UPMC study reports Cesium-131 Prostate Treatment provides strong Cancer Control

Dr. Benoit at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center noted, “Our program began using Cesium-131 in 2006 in hopes of decreasing the duration of the bothersome lower urinary tract symptoms that accompany prostate brachytherapy. Our hope was that cancer control with Cesium-131 would be equivalent to the cancer control we achieved with Iodine-125 and Palladium-103. However, our intermediate term results demonstrate that in addition to decreasing morbidity, oncologic outcomes with Cesium-131 are actually exceeding those of Iodine-125 and Palladium-103.”
Standard treatment options for localized prostate cancer include radical prostatectomy, external beam radiotherapy, and prostate brachytherapy. Radical prostatectomy is an invasive procedure with the highest risk of urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction of all treatments for localized prostate cancer. External beam radiation has a lower risk of these complications, but requires eight weeks of daily therapy.
Prostate brachytherapy is a third treatment option for localized prostate cancer. Prostate brachytherapy has a significantly lower risk of urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction when compared to radical prostatectomy, but very similar cure rates. Prostate brachytherapy is an outpatient procedure with a much faster return to full activity than radical prostatectomy. Men who undergo prostate brachytherapy for treatment of their prostate cancer also avoid the long course of treatment required when one undergoes external beam radiation.
A drawback of prostate brachytherapy, however, has been the bothersome urinary and bowel symptoms that can accompany the procedure. Previous studies have demonstrated that by using the isotope Cesium-131, the duration of these symptoms is dramatically decreased when compared to men who undergo prostate brachytherapy with the other available isotopes.

Cesium-131,most significant advancement in internal radiation therapy in 20 years

IsoRay Inc. (NYSE MKT: ISR), a medical technology company and innovator in brachytherapy and medical isotope applications, today announced that it ranked 5th highest in share price performance for the 2014 calendar year, with a 192% increase, among all 2,417 listed companies on the NYSE Group, which includes the NYSE and the NYSE MKT.
IsoRay Chairman and CEO Dwight Babcock commented, “It is very rewarding to see the market begin to understand the tremendous potential benefits IsoRay and its products, utilizing IsoRay’s patented isotope Cesium-131, can offer to pediatric and adult patients suffering the ravages of cancer located in the brain, head and neck, lung, gynecological and prostate. As institutional study results are being peer reviewed and published, evidence is growing as to how well Cesium-131 kills cancer and its ability to provide an improved quality of life. Other institutional studies continue to accrue patients or are allowing their data to mature to a point that will be eligible for submittel to peer review. Cesium-131 not only successfully treats primary cancers but also those cancers that recur when the current standard of care has failed.”
Babcock said, “Leaders in the medical arena recognize the important need for a new powerful weapon in the battle against cancer and I believe Cesium-131 is that solution.”
IsoRay is the exclusive manufacturer of Cesium-131. The pioneering brachytherapy therapy is one of the most significant advances in internal radiation therapy in 20 years. Cesium-131 allows for the precise treatment of many different cancers because of its unrivaled blend of high energy and its 9.7 day half-life (its unequaled speed in giving off therapeutic radiation).
In addition to its CMS codes, Cesium-131 is FDA-cleared and holds a CE mark for international sales in seed form for the treatment of brain cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, ocular melanoma cancer, colorectal cancer, gynecologic cancer, head and neck cancer and other cancers throughout the body. The treatment can be deployed using several delivery methods including single seed applicators, implantable strands and seed sutured mesh. IsoRay also sells several new implantable devices, including the GliaSite® radiation therapy system.

Rutgers Cancer Institute has a Clinical Trial examining effects of ‘Chemo Brain’ in Breast Cancer Patients

Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey is referring breast cancer patients to a clinical trial examining the side effects of chemotherapy and hormonal therapy on the brain.
When receiving treatment for breast cancer, patients sometimes experience side effects that can make it harder for them to concentrate, remember things or do tasks requiring rapid or precise hand movements. Referred to as “chemo brain,” these changes can affect a patient’s quality of life. The study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by the Kessler Foundation in cooperation with the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, will look at the side effects of these medicines on breast cancer patients by looking at changes that occur inside the brain. Investigators also will look at how these changes affect hand movements.
Patients accepted into the study will come for two to three visits, four to six months apart during the course of the chemotherapy or hormonal treatment. At each visit, participants will have a brain imaging scan (MRI) and a test to assess the health of the brain and nervous system using a magnetic pulse. Individuals also will have brain activity and function measured while performing special tasks.
Serena Wong, MD, medical oncologist at the Cancer Institute and assistant professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, is the referring physician for the study at the Cancer Institute, who also will be screening participants. “The brain typically recovers from these cognitive side effects over time, but subtle changes can sometimes persist for years. This study will enable investigators to better understand the relationship between cancer treatments and brain function. Our goal is to find ways to minimize or even prevent the effects of ‘chemo brain,’ thus helping to improve the patient’s quality of life,” she said.
Post-menopausal, right-handed women between 50 and 70 years old who have had or are scheduled to have surgery for breast cancer or are scheduled to receive or are currently receiving chemotherapy or hormone treatment are eligible to take part in the trial, although other criteria must also be met.  Healthy post-menopausal women with no evidence of breast cancer also are being sought for comparison.
For more information on how to take part in this trial, individuals should call the research team at 800-248-3221 extension 3525 or e-mail dallexandre@kesslerfoundation.org.  

Study offers new look at complex head and neck tumor behavior of Cancer

Head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) ranks among the top ten most prevalent cancers in the United States. Despite its prevalence, little is known about how this cancer develops and spreads. However, in a paper to be published in the January, 2015 edition of Nature, researchers offer critical new information about head and neck cancers.
An increasing number of head and neck cancers are caused by a virus, the human papilloma virus (HPV). Using tissue from HPV-positive and HPV-negative (largely linked to smoking) HNSCC tumors, researchers from institutions around the country referenced The Cancer Genome Atlas to develop a comprehensive assessment of alterations, or oncogenes, that could play a role in how the tumors develop and metastasize, said Wendell Yarbrough, M.D., section chief of otolaryngology at Yale School of Medicine and Clinical Program Leader of the Head & Neck Cancer Program at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven.
 “To make the progress we envision with personalized medicine, we first have to understand what’s driving these tumors, and this is one of the first studies to do this,” said Yarbrough, an author on the study. “We found some characteristics we’d never seen before in these tumors that ultimately could help us pair the most effective new drugs with patients most likely to respond.”
Notable among the findings is the fact that the defects in tumors varied broadly across patients, with tumors of some non-smokers or low-smokers resembling those of smokers. The study also uncovered the presence of the Her2 gene amplification, known to play a critical role in breast cancer.

University of Kentucky study finds potential new drug target for Lung Cancer

A new study by University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center researchers suggests that targeting a key enzyme and its associated metabolic programming may lead to novel drug development to treat lung cancer
Cancer cells undergo metabolic alterations to meet the increased energy demands that support their excess growth and survival. The Krebs cycle in the mitochondria of cells is used to supply both energy and building materials for cell growth. Two mitochondrial enzymes - pyruvate carboxylase (PC) and glutaminase replenish carbon to the Krebs cycle.
Published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the study collected metabolic data directly from more than 120 human lung cancer patients.
When they infused the patients with a glucose tagged with stable heavy atoms immediately prior to surgical removal of tumor tissue, they found that PC was selectively activated, in other words, PC expression may play an important role in the development of lung cancer.
By using molecular genetic tools to reduce the amount of PC in human lung cancer cells, the team observed decreased cell growth, a compromised ability to form colonies in soft agar (a gelatinous material specifically used to grow bacteria and other cells), and a reduced rate of tumor growth in mice. The loss of PC also induced widespread changes in the central metabolism of the cell, suggesting a role for PC in early stage metabolic reprogramming.

"We now know much more about metabolic reprogramming of cancerous tissues in human patients, particularly that the activation of Pyruvate Carboxylase is important to lung cancer cell growth and survival," said Fan, UK professor of toxicology and faculty member of the Markey Cancer Center and CESB at the University of Kentucky. "Ultimately, figuring out how to target PC may help researchers develop new, more effective therapeutic strategies to improve upon current lung cancer treatments, which are limited and harmful." 

New drug for attacking Cancer cells: Nivolumab by Bristol-Myers Squibb

Nivolumab (Opdivo) is a PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor newly approved for advanced melanoma. PD-1 blockers boost the immune system to attack various types of cancer cells. In fact, BMS' Nivolumab is under study to knock out other cancer types, including lung, kidney, brain, and lymphoma. Merck's competitor PD-1-blocking agent pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was approved for advanced melanoma in September 2014, but nivolumab claimed the stake as the world's first PD-1 blocker with a Japanese approval in July 2014. FDA approval came three months early, and peak sales could reach $6 billion by 2020.

