon cancer care

Ontario needs to improve the way it cares for breast and colon cancer patients taking protective chemotherapy, nearly half of whom are making unplanned visits to overburdened emergency rooms, according to a new evaluation of cancer care in Canada’s most populous province. The Cancer System Quality Index, released Tuesday, shows that 46 per cent of colon cancer patients and 43 per cent of breast cancer patients who received chemotherapy after surgery turned to ERs at least once, an outcome that suggests oncologists and family doctors are not doing enough to help patients cope with the toxic side effects of their therapy. Read more here.

Selumetinib in uveal melanoma

In patients with advanced uveal melanoma, treatment with the agent selumetinib, compared with chemotherapy, resulted in an improved cancer progression-free survival time and tumour response rate, but no improvement in overall survival, according to a study in JAMA. The modest improvement in clinical outcomes was accompanied by a high rate of adverse events. Read more here.

Gene expression profiling test expands to assess colon and prostate cancers

The high price of gene expression profiling – and the uneven coverage for it across this country – point to the hard choices ahead for provincial health departments as personalized cancer medicine moves from dream to day-to-day reality in oncologists’ offices and cancer clinics. Health officials always wrestle with what to pay for, but new assays that can tailor treatments for cancer, Canada’s number one killer, are upping the ante. Read more here.

Exercise may help chemotherapy side effects

Dr. Kristin Campbell, lead researcher of the exercise study and an assistant professor of physical therapy at the University of British Columbia, and colleagues recruited women treated for early-stage breast cancer in advance of a pilot study, presented in early June at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. At the end of the study, women in both the control and exercise groups showed little difference in their neuropsychological test results and self-reported cognitive functioning. However, the brain-imaging tests showed significantly increased activity in the exercise group in brain regions known to support task performance, attention and decision-making, Campbell said. Read more here.

Scientists identify additional challenges in KRAS-driven cancers

Cancers driven by – and dependent on – the potent mutated cancer gene KRAS have an especially poor prognosis, and three decades of scientific attempts have failed to produce drugs that can attack KRAS and halt the tumors’ runaway growth. A renewed assault on the problem is underway, but researchers report they have identified a backup genetic pathway that can enable cancer cells to survive and thrive in the absence of KRAS. If and when it becomes possible to shut down the oncogene in human cancers, the findings suggest, this escape mechanism will have to be blocked as well to kill the tumor cells. Read more here.

UCLA scientists discover how adult stem cell regulation contributes to lung cancer

UCLA researchers led by Dr. Brigitte Gomperts, member of UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research, have discovered how factors that regulate growth of adult stem cells that regenerate tissue for repair in the lungs can lead to the formation of pre-cancerous lesions. This process is thought to be the first stage in the development of lung cancer. Read more here.

Study finds stronger nicotine dependency associated with higher risk of lung cancer

People who are highly addicted to nicotine -- those who smoke their first cigarette within five minutes after awakening -- are at higher risk of developing lung cancer than those who wait for an hour or more to smoke. Researchers at NCI found this simple measure of nicotine dependency improved lung cancer risk prediction beyond standard smoking measures, such as cigarettes per day, age, gender, history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other lung cancer risk factors. Read more here.

Vaccine 'reprograms' pancreatic cancers to respond to immunotherapy

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed and tested a vaccine that triggered the growth of immune cell nodules within pancreatic tumors, essentially reprogramming these intractable cancers and potentially making them vulnerable to immune-based therapies. In their study described in Cancer Immunology Research, the Johns Hopkins team tested the vaccine in 39 people with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDAC), the most common form of pancreatic cancer. Read more here.

NIH and NSF collaborate to accelerate biomedical research innovations into the marketplace

A collaboration between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health will give NIH-funded researchers training to help them evaluate their scientific discoveries for commercial potential, with the aim of accelerating biomedical innovations into applied health technologies. I-Corps at NIH is a pilot of the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program specially tailored for biomedical research. Read more here.

