Pharmaceutical Exec for maker of $150,000 per year Cancer Drug blasted

“I think, we’re very responsible in our drug pricing. And we tend to support the price of our drugs with strong economic data,” Caruso said. “So rather than pledge to a particular number, I think it’s important that we continue to develop robust data that provides a solid foundation for the value that our products provide the health care system.”
Those comments sparked immediate frustrations due to the fact that Johnson & Johnson has gained notoriety for its high drug costs. Currently, the pharmaceutical company is producing and marketing a cancer drug called Imbruvica, which costs roughly $9,550 for one bottle of 90 pills.
Imbruvica’s dosage calls for four capsules per day, meaning one bottle lasts about a 22 days. In total, a year-long supply of the drug would cost approximately $154,922. Another drug Johnson & Johnson markets, used to treat Hepatitis C, sells for a little more than $22,000 for a month’s supply, equaling $264,000 for a one-year supply.
“Johnson & Johnson’s justification for their prescription drug prices are outrageous,” Vijay Das