New Breast Cancer-fighting drug: Palbociclib by Pfizer

Pharma giant Pfizer is looking forward to a new year in R&D, and hopefully a new drug approval with Palbociclib, (Ibrance) which is touted as having mega-blockbuster potential. Palbociclib is a CDK4/6 inhibitor for breast cancer, most likely for use with letrozole, and received FDA priority review designation in October 2014. It also received breakthrough drug status. Pfizer's seeking approval in treatment naive postmenopausal women with metastatic ER+, HER2-breast cancer. Analysts forecast sales at roughly $3 billion a year by 2020 if approved. FDA is expected to make a decision by April 13, 2015. Lilly and Novartis have CDK inhibitors in the works, too.

Tumor micro-environment is a rough neighborhood for Nano-particle Cancer Drugs

Nano-particle drugs, tiny containers packed with medicine and with the potential to be shipped straight to tumors, were thought to be a possible silver bullet against cancer. However new cancer drugs based on nano-particles have not improved overall survival rates for cancer patients very much. Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill now think that failure may have less to do with the drugs and tumors than it does the tumor’s immediate surroundings.
“Tumors create bad neighborhoods,” said William Zamboni, the study’s senior author and an associate professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. “They spawn leaky, jumbled blood vessels that are like broken streets, blind alleys and busted sewers. There are vacant lots densely overgrown with collagen fibers. Immune-system cells patrolling the streets might be good guys turned bad, actually working for the tumor. And we’re trying to get a large truckload of medicine through all of that.”
At first, what they saw was no surprise: significantly more of the nano-drug Doxil made it into both triple-negative breast-cancer tumors compared with the standard small-molecule Doxorubicin. “That’s nothing new,” Zamboni said. “We’ve seen that for twenty years.” They also saw the same amount of Doxorubin in both tumors.
What did surprise them was that significantly more of the nano-drug Doxil, twice as much, was delivered to the C3-TAg triple-negative breast cancer tumor than to the T11 triple-negative breast cancer tumor.
 “These tumors are subtypes of a subtype of one kind of cancer and are relatively closely related,” said Zamboni. “If the differences in delivering nanoagents to these two tumors are so significant, we can only imagine what the differences might be between breast cancer and lung cancer.”
 Zamboni and his team suggest that better profiling of tumors and their micro-environments would allow doctors not only to better identify patients who would most benefit from nano-particle-based cancer therapy, but also that clinicians may need to learn more about a patient’s tumor before prescribing treatment with one of the newer nano-particle drugs.
“It looks like the tumor micro-environment could play a big role in cancer treatment,” said Zamboni. “It may be the factor that could point us in the right direction for personalized care not only for triple-negative breast cancer but for any type.”

New drug combination for Advanced Breast Cancer delays disease progression

A new combination of cancer drugs delayed disease progression for patients with hormone-receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer, according to a multi-center phase II trial.
The trial enrolled 118 post-menopausal women with metastatic hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer whose cancer continued to progress after being treated with an aromatase inhibitor. The study, based on work done by Doris Germain of Mt. Sinai Hospital, found that the combination of the drugs bortezomib and fulvestrant, versus fulvestrant alone, doubled the rate of survival at 12 months and reduced the chance of cancer progression overall.
Bortezomib, used most commonly in treating multiple myeloma, is a proteasome inhibitor that prevents cancer cells from clearing toxic material. Fulvestrant causes clumping of the estrogen-receptor protein. When bortezomib blocks the ability of the cell to clear these protein clumps, they grow larger and become toxic to the cancer cells. This, in turn, amplifies the effectiveness of fulvestrant, a drug commonly used in this subset of patients.
The drug combination doubled the number of patients whose cancer had not progressed after one year from 14% to 28%. 

Prostate cancer: Androgen receptor activates different genes when bound to antiandrogens

PUBLIC RELEASE 01/27: The androgen receptor in prostate cancer cells can activate different sets of genes depending on whether it binds with an androgen hormone or an antiandrogen drug, according to a new study led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute.
The study found that when androgen receptor (AR) binds with testosterone or dihydrotestosterone, the activated receptor binds, as expected, to segments of DNA called androgen response elements.
But when the receptor binds with either of two antiandrogenic drugs, bicalutamide or enzalutamide, it then binds to different DNA sequences and activates entirely different sets of genes, including cancer-promoting oncogenes.
The researchers called these newly discovered AR binding sites on DNA "antiandrogen response elements" and showed that they activate genes that might enable tumor progression during antiandrogen treatment.
The findings suggest that the treatment of prostate cancer with antiandrogenic drugs should include agents that target antiandrogen-regulated oncogenes.
"The discovery of antiandrogen response elements was completely unexpected," says principal investigator and researcher Qianben Wang, PhD, associate professor of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics.
He noted that antiandrogen agents are known to work by competing with androgens to bind to AR, thus inhibiting androgen-induced gene expression.
"We found that antiandrogens can also trigger AR to bind to DNA sequences that are distinctly different from androgen response elements, and thus regulate genes relevant to prostate cancer development," Wang says.
Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men. An estimated 220,800 new cases are expected in the United States in 2015, along with 27,540 deaths from the disease.

Obama's 2015 State of the Union Address encourages changes in Cancer Treatment: Unipathic Medicine is desperately needed

There are two critical reasons Unipathic Medicine is desperately needed for the treatment of cancer and chronic diseases. First, data has shown that the vast majority of patients today are seeking some sort of alternative/integrative care to add to their conventional treatment protocols. But there is a crisis of standards and quality control in the field. “Natural” and “alternative” options are buzz words that practitioners use to attract patients and meet demand. The term “integrative medicine” is being used and advertised by everyone from the big name hospitals, to the small town alternative medical practitioners, to the snake oil salesmen.
With everyone from Whole Foods to MD Anderson claiming to offer alternative/natural healthcare options, the precise science of true integrative medicine has been pillaged and left as an empty and formless wasteland. The term has been abused, and truly effective and targeted therapies have been lumped in with and lost amidst a sea of unproven and unscientific “feel good” therapies. Reiki, music therapy, light therapy, extreme and unproven diets, dubious supplements, therapeutic touch, healing crystals, new age practices, the list goes on and on.
The second reason Unipathic Medicine is desperately needed is because of the critical importance of utilizing targeted personalized medical care to achieve better outcomes for patients. Personalized diagnostics can reveal unique markers of disease that can then be more effectively treated with an individualized treatment protocol. No two cancers or chronic diseases are alike; therefore, better and more effective treatment necessitates that each patient’s protocol will likewise be personalized and different. 

Two companies redefining Cancer Treatment

Juno Therapeutics is an undeniably intriguing company that is working on attacking cancer in an entirely new way.
Juno's immunotherapy strategy attempts to do away with chemotherapy's shock-and-awe approach of destroying both cancerous and healthy cells. Instead, immunotherapy battles back against cancer by reengineering the body's own immune system. Juno hopes to do this by altering the genetic code of the immune system's T-cells to allow them to more easily recognize and kill cancer cells.
Juno is mostly focused on therapies for the treatment of B-cell lymphomas and leukemias, and early-stage results are intriguing. For example, 20 out of 22 patients with relapsed/refractory B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia saw remission when treated with Juno's JCAR015.

Bellicum Pharmaceuticals is harnessing the power of the immune system to attack cancer. The main problem with using chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs, to train T cells to attack tumor cells is that the immune system can become overactive to the point where it starts damaging healthy tissue.
Bellicum's Chemical Induction of Dimerization, or CID, technology is a safety switch that can either turn on the CAR-T or can be built to activate a signal that tells the CAR-T cells to kill themselves. Genes that code for the proteins that make the biologic switch are added to cells, which are then put in the patient. The biological switch is activated by giving the patients rimiducid, which brings the two parts of the switch together, making it active.
      In addition to CAR-T, Bellicum is also using the CID technology in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, a treatment that can cure patients of their blood cancer but can lead to graft-versus-host disease where the patient's immune cells attack the donor stem cells. By incorporating CID into the donor host cells, the cells can be programmed to die with the addition of rimiducid if they cause graft-versus-host disease. Cure rates could also be raised by giving higher doses of stem cells that would normally be more likely to cause graft-versus-host disease. The first phase of a phase 1/2 trial of Bellicum's BPX-501 in patients with mis-matched donors dosed its first patients this month.