Combining treatments boosts some smokers’ ability to quit

Combining two smoking cessation therapies is more effective than using just one for male and highly nicotine-dependent smokers who weren't initially helped by the nicotine patch, according to researchers at Duke Medicine. The findings, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, also support using an adaptive treatment model to determine which smokers are likely to succeed in quitting with nicotine replacement alone before trying additional therapies. Read more here.

New release of EPIC website

The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study is one of the largest cohort studies in the world, with more than half a million (521 000) participants recruited across 10 European countries and followed for almost 15 years. EPIC was designed to investigate the relationships between diet, nutritional status, lifestyle and environmental factors, and the incidence of cancer and other chronic diseases. EPIC investigators are active in all fields of epidemiology, and important contributions have been made in nutritional epidemiology using biomarker analysis and questionnaire information, as well as genetic and lifestyle investigations. Visit the website here.

Half of teen smokers go for flavoured products, up risk of getting hooked: study

Among Canadian teens who report using tobacco, more than half are opting for products infused with such flavours as bubble-gum, cherry or watermelon, a study has found. The University of Waterloo study is based on the 2010-2011 Youth Smoking Survey of Grade 9-12 students from across Canada. Lead author Leia Minaker, a postdoctoral fellow at the university’s Propel Centre for Population Health Impact, said the tobacco industry promotes cigarettes, cigarillos and smokeless tobacco with a variety of flavours and glitzy packaging to attract young people to the addictive products. Read more here.

Heparin derivative suppresses neuroblastoma tumor growth

Researchers at Duke Medicine have identified a new strategy for treating neuroblastoma using a modified version of heparin, a century-old injectable drug that thins the blood to prevent clots from forming. The study, conducted in mice, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, found that when heparin is altered to remove its blood-thinning properties, it can suppress and shrink neuroblastoma tumors without causing severe bleeding. Read more here.

Study compares survival for treatments of uncommon eye cancer

In patients with advanced uveal melanoma, treatment with the agent selumetinib, compared with chemotherapy, resulted in an improved cancer progression-free survival time and tumor response rate, but no improvement in overall survival, according to a study in JAMA. The modest improvement in clinical outcomes was accompanied by a high rate of adverse events. Read more here.

Summary Basis of Decision (SBD) for Giotrif

Health Canada has issued a Notice of Compliance to Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Ltd. for the drug product, Giotrif. Based on Health Canada's review, the benefit/risk profile of Giotrif is favourable as monotherapy for the treatment of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor-naïve patients with metastatic (including cytologically proven pleural effusion) adenocarcinoma of the lung with activating EGFR mutation(s). Read more here.

Sedentary behavior increases the risk of certain cancers

To assess the relationship between TV viewing time, recreational sitting time, occupational sitting time, and total sitting time with the risk of various cancers, Daniela Schmid, PhD and Dr Michael Leitzmann of the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, University of Regensburg, Germany, conducted a meta-analysis of 43 observational studies, including over 4 million individuals and 68,936 cancer cases. When the highest levels of sedentary behavior were compared to the lowest, the researchers found a statistically significant higher risk for three types of cancer—colon, endometrial, and lung. Read more here.

Physicians urge World Health Organization to regulate e-cigarettes

A group of 129 physicians, epidemiologists and others from 31 countries sent an open letter to the World Health Organization on Monday urging the United Nations agency to hold firm in what seems to be its intention to impose strict regulations on electronic cigarettes. The letter was a response to one sent last month by 53 other experts who urged the WHO to go easy on e-cigarettes, which the advocates called “part of the solution” in the fight against smoking. Read more here.

End-of-life care: a national dialogue

In the first half of 2014, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) in partnership with Maclean’s magazine hosted a series of town hall meetings in all regions of Canada for the public on end-of-life care issues. The national dialogue focused on three main issues: advance care directives, palliative care, and euthanasia and physician-assisted dying. The main aim of the consultation process was to seek input from Canadians on their perceptions and views about the status of end-of-life care in Canada. Read the full report here.

Ontario’s High Risk Breast Screening Program is showing positive results

The Journal of Clinical Oncology has published a study on the Ontario Breast Screening Program (OBSP) High Risk Screening Program. The study evaluated the first year of the program, which launched in 2011 as an expansion of the OBSP. The results of the study show that the program is working as planned and is helping detect breast cancer in women who are considered to be at high risk for developing the disease. Read more here.