U.S. Biosimilars drugs in 2015, What to expect, catch-up with European Union ?

The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee unanimously recommended approval of Sandoz’s EP2006, a biosimilar for filgrastim (Neupogen). EP2006 is a recombinant granulocyte colony-stimulating factor used to boost white blood cells after cancer treatments that deplete these necessary infection-fighting cells. If FDA-approved, this would be the first true biosimilar in the U.S. and would have a brand name of Zarxio. The FDA noted in their briefs that EP2006 was “highly similar” to the brand biologic and had “no clinically meaningful differences between the proposed product and the reference product in terms of safety, purity, and potency”. The FDA stated that “robust” pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic comparative studies supported biosimilarity with the original filgrastim. Legal action over patent protection may still interfere with a launch any time soon.
Biosimilars are just that; similar because they do not have to be exact copies of the active ingredient, as with small-molecule drugs. The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 (the BPCI Act) allowed the creation of an abbreviated licensure pathway for biological products that are shown to be interchangeable with an already FDA-approved biological product. Under the new law, a biological product may be demonstrated to be “biosimilar” if data show that the product is “highly similar” to an already-approved biological product.

Several biologics have already lost patent protection in Europe. An established legal pathway for biosimilars has been in the European Union since 2005. Several biosimilars, including somatropins, filgrastims, and epoetins, have been licensed and marketed in the European Union (EU). Biologics that have already expired in Europe include Neulasta (pegfilgrastim), Remicade (infliximab), Mabthera (rituximab, known as Rituxan in the U.S.), and Lovenox (enoxaparin).
Other top biologics facing future patent expiration include Humira (2018), Enbrel (2015), and Avastin (2019), all well-known brands in the U.S. According to IMS, the biologics market accounts for 27% of the pharmaceutical sales in Europe and is growing at 5.5% vs. total market growth of 1.9% between 2012 and 2013.
France was the first EU member-state to initiate automatic pharmacist substitution for biosimilars in February 2014.

Many Breast Cancer patients lack info on their Cancer

Many women with breast cancer lack basic knowledge about their disease, such as their cancer stage and other characteristics, according to a new study.
The lack of knowledge was even more pronounced among minority women, the study authors found.

"We certainly were surprised at the number of women who knew very little about their disease," said Dr. Rachel Freedman, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Although the study didn't specifically look at the reasons behind the lack of knowledge, Freedman suspects that women may be overwhelmed when they're initially diagnosed. In addition, she said, individual doctors vary in how much information they give and how well they explain the cancer characteristics.
The study is published online Jan. 26 in Cancer.
Kimlin Tam Ashing, a professor at the Beckman Research Institute at the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif., reviewed the study's findings, and said that quick appointments may also be to blame for the knowledge gap.
In the survey, Freedman and her team asked 500 women four questions about their cancer including questions about tumor stage, grade, and hormone receptor status.
Overall, 32 percent to 82 percent of women reported that they knew the answers to these questions. But only 20 percent to 58 percent were actually correct, depending on the characteristics, the investigators found.
Just 10 percent of white women and 6 percent of black and Hispanic women knew all of their cancer characteristics correctly, according to the study.

New drug treatment beating Ovarian Cancer

A new type of intensive chemotherapy is proving highly effective in treating women desperately ill with Ovarian Cancer, scientists announced today.
The pioneering treatment is successful in 80% of patients whose first-line chemotherapy had failed, compared to rates of less than 15% under current therapies.
The results, published in the British Journal of Cancer today, will provide fresh hope to the 7,000 women who are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year in the UK. They have a survival rate of just 29% after five years.
Currently, women whose tumors have returned have very limited options, with less than half responding to follow-up chemotherapy.
The Dutch study involved 98 women with Ovarian Cancer whose first-line chemotherapy had initially been successful, but who had later relapsed.
Researchers divided the women into three groups depending on the severity of their cancer and treated them with an intensive regime of Cisplatin and another drug called Etoposide.
The response rates of the two groups of women who were least ill to the new treatment were 92% and 91%.
This compares to a response of 50% and 20% to 30% with standard therapies.
Among the group of women who were most seriously ill, 46% responded to treatment, compared with less than 15% for current therapies.
Overall, 80% of the women's tumours shrank and an unprecedented 43% showed a complete response, with all signs of their cancers disappearing.
Cisplatin and Etoposide are already used in chemotherapy regimes for many cancers, but the new treatment used the drugs much more intensively than usual.
Usually, doctors give their patients several weeks to recover from the toxic side-effects of Cisplatin, but in the new study the drug was given on a weekly basis, along with strong drugs to prevent nausea.
Study author Dr Ronald de Wit, of the Rotterdam Cancer Institute, said: "We were delighted by the success of the study. The new drug combination was highly effective at keeping women alive for longer, giving real hope to those who would otherwise have had very little at all."

New antibodies for Cancer Treatment

Out of a library with billions of artificial antibodies, researchers have identified ten that can possibly prevent cancer tumours from growing.
A research team at Aarhus University i Denmark has developed ten new antibodies that can possibly be used in the battle against cancer. They work by inhibiting the body's blood vessel formation close to the tumour, which is thereby cut off from oxygen and nutrient supply.
Up to now, the researchers have tested some of the antibodies on mice and, in the laboratory they have succeeded in using them to stop the development of malignant tumours. "The antibodies we've found prevent a cancer tumour from growing. They appear to work perfectly in the laboratory, and this means, of course, that they've got incredibly interesting therapeutic potential that we'll investigate further. However, we're still quite early in the experimental stage," says Associate Professor Peter Kristensen.
The antibodies neutralize the effects of signal substances released by carcinoma cells to get blood vessels to replicate, thus cutting off the blood supply to the tumor.
A cancer tumor deprived of oxygen and nutrients becomes dormant and is thereby made harmless. If it receives a supply from the bloodstream, however, it grows and spreads, and the researchers appear to be able to prevent this deadly process.
The researchers isolated their antibodies from a library consisting of billions of different antibodies, and they subsequently analyzed the ability of the individual antibodies to inhibit blood vessel formation. This sounds like incredibly extensive laboratory work, and it would have been far from possible just a few years ago. However, they used a biological technology for this purpose that they developed and published in Nature Protocols three years ago. It helps them to identify and extract the antibodies with specific binding properties regarding the surface proteins in blood vessel cells. 

Cancer Advance of the Year: Transformation of CLL Treatment

Clinical research has brought about tremendous progress in cancer care, resulting in longer survival and better quality of life for the more than half a million Americans diagnosed with cancer each year. During the last decade, more than 60 new cancer drugs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Entire new classes of drugs have been developed, each targeting a specific molecule, gene, or protein required for tumor survival, growth, or spread.
In the last year alone, four new therapies were approved for patients with (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia) (CLL). These treatments are more effective and cause far fewer side effects than the treatment options that were previously available. For this reason, ASCO has named the transformation of CLL treatment the cancer Advance of the Year in its Clinical Cancer Advances 2015 report.
“This has truly been a banner year for CLL and for clinical cancer research as a whole,” said ASCO President Peter P. Yu, MD, FASCO. “Advances in cancer prevention and care, especially those in precision medicine, are offering stunning new possibilities for patients.”

CLL is the most common adult leukemia, and approximately 90% of people who are diagnosed are over the age of 55. However, until last year, many older patients had few treatment options. For years, the standard treatment for CLL has been a combination of chemotherapy (fludarabine [Fludara]/cyclophosphamide [Neosar]) and targeted therapy (rituximab [Rituxan]). Most older adults, though, are unable to tolerate standard treatment because of severe, even life-threatening, side effects.

In 2014, people who had just been diagnosed with CLL gained two new treatment options that are far more effective than existing drugs. When combined with chemotherapy, obinutuzumab (Gazyva) and ofatumumab (Arzerra) extend the amount of time until CLL gets worse by roughly a year. These drugs are known as immunotherapies, which is a type of cancer treatment designed to boost the body's natural defenses to fight the cancer.
For patients with CLL that has come back after treatment or become resistant to standard treatment, two new targeted drugs, ibrutinib (Imbruvica) and idelalisib (Zydelig), are so effective they are poised to transform CLL care, potentially eliminating the need for chemotherapy.

How to attack and paralyze Myeloma cells in Bone Marrow

Multiple myeloma is a malignant disease characterised by proliferation of clonal plasma cells in the bone marrow and typically accompanied by the secretion of monoclonal immunoglobulins that are detectable in the serum or urine. Increased understanding of the microenvironmental interactions between malignant plasma cells and the bone marrow niche, and their role in disease progression and acquisition of therapy resistance, has helped the development of novel therapeutic drugs for use in combination with cytostatic therapy. Together with autologous stem cell transplantation and advances in supportive care, the use of novel drugs such as proteasome inhibitors and immunomodulatory drugs has increased response rates and survival substantially in the past several years. Present clinical research focuses on the balance between treatment efficacy and quality of life, the optimum sequencing of treatment options, the question of long-term remission and potential cure by multimodal treatment, the pre-emptive treatment of high-risk smouldering myeloma, and the role of maintenance. Upcoming results of ongoing clinical trials, together with a pipeline of promising new treatments, raise the hope for continuous improvements in the prognosis of patients with myeloma in the future.
Multiple Myeloma is one of the most common blood cancers, mainly diagnosed in elderly patients. As life expectancy increases, the frequency of the disease has therefore increased during the last decades. Both deeper insights into disease biology including interactions between malignant plasma cells and their bone marrow environment, and the design and clinical testing of new drugs have led to a considerable improvement in the prognosis of this mostly incurable disease during the last years. The right timing and the choice of the best treatment match for the particular myeloma stage and the needs of the individual patient are essential for optimal disease control.
Bornhäuser and Röllig present a structured guidance when and how which treatment should be used and introduce new ways to paralyze the cell cycle of cancer cells or to attack malignant cells by transfusing specific immune bodies. These new therapy approaches will help to further increase the prognosis of myeloma patients in the near future.
The article was co-written by the myelom expert Stefan Knop from Würzburg university and published in The Lancet, one of the world's best known and most renowned medical journals, making it available to a large audience of readers.
Myeloma patients can get individual treatment advice and information on participation in clinical trials in the myeloma outpatient clinic at the Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik I of the university hospital Dresden.

Scientists investigate sound waves for burning away Cancer pain

Researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, both in the UK, have announced they are experimenting with a novel approach to treating cancer pain, using next-generation ultrasound to burn away the source of the pain.
In cases where cancer has metastasized to the bone, patients can experience intense bone pain that severely reduces their quality of life.
The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) team hopes that its new high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) approach could provide an effective and non-invasive alternative for treating pain when radiation therapy is no longer an option.
HIFU works by concentrating ultrasound energy precisely on a target to destroy tissue with heat. The heat destroys the nerve tissue in the bone surrounding the tumor but leaves the neighboring tissue unharmed.
"Focused ultrasound is an exciting potential cancer treatment because of its ability to target tumors very precisely," says study co-leader Gail ter Haar, professor of Therapeutic Ultrasound at ICR.
"The point onto which the ultrasound beam is focused gets very hot," she explains, "but the surrounding tissue is left unharmed. It's like using a magnifying glass in the sun to start a fire, where you need to form a sharp focal spot on the dry tinder."
The precision targeting, meanwhile, comes from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which identifies the area for treatment and tracks the therapy in real time.
Ultrasound's main use in medicine until now has been as a way of imaging the body. The ICR researchers believe that by using ultrasound at a much higher power, as in HIFU, it provides a previously unexplored method of treating cancer.

The coming wave of New Cancer-Fighting Drugs

The treatments, known broadly as immunotherapies or immune-oncology, fall into two major categories: drugs that help take the brakes off the immune response, going after solid tumors like melanoma and lung cancer, and customized treatments that modify immune cells to combat blood malignancies.
“I think 2015 is the end of the beginning in the story of immunotherapy,” said Michael Giordano, head of development of oncology and immunology at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. “2015 will be a pivot point where I-O will be mainstreamed beyond melanoma and we’ll start seeing it approved and used in large tumors.”
There are 374 experimental cancer drugs in mid-stage trials, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics’ global outlook report published last year. That’s more than twice as many drugs as for nervous system disorders, for example. Of the experimental cancer drugs, about 25 percent to 30 percent are immunotherapies, according to IMS.
In trials, Merck & Co. and Bristol-Myers’ drugs showed long-lasting effects in some patients that oncologists have called dramatic.

England's Cancer Drugs Fund gets financial boost but cut in treatments

The Cancer Drugs Fund is to be boosted to £340m from April, but 16 drugs used in 25 different treatments have been axed from the list it will pay for, NHS England has announced.
Cancer charities and the pharmaceutical companies said scrapping drugs would harm patients, while critics of the fund said the review did nothing to make the process of deciding which drugs the NHS should provide more rational or fair.
Some new drugs will join the list, but of the 84 drug treatments presently funded, some of these are the same drug used in more than one type of cancer, 25 will be stopped. Three of the drugs to go are used in advanced breast cancer.
“Thousands of breast cancer patients have today been denied the chance of improved quality of life and extra time with their loved ones. “This news is devastating for them,” said one charity chief executive, Samia al Qadhi at Breast Cancer Care. Like other charities it was critical of the way the fund operates.
“The Cancer Drugs Fund is falling apart when there is still no long-term solution in place,” she said. “While it is good that another three breast cancer drugs remain on the list and budget for the Cancer Drugs Fund will grow, the priority now must be to urgently find a sustainable system that works. Without this, cancer patients will continue to be denied access to vital treatment, they deserve better than this.”
Bowel cancer and blood cancer charities also lined up to criticise decisions to rule out paying for drugs in their fields.
NHS England launched the review of the Cancer Drugs Fund because it was seriously overspent. It was launched in 2011 as a £200m-a-year pool of money to pay for new cancer drugs that were turned down by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) because of their very high cost.

Scripps Florida scientists develop novel platform for Treatment of Breast, Pancreatic Cancer

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified a novel synthetic compound that sharply inhibits the activity of a protein that plays an important role in in the progression of breast and pancreatic cancers.
In the new study, to be published in the February 2015 print edition of the journal Molecular Pharmacology, the scientists showed that the compound, known as SR1848, reduces the activity and expression of the cancer-related protein called “liver receptor homolog-1” or LRH-1.
“Our study shows that SR1848 removes LRH1 from DNA, shutting down expression of LRH-1 target genes, and halts cell proliferation,” said Patrick Griffin, chair of the (TSRI) Department of Molecular Therapeutics and director of the Translational Research Institute at Scripps Florida. “It’s a compound that appears to be a promising chemical scaffold for fighting tumors that are non-responsive to standard therapies.”
LRH1 plays a crucial role in breast cancer through its regulation of genes involved in hormone synthesis and cholesterol metabolism, also key risk factors in cardiovascular disease. LRH-1 has also been implicated as a tumor promoter in intestinal and pancreatic cancer. Over-expression of LRH-1 has been shown to promote evasiveness and metastasis, the usually lethal spread of the disease.

Vitamin D aids the immune system to fight Colorectal Cancer

A research group has identified an association between vitamin D and how the immune system responds to cancer cells among a large human population sample for the first time.
Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer and fourth leading cause of cancer death worldwide, according to background information in the study. In the US, it is the second leading cause of cancer death. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that 51,783 people died from the disease in 2011.
Previous research has indicated that vitamin D could have a preventive effect against colorectal cancer. The vitamin is obtained through exposure to sunlight as well as certain foods and supplements.
The role of vitamin D within the body is to assist the immune system and contribute to calcium absorption and the growth and repair of bones. Some studies have also associated vitamin D with reducing the risk of multiple sclerosis, asthma symptoms and heart attacks.
"People with high levels of vitamin D in their bloodstream have a lower overall risk of developing colorectal cancer," says senior author Dr. Shuji Ogino. "Laboratory research suggests that vitamin D boosts immune system function by activating T cells that recognize and attack cancer cells."

New Cancer Treatment strategy for aggressive cancers identified

Details on how disrupting a pathway used by cancerous cells to proliferate could be the key to inhibiting the growth and survival of tumors.
"Identification of genetic markers that predict cancer cell vulnerabilities and new drugs to exploit such vulnerabilities is a focal point of cancer research today," says senior author Lee Zou, associate scientific director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center.
Cancer cells survive by avoiding the natural processes of aging and death that normal cells undergo.
In normal cells, repetitive DNA sequences called telomeres regulate these processes. Telomeres are found at the end of chromosomes, protecting them and ensuring that cells do not lose genetic information when dividing.
Over time, telomeres erode and shorten. Once telomeres have been eroded down to a critically short length, a signal is sent which tells the cell to stop dividing, protecting the genetic information while simultaneously cutting short the cell's lifespan.
The other pathway is referred to as the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway. In this pathway, telomeres are lengthened via recombination with DNA sequences from other chromosomes.
This new study represents the first time that a therapy has been identified specifically for treating the ALT pathway.
"Cancer cells must rely on either the telomerase enzyme or the ALT pathway to bypass the normal processes of cell aging and death," explains Zou. "Our findings may provide a new direction for the treatment of ALT-positive cancers, which include osteosarcoma, glioblastoma and certain pancreatic tumors."