Lung-MAP launches: first precision medicine trial from National Clinical Trials Network

Lung-MAP is a multi-drug, multi-arm, biomarker-driven clinical trial for patients with advanced squamous cell lung cancer. Squamous cell carcinoma represents about a quarter of all lung cancer diagnoses, but there are currently few treatment options beyond surgery for the disease. The trial will use genomic profiling to match patients to one of several different investigational treatments that are designed to target the genomic alterations found to be driving the growth of their cancer. This innovative approach to clinical testing should both improve access to promising drugs for patients and ease the significant recruitment and infrastructure burdens on researchers involved in traditional clinical trials. Read more here.

Benefits of trastuzumab for advanced breast cancer outweigh the risk of harm

In women with HER2-positive advanced or metastatic breast cancer, treatment with trastuzumab is associated with prolonged survival but also increases the risk of developing heart problems, a new systematic review shows. However, the review concludes that more women benefit from use of trastuzumab than are harmed. The review focuses on treatment for women with advanced stage breast cancer who have tested HER2-positive. Read more here.

Dr. Patricia Ganz talks about common cancer survivorship issues

A recent episode of Take Care, a health care-focused radio show, featured an interview with Dr. Patricia Ganz, a medical oncologist and director of the UCLA LIVESTRONG Cancer Survivorship Center of Excellence. In the interview, Dr. Ganz describes a number of issues that can plague cancer survivors after active treatment has ended, including fatigue, depression, chemo brain, sexual dysfunction, and guilt. Read more here.

Listen to the episode of Take Care here.

Medical research safeguarded in Europe

The European Society for Medical Oncology has welcomed the adoption of the Clinical Trials Regulation by the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament, which enters into force this week. The new clinical trial framework acknowledges the importance of using data stored for a clinical trial beyond the end of the study itself, for research purposes. Practically speaking, the Regulation states that when a patient gives his/her consent for a clinical trial, he/she can easily give a one-time consent for data to be used beyond the trial, for the purpose of medical research, still with the possibility to withdraw it at any time. Read more here.

Tamoxifen-resistant breast cancer reversed when drug paired with anti-malaria agent

The inexpensive anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) reverses resistance to tamoxifen, a widely used breast cancer drug, in mice. Investigators from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center say adding HCQ to tamoxifen could provide a new treatment option for some women with advanced, postmenopausal estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer. The ER+ subtype accounts for an estimated 70 percent of all breast cancers. While many of these women are treated with tamoxifen, which blocks estrogen from fueling the tumor, 50 percent of these cancers will either not respond or will become resistant to tamoxifen over time. Read more here.

Broad Institute, MGH researchers chart cellular complexity of brain tumors

Cellular makeup of glioblastoma more diverse than previously thought

Scientists from the Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have conducted a first-of-its-kind study that characterizes the cellular diversity within glioblastoma tumors from patients. The study, which looked at the expression of thousands of genes in individual cells from patient tumors, revealed that the cellular makeup of each tumor is more heterogeneous than previously suspected. The findings, which appear online in Science Express, will help guide future investigations into potential treatments for this devastating disease. Read more here.

Childhood cancer survivors hospitalized frequently years after cancer treatment

Survivors of childhood cancers were hospitalized more often and for longer durations because of blood disorders and other problems, many years after cancer treatment was completed, compared with the general population, according to a recent study. "Our findings demonstrate that childhood cancer survivors face ongoing problems that can lead to hospitalization, even for those who are decades past their original cancer diagnosis. This can negatively impact their quality of life," said Anne C. Kirchhoff, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatrics at the Huntsman Cancer Institute of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Read more here.

Medical Costs and Productivity Losses of Cancer Survivors — United States, 2008–2011

The number of persons in the United States with a history of cancer has increased from 3 million in 1971 to approximately 13.4 million in 2012, representing 4.6% of the population. To estimate annual medical costs and productivity losses among male and female cancer survivors and persons without a cancer history, CDC, along with other organizations, analyzed data from the 2008–2011 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Read more here.