Boehringer Ingelheim and Vanderbilt University join forces to develop new cancer treatment

Ingelheim, Germany, January 15, 2015, Boehringer Ingelheim announced today that it has established a research alliance with Vanderbilt University and the cancer drug discovery laboratory of Professor Stephen W. Fesik, Ph.D., the Orrin H. Ingram, II Chair in Cancer Research and Professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Chemistry. The aim of the new collaboration is the research and development of small molecule inhibitors of oncogenic Ras for the treatment of cancer. Ras is the most frequently mutated oncogene known in cancer with K-Ras being the most commonly mutated form occurring in Pancreas, Colon, Biliary tract and Lung Adenocarcinomas. Mutations in the Ras family are very common, and found in 20 to 30 percent of all human tumors. Ras has been a particularly difficult protein to target since its discovery in human cancers more than 30 years ago.
Under the terms of the agreement, the research capabilities of Vanderbilt University and Boehringer Ingelheim will be brought together in a multi-year research program focusing on the development of small molecule inhibitors of Ras.

Why the Drugs for Cancer Treatment cost so much, and Lowering these Costs

ELI LILLY charges more than $13,000 a month for Cyramza, the newest drug to treat stomach cancer. The latest medicine for lung cancer, Novartis’s Zykadia, costs almost $14,000 a month. Amgen’s Blincyto, for leukemia, will cost $64,000 a month.
Companies are taking advantage of a mix of laws that force insurers to include essentially all expensive drugs in their policies, and a philosophy that demands that every new health care product be available to everyone, no matter how little it helps or how much it costs. Anything else and we’re talking death panels. Companies buy up the rights to old, inexpensive generic drugs, lock out competitors and raise prices. For instance, Albendazole, a drug for certain kinds of parasitic infection, was approved back in 1996. As recently as 2010, its average wholesale cost was $5.92 per day, by 2013, it had risen to $119.58.
Novartis, the company that makes the Leukemia drug Gleevec, keeps raising the drug’s price, even though the drug has already delivered billions in profit to the company. In 2001 Novartis charged $4,540, in 2014 dollars, for a month of treatment; now it charges $8,488. With its pricing, Novartis is just keeping up with other companies.
Many European countries say no to a handful of drugs each year, usually those that are both pretty ineffective and highly costly. Because they can say no, yes is not a guarantee. So companies have to offer their drugs at prices that make them attractive to these health care systems. A recent survey of cancer drug policies revealed you don’t have to say no very often to get discounts for saying yes. Of the 29 major cancer drugs included in the study that are available in the United States, an estimated 97 percent and 86 percent are also available in Germany and France, respectively. Prices in Europe for prescription drugs are 50 percent below what we pay in the United States!
We are left with two hard options! Free up insurers and government programs from the requirement to include all expensive drugs in their plans as we explain to the public that some drugs are not effective enough to justify their price. Second option, Demand that policy makers set drug prices in the United States equal to those of Western Europe. Either option would be a great improvement to the situation we have today.

Study finds new treatment target for aggressive blood cancer

The Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), reported the following findings in the journal Experimental Hematology.
The researchers have discovered an interaction between two molecules that may contribute to the development of Acute Myeloid Leukemia. They suggest the pathway could be a potential target for treating the aggressive blood cancer (AML)and that one of the molecules could serve as a biomarker in personalized therapy of the disease.
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive blood cancer whose diagnosis is often associated with poor survival. The cancer starts in cells that would normally develop into various types of blood cell.
As AML progresses, more and more dysfunctional blood cells accumulate in the body.
The disease mostly affects older people and is not usually seen in patients under the age of 45.
According to the American Cancer Society, there were about 18,860 new cases of AML and 10,460 deaths to the disease in the US in 2014.

Advances in Colorectal Cancer Treatment

Health care professionals and researchers from around the world will be gathering in San Francisco, California, this weekend to discuss the latest advances in the diagnosis, treatment, and management of gastrointestinal (GI) cancers at the 2015 GI Cancers Symposium. More than 800 abstracts will be presented at the meeting, highlighting research into cancers of the colon/rectum, stomach, pancreas, esophagus, small intestine, and anus.
Two of these studies looked at combining chemotherapy and targeted therapy for metastatic colorectal cancer. One study compared two different chemotherapy regimens (combinations of drugs) plus the targeted therapy drug bevacizumab (Avastin) as initial treatment for metastatic colorectal cancer. In the other study, researchers looked at adding the targeted therapy ramucirumab (Cyramza) to standard chemotherapy for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer that had gotten worse after initial treatment. The researchers found that both the newer approach to chemotherapy and the new targeted therapy helped patients with metastatic colorectal cancer live longer. These studies highlight potential new options for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer whether they are first diagnosed and receiving initial treatment or have had the disease worsen during treatment.
A third study that will be highlighted at the meeting suggests that people with rectal cancer who have no signs of cancer after receiving both chemotherapy and radiation therapy may be able to safely postpone or not have surgery. This could help many patients avoid the risks of rectal cancer surgery, which can include bowel problems and decreased sexual function.
“We believe that our results will encourage more doctors to consider this watch-and-wait approach as an alternative to immediate rectal surgery, at least for some patients,” said senior study author Philip Paty, MD, a surgical oncologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “From my experience, most patients are willing to accept some risk to defer rectal surgery in hope of avoiding major surgery and preserving rectal function.”
It is important to talk about all of your treatment options with your doctor. Discussing the risks and benefits of each option and how any side effects can be managed can help you and your doctor choose the most appropriate treatment plan for your situation.

Opdivo shows promise against Lung Cancer, trial Stopped Early!

Drug-maker Bristol-Myers Squibb says a trial of nivolumab (Opdivo) has been stopped early because the drug improves how long people with a type of advanced lung cancer live compared to chemotherapy.

This is the first time a survival advantage over chemo has been shown in lung cancer with an immunotherapy-type drug, the company says. Immunotherapy treatments spur the immune system to fight cancer like it does other illnesses.

The trial included 272 people with an advanced lung cancer known as squamous cell non-small cell cancer.

Analysts say nivolumab, which is already approved as a melanoma treatment, could be cleared for use in lung cancer before the end of the year, the company has requested approval for this in both the United States and Europe.

Another immunotherapy drug is also making progress: pembrolizumab (Keytruda). Merck & Co. has announced it is speeding up its development of the drug for use in lung cancer. It hopes to file for approval by mid-year. Pembrolizumab is already marketed for use in melanoma.

Early results with these drugs in lung cancer have been causing excitement at recent medical meetings, leading one researcher to predict that "immunotherapy is heralding a new era of lung cancer treatment."

Patients Seek ‘Right to Try’ New Drugs for Cancer Treatment

Since May, a string of states have passed laws that give critically ill patients the right to try medications that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Deemed “Right to Try” laws, they have passed quickly and often unanimously in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Louisiana and Arizona, bringing hope to patients like Larry Kutt, who lives in this small town at the edge of the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Kutt, 65, has an advanced blood cancer and says his state’s law could help him gain access to a therapy that several pharmaceutical companies are testing. “It’s my life,” he said, “and I want the chance to save it.”

The laws do not seem to have helped anyone obtain experimental medicine, as the drug companies are not interested in supplying unapproved medications outside the supervision of the F.D.A. But that seems almost beside the point to the Goldwater Institute, the libertarian group behind legislative efforts to pass Right to Try laws. “The goal is for terminally ill patients to have choice when it comes to end-stage disease,” said Craig Handzlik, state policy coordinator for the Goldwater Institute, based in Arizona. “Right to Try is something that will help terminally ill people all over the country.”

Legislators in 10 other states will introduce these bills in 2015, Mr. Handzlik said, and lawmakers in Kansas, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming have already filed bills or announced intentions to do so. Critics of the laws like Dr. David Gorski, a surgeon in Michigan who blogs about medical issues, call them “a cruel sham.”

Releasing unstudied therapies, Dr. Gorski said, could cause untold pain in a person’s final days, even hastening death. “They’re far more likely to harm patients than to help them,” he said in an interview.

A divided federal appeals court ruled in 2007 that patients do not have a constitutional right to medicines that are not federally approved. The next year, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of that ruling, thwarting the hopes of those who would like a federal Right to Try law.

Supporters have popularized their cause by nicknaming the laws “Dallas Buyers Club” bills, invoking the 2013 movie featuring a rodeo competitor who smuggled unapproved treatments to desperate people with AIDS.

Targeting fatty acids may be treatment strategy for Arthritis, Leukemia

Enzymes linked to diabetes and obesity appear to play key roles in Arthritis and Leukemia, potentially opening up new avenues for treating these diverse diseases, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Working with genetically engineered mice, the researchers discovered that the same enzymes involved in turning carbohydrates into the building blocks of fats also influence the health of specialized white blood cells called neutrophils. Neutrophils are the most abundant type of white blood cell and a hallmark of inflammation, which is a key component of Rheumatoid Arthritis. Abnormally high levels of neutrophils also are common in patients with Leukemia.
"The link between these enzymes and neutrophils was a big surprise," said first author Irfan J. Lodhi, PhD, assistant professor of medicine. "We had never thought about treating Rheumatoid Arthritis or Leukemia by targeting enzymes that produce fatty acids, but this work supports that line of thinking."
In the study, mice that couldn't make enzymes needed to produce a certain type of fat abruptly lost weight and developed extremely low white blood cell counts, with very few neutrophils. Without this fat, called an Ether Lipid, neutrophils died.
That discovery could lead to the targeting of Ether Lipids as a way to reduce the number of neutrophils in inflammatory diseases and Leukemias. The researchers believe limiting, rather than eliminating, ether lipids may be the best approach because neutrophils are important infection fighters.
"This may be a pathway to limit inflammation," said senior investigator Clay F. Semenkovich, MD, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine. "If we could reduce the activity of these enzymes without eliminating them entirely, it could lower the levels of Ether Lipids and potentially help patients with Leukemia and inflammatory diseases such as Arthritis."
Semenkovich, also a professor of cell biology and physiology and director of the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Lipid Research, said the enzymes specifically target neutrophils without affecting other immune cells.

Coupling Head and Neck Cancer Screening and Lung Cancer Scans improves survival

Adding head and neck cancer screenings to recommended lung cancer screenings would likely improve early detection and survival, according to a multidisciplinary team led by scientists affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), a partner with UPMC CancerCenter.
The team provides a rationale for a national clinical trial to assess the effectiveness of adding examination of the head and neck to lung cancer screening programs. People most at risk for lung cancer are also those most at risk for head and neck cancer.
"When caught early, the five-year survival rate for head and neck cancer is over 83 percent," said senior author Brenda Diergaarde, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health and member of the UPCI. "However, the majority of cases are diagnosed later when survival rates generally shrink below 50 percent. There is a strong need to develop strategies that will result in identification of the cancer when it can still be successfully treated."
Head and neck cancer is the world's sixth-most common type of cancer. Worldwide every year, 600,000 people are diagnosed with it and about 350,000 die. Tobacco use and alcohol consumption are the major risk factors for developing the cancer.
The early symptoms are typically a lump or sore in the mouth or throat, trouble swallowing or a voice change, which are often brushed off as a cold or something that will heal. Treatment, particularly in later stages, can be disfiguring and can change the way a person talks or eats.
Dr. Diergaarde and her team analyzed the records of 3,587 people enrolled in the Pittsburgh Lung Screening Study (PLuSS), which consists of current and ex-smokers aged 50 and older, to see if they had a higher chance of developing head and neck cancer.
In the general U.S. population, fewer than 43 per 100,000 people would be expected to develop head and neck cancer annually among those 50 and older. Among the PLuSS participants, the rate was 71.4 cases annually per 100,000 people.
Recently, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, as well as the American Cancer Society and several other organizations, recommended annual screening for lung cancer with low-dose computed tomography in people 55 to 74 years old with a smoking history averaging at least a pack a day for a total of 30 years. The recommendation came after a national clinical trial showed that such screening reduces lung cancer mortality.
"Head and neck cancer is relatively rare, and screening the general population would be impractical," said co-author David O. Wilson, M.D., M.P.H., associate director of UPMC's Lung Cancer Center. "However, the patients at risk for lung cancer whom we would refer for the newly recommended annual screening are the same patients that our study shows also likely would benefit from regular head and neck cancer screenings. If such screening reduces mortality in these at-risk patients, that would be a convenient way to increase early detection and save lives."

SHOCKING NEWS: High-doseTestosterone Therapy helps some men with advanced Prostate Cancer

The male hormone testosterone, generally thought to be a feeder of prostate cancer, has been found to suppress some advanced prostate cancers and also may reverse resistance to testosterone-blocking drugs used to treat prostate cancer.
The finding, by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, is reported in the Jan. 7 issue of Science Translational Medicine.
Medical oncologist Samuel Denmeade, M.D., who led the small study of 16 patients with metastatic prostate cancer, warns that the timing of testosterone treatment used in his research is critical and difficult to determine, and says men should not try to self-medicate their cancers with testosterone supplements available over the counter.
Previous studies have shown that taking testosterone at the wrong time, particularly by men with symptoms of active cancer progression who have not yet received testosterone-blocking therapy, can make the disease worse.
In men whose prostate cancer spreads, doctors typically prescribe drugs that block testosterone production, but cancer cells eventually become resistant to this means of reducing the hormone, says Denmeade, a professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. At that point, physicians switch to other drugs, such as enzalutamide, which block testosterone's ability to bind to receptors within prostate cancer cells.
Denmeade says the combination of drugs that block testosterone production and receptors, called androgen deprivation therapy, may make prostate cancer more aggressive over time by enabling prostate cancer cells to subvert attempts to block testosterone receptors. And many men on these drugs experience harsh side effects, including impotence, weight gain, muscle loss and intense fatigue.
"This really is the most lethal form of prostate cancer," says Michael Schweizer, M.D., researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and contributor to the study during his recent fellowship at Johns Hopkins. "It's the one that's the most resistant, and typically once people progress to this stage it's when we start to worry that they're at a much higher risk for dying from prostate cancer."
The new study tested an approach based on the idea that if prostate cancer cells were flooded with testosterone, the cells might be killed by the hormone shock. The cells also might react by making fewer receptors, which may make the prostate tumor cells vulnerable once more to androgen deprivation therapy.

Merck speeds up drug-submission plans for Hepatitis C, and Lung Cancer

Merck & Co said it would fast track its plans to submit new drugs for hepatitis C and lung cancer for regulatory approval.
The drugmaker is trying to close the gap with competitors in the two lucrative segments.
Gilead Sciences Inc's hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi, priced at $84,000 per course, notched up sales of $2.8 billion in the company's latest quarter.
Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved AbbVie Inc's all-oral hepatitis C treatment, priced lower than Gilead's drugs.

Merck said it planned to file an application with the FDA in the first half of the year for marketing approval for grazoprevir/elbasvir, a new two-drug, single-pill combination to treat hepatitis C.
The company had said in November that it planned to submit the new drug application sometime in 2015.
Merck also said it would file an application midyear for expanding the use of its new cancer immunotherapy Keytruda to include the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer, the most common form of the deadly disease.
Merck's plan to speed up the drug submissions was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Keytruda belongs to a new class of drugs, called PD-1 inhibitors, that have generated great enthusiasm in the medical community.
They work by blocking a mechanism tumors use to camouflage themselves from the immune system, allowing it to recognize and attack the cancer.
The FDA approved Keytruda last year to treat advanced melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, making it the first drug from the PD-1 class to reach the U.S. market.

The Coming Wave of New Cancer-Fighting Drugs!

The treatments, known broadly as immunotherapies or immune-oncology, fall into two major categories, drugs that help take the brakes off the immune response, going after solid tumors like melanoma and lung cancer, and customized treatments that modify immune cells to combat blood malignancies.
“I think 2015 is the end of the beginning in the story of immunotherapy,” said Michael Giordano, head of development of oncology and immunology at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. “2015 will be a pivot point where I-O will be mainstreamed beyond melanoma and we’ll start seeing it approved and used in large tumors.”
There are 374 experimental cancer drugs in mid-stage trials, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics’ global outlook report published last year. That’s more than twice as many drugs as for nervous system disorders, for example. Of the experimental cancer drugs, about 25 percent to 30 percent are immunotherapies, according to IMS.
In trials, Merck & Co. and Bristol-Myers’ drugs showed long-lasting effects in some patients that oncologists have called dramatic.
There a huge unmet medical need from patients, for whom many new treatments extend lives by years, rather than months. And the financial reward for drugmakers is huge. The drugs have annual costs of $150,000, and a slate of personalized treatments are expected to carry even higher price tags.

There is a surge in the stocks in this field. Kite Pharma Inc., Juno Therapeutics Inc. and Bluebird Bio Inc. have gathered interest from investors for their therapies to modify the immune system cells and retrain them to attack blood cancers, a technique known as CAR. Kite and Bluebird rose more than fourfold in the last year, while Juno’s shares have more than doubled since their initial public offering last month. All three companies are scheduled to present at the JPMorgan Health Care Conference in San Francisco next week.
Kite plans to file for regulatory approval for its treatment by end of 2016, according to spokesman Justin Jackson. Juno plans to file an application by late 2016 or early 2017, according to company filings.
Bristol-Myers and Merck, meanwhile, are racing to expand their drugs beyond melanoma. They expect approvals in lung cancer this year, and are testing on a wide range of solid tumors.

A HISTORIC FIRST; F.D.A. Panel approves generic copy of costly Biologic Drug

An expert panel unanimously recommended on Wednesday that the Food and Drug Administration approve a cheaper copy of a special drug used in cancer therapy, paving the way for alternatives to an entire class of complex and costly drugs to enter the United States market.

Most brand-name drugs eventually lose their patent protection, opening the market to lower-priced generic products. But one class of drugs, known as biologics, which includes some of the most expensive medications in the world, has been insulated from the competition of cheaper copies for years.

That changed when the 14 members of the panel, convened by the F.D.A., agreed to recommend approval of a drug known as EP2006, which helps the body make white blood cells and is a close copy of an existing medication called Neupogen, also called filgrastim. EP2006 was approved in Europe in 2009 as Zarzio but has not been used in the United States, in part because no regulatory pathway existed to bring copies of biologic drugs to market.

“This is kind of like cutting the ribbon to open a major new road,” said Ronny Gal, a senior research analyst who focuses on specialty pharmaceuticals at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “It is literally a new concept in medicine.”

Biologic drugs are so called because they are made out of living cells and not synthesized from chemicals as ordinary drugs are. Some examples of popular biologic drugs are Remicade, Humira and Enbrel for autoimmune disease, and Herceptin, Rituxan and Avastin for cancer.

If the F.D.A. follows the panel’s advice, and it usually does, though it does not have to, the move would usher in an era of competition for biologics and would eventually reduce prices, Mr. Gal said. Pharmaceutical companies have been criticized recently for the high prices of new drugs, and biologics are particularly expensive; Avastin, for example, can cost more than $50,000 a year.

Express Scripts, the nation’s largest manager of prescription drug benefits, estimates that the introduction of EP2006, to be called Zarxio in the United States, could save $5.7 billion in drug costs over the next 10 years.

Virginia Tech Carilion researchers working on new Cancer Treatment

A casual conversation could be the start of a new cancer treatment. Doctors at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute got a $200,000 grant. The idea is to use a virus to destroy an aggressive type of brain cancer called glioblastoma. Normally within a year of being diagnosed someone passes away. The drugs that are used to treat it now can lose their effectiveness according to VTC doctors. If this works it could be used to treat other cancers too.
Two doctors were just chatting about their research when they came up with the new idea. "We need to be creative and think about new approaches to go after it and I think the next generation of drugs we will be moving towards this kind of approach, an approach based on vehicles like viruses that are kind of like a Trojan horse getting a drug delivered into the brain tissue," said Dr. Robert Gourdie, who concentrates on heart research. "We think that if it works it will be very, very beneficial for this type of cancer," said Dr. Zhi Sheng, who researches cancer. They hope to be testing the new treatment on animals within the next year. In two years they hope to be testing it on humans.

Can the state of Connecticut force a teenage girl to undergo Chemotherapy?

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday afternoon that the state can require Cassandra to continue treatment.
Her mother, Jackie Fortin, said she's disappointed by the decision. "She knows I love her and I'm going to keep fighting for her because this is her decision," Fortin said. "I know more than anyone, more than DCF, that my daughter is old enough, mature enough to make a decision. If she wasn't, I'd be making that decision."
A 17-year-old Connecticut girl recently diagnosed with cancer has been removed from her home after refusing to undergo chemotherapy.
The girl, named Cassandra, is now in the custody of child welfare authorities and is being forced to undergo cancer treatment. The state Supreme Court is taking up her case Thursday to weigh whether she's mature enough to make her own medical decisions.
Cassandra is Jackie Fortin's only child. Fortin has been a single mother for Cassandra's entire life. Until last month, they lived together in Windsor Locks, Conn. Fortin says this is the first time they've been separated.
"Nobody, whether it's her age or an adult, should ever have to go through this by herself," she says.
For the past month, her daughter has been held at a local hospital, undergoing chemotherapy treatment against her wishes. A court gave the state Department of Children and Families temporary custody of Cassandra, as well as the authority to make medical decisions for the teen, after doctors reported Fortin for neglect. Court papers document missed appointments and arguments with doctors over her daughter's diagnosis.
"This is not about death," Fortin says. "My daughter is not going to die. This is about, 'This is my body, my choice, and let me decide.' "
Although the truth in this matter is, she will certainly die! Cassandra's doctors testified in previous hearings that Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system, is lethal without the recommended treatment. With treatment, she has an 85 percent chance of survival.
Kristina Stevens, an administrator with Connecticut's DCF, says the doctors' medical opinions prompted the state to get involved.
"We had the benefit of experts who could tell us with great clarity if in fact we don't do something, if the system doesn't react and respond, this child will die," Stevens says.
Cassandra is just eight months away from turning 18. Joshua Michtom, one of her attorneys, says this adds another complicated layer to the case.
"The general rule for adults is that you can say no to treatment no matter how life-saving it may be," Michtom says. "You can say no even to helpful treatment. If she were 18, no matter what anyone said, it would be her choice to make."

Wasp venom targets Breast Cancer in new therapy

Wasp venom may deliver a painful sting, but scientists from the Institute for Biomedical Research (IRB Barcelona) have carried out successful in vitro tests using the venom to kill breast cancer tumor cells, a new study describes. The next step will be to test its effectiveness in mouse models.
Most anti-tumor compounds are accompanied by a series of side effects and may even become resistant, but the IRB Barcelona team designed a new therapy based on a peptide - the binding of several amino acids - from wasp venom for its potential use against breast cancer.

"This peptide has the ability to form pores in the cell plasma membrane, penetrate into the cell and finally, cause its death, either by necrosis or by triggering apoptosis, programmed cell death," 
However, this "natural weapon" could not be directly used in the therapy due to its high toxicity and lack of cell specificity - meaning, it would not only attack tumor cells but healthy cells as well. So, the researchers came up with a way to deliver the venom to the tumor without causing harm to the body's healthy cells.
The system consists of a decorated carrier polymer with two components: a peptide that is bound to a tumor cell receptor and the cytotoxic peptide of the wasp venom.
In vitro experiments show that the substance successfully reaches and kills the tumor cells while leaving healthy cells, like red blood cells, alone.
Though the experiment is in its early stages and still has to undergo testing in mice, researchers are optimistic that these findings will be put toward anti-cancer therapy in the future.

Scorpion venom could yield new Cancer Treatment

Scorpion venom has been gaining interest as a source of new drugs. It contains a mixture of biological chemicals called peptides, some of which are known to trigger cell death by forming pores in biological membranes. Cell death can be useful if we are able to target, say, tumour cells to auto-destruct.
These toxins can have very potent effects. For instance, one particular small peptide, known as TsAP-1, isolated from the Brazilian yellow scorpion (Tityus serrulatus), has both anti-microbial and anti-cancer properties.
However, harnessing this kind of power for clinical good has so far been challenging because these toxins kill both tumours and healthy cells. One method to control such toxicity is through using nanotechnology to build specially made drug-delivery vehicles. If successful, the toxic drug is released to kill only unwanted tissues in a body.
One such attempt has been made by Dipanjan Pan at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. In a study published in the journal Chemical Communications, scientists claim to have created spherical capsules to trap scorpion venom toxin TsAP-1. This encapsulated toxin, named NanoVenin, increases the drugs effectiveness at killing breast cancer cells by ten times.
This is an interesting development for two reasons. Firstly, the venom toxin in its natural form could not be used due to the lack of specificity and, secondly, the incorporation of the venom toxin in the nanoparticle caused a large increase in the drug’s potency, making it more clinically useful.
This form of the drug works on breast cancer cells, but it is not disease-specific yet. Researchers can modify its outer shell by, for example, attaching proteins that can make it selective towards certain types of cancers. It may also be possible to coat the nanoparticle in a biodegradable layer so as to trap its toxicity until it reaches the diseased area, where the layer degrades to reveal the toxin.

Researchers target the cell's 'biological clock' in promising new Therapy to Kill Cancer Cells

Cell biologists at UofTexas Southwestern Medical Center have targeted telomeres with a small molecule called 6-thiodG that takes advantage of the cell's 'biological clock' to kill cancer cells and shrink tumor growth.
Dr. Jerry W. Shay, Professor and Vice Chairman of Cell Biology at UT Southwestern, and colleague, Dr. Woodring E. Wright, Professor of Cell Biology and Internal Medicine, found that 6-thio-2'-deoxyguanosine could stop the growth of cancer cells in culture and decrease the growth of tumors in mice.
"We observed broad efficacy against a range of cancer cell lines with very low concentrations of 6-thiodG, as well as tumor burden shrinkage in mice," said Dr. Shay, Associate Director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Dr. Shay and Dr. Wright, who hold The Southland Financial Corporation Distinguished Chair in Geriatrics, are co-senior authors of the paper appearing in the journal Cancer Discovery.
6-thiodG acts by targeting a unique mechanism that is thought to regulate how long cells can stay alive, a type of aging clock. This biological clock is defined by DNA structures known as telomeres, which cap the ends of the cell's chromosomes to protect them from damage, and which become shorter every time the cell divides. Once telomeres have shortened to a critical length, the cell can no longer divide and dies though a process known as apoptosis.
Cancer cells are protected from this death by an RNA protein complex called telomerase, which ensures that telomeres do not shorten with every division.  Telomerase has therefore been the subject of intense research as a target for cancer therapy. Drugs that successfully block its action have been developed, but these drugs have to be administered for long periods of time to successfully trigger cell death and shrink tumors, leading to considerable toxicities. This outcome is partially because cells in any one tumor have chromosomes with different telomere lengths and any one cell's telomeres must be critically shortened to induce death.
6-thiodG is preferentially used as a substrate by telomerase and disrupts the normal way cells maintain telomere length. Because 6-thiodG is not normally used in telomeres, the presence of the compound acts as an 'alarm' signal that is recognized by the cell as damage. As a result, the cell stops dividing and dies.

Cancer-causing Chemicals in Smokeless Tobacco Products Influence Carcinogen Exposure

Higher levels of cancer-causing chemicals called tobacco-specific nitrosamines in smokeless tobacco products led to greater exposure to these carcinogens even after taking into account how much or how long the product was used, according to a study published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
“Our results show that although the pattern of tobacco use, for example, amount of dip and number of dips, can influence the level of smokeless tobacco users’ exposure to tobacco-specific nitrosamines, the actual amount of these chemicals in the products also makes a significant difference,” said Dorothy K. Hatsukami, PhD, the Forster Family professor in cancer prevention in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
“The majority of smokeless tobacco users in the United States are not aware of the levels of cancer-causing chemicals in their smokeless tobacco products or of the tremendous variability in the levels of these chemicals across brands sold in this country,” continued Hatsukami. “At a minimum, the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) should provide smokeless tobacco consumers information about the different levels of cancer-causing chemicals in different brands of smokeless tobacco and, ideally, require levels of tobacco-specific nitrosamines be substantially reduced, if not eliminated, in all products. Levels of these chemicals in smokeless tobacco products could be readily reduced by changing manufacturing practices.”
Levels of exposure to tobacco-specific nitrosamines are associated with disease risk, according to Hatsukami. Prior studies have shown that smokeless tobacco users in the United States experience about two to three times greater risks for oral cancer compared with those who do not use these products, she said. Pancreatic cancer has also been linked to smokeless tobacco use.

February 15-20, San Fancisco: Translating Cancer Therapy from Promise to Reality

There is a great need for more effective and less toxic therapies for metastatic cancer patients. Advances in genetically engineered T cells is demonstrating clinical efficacy, eliminating many side effects from traditional chemo- and radiation therapies. Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Inaugural Clinical Cancer Immunotherapy symposium will demonstrate bench to bedside translation of combination immunotherapies, adoptive T cell therapies, as well as molecular targeted therapies. Case studies using prognostic biomarkers to predict immunotherapy response will also be showcased. The human immune system is inherently capable of recognizing and destroying cancer cells. At this event, attendees will learn more about the translational advances that are converting the promise of immunotherapy into reality for cancer treatment.

The 7th Breast and Gynecological International Conference Meeting

Through their deep sense of responsibility toward the health care community ,the BGICS continue in their strive to give a good platform for the exchange of experience on cancers & to outline the actual status of the problems relating to the Breast and Gynecological cancers, with discussion of the prospects in the context of the most recent international trends and initiatives for the treatment The 7th BGICC,2015 Scientific Program is designed to give a good platform for the exchange of experience on cancers & to outline the actual status of the problems relating to the Breast & gynecological cancers, with discussion of the prospects in the context of the most recent international trends and initiatives for the treatment.The Conference is organized by the BGICS, a non-profit society aiming at promoting optimal standards of care for patients with breast &gynecological cancers.
7th BGICC will be held on 15-16 January,2015 in Cairo,Egypt.
"The Mission of BGICS is one of the international multi-disciplinary organization dedicated to fostering the science of Breast-Gynecological oncology and improving the care of cancer patients and their families throughout the world. They aim to lessen the human suffering from cancer all over the world."

Blood cancers 2015: Bringing T cell therapy to the clinic

Immunotherapy: unlocking the body’s immune system to fight diseases, is one of the most exciting and promising areas of cancer research and treatment. In the coming year, City of Hope will be opening more clinical trials using an especially powerful type of immunotherapy focusing on T cells. Many of these trials will focus on blood cancers.
Chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR,T cell therapy is a promising approach to immunotherapy being studied at a handful of centers nationwide, including City of Hope, the only center currently offering clinical trials in California. The trials use a similar approach tailored to each cancer: Patients have their T cells collected from the blood then they are replicated in the lab. The cells are then modified using a lentivirus, a virus that encodes the T cells with specific antigen receptors, allowing them to recognize proteins found on cancer cells. This, researchers say, should trigger the immune system to fight cancer.
Trials using this type of immunotherapy are currently underway at City of Hope for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia.  In the next year, City of Hope plans to roll out trials in brain cancer, breast cancer metastases to the brain, acute myeloid leukemia, and multiple myeloma.
Researchers hope that the T cells will be long-lived in the body and reproduce allowing them to be effective against the initial cancer, and ready should any relapse or recurrence arise.
“When you get a cold or infection, the immune cells specifically track down and ride the body of infected cells,” said Stephen J. Forman, M.D., chairman of the Hematologic Malignancies and Stem Cell Transplantation Institute and director of the T Cell Immunotherapy Research Laboratory at City of Hope.
Cancers are frequently able to develop properties that trick the immune system into believing they are part of the body itself, but this time, scientists believe they can jump a step ahead of the cancer and restore the body’s natural defenses.

1.5 Million Cancer Deaths Avoided in 2 Decades

Annual statistics reporting from the American Cancer Society shows the death rate from cancer in the US has fallen 22% from its peak in 1991. This translates to more than 1.5 million deaths from cancer that were avoided. “Cancer Statistics, 2015,” published in the American Cancer Society’s journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, and its companion piece “Cancer Facts & Figures 2015,” estimates the numbers of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the US this year. The estimates are some of the most widely quoted cancer statistics in the world.

A total of 1,658,370 new cancer cases and 589,430 deaths from cancer are projected to occur in the US in 2015. During the most recent 5 years for which there are data (2007-2011), new cancer cases decreased by 1.8% per year in men and stayed the same in women. Cancer death rates decreased by 1.8% per year in men and 1.4% in women in the same 5 years.

“The continuing drops we’re seeing in cancer mortality are reason to celebrate, but not to stop,” said John R. Seffrin, PhD, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society in a statement. “Cancer was responsible for nearly one in four deaths in the United States in 2011, making it the second leading cause of death overall. It is already the leading cause of death among adults aged 40 to 79, and is expected to overtake heart disease as the leading cause of death among all Americans within the next several years. The change may be inevitable, but we can still lessen cancer’s deadly impact by making sure as many Americans as possible have access to the best tools to prevent, detect, and treat cancer.”

The researchers say additional progress can be made by applying cancer-fighting efforts across all segments of the population. The amount of the decrease in cancer deaths varied by state, and was generally lowest in the South and highest in the Northeast. Regional differences in cancer death rates and trends reflect differences in risk factor patterns, such as smoking and obesity, as well as disparities in the national distribution of poverty and access to health care, which have increased over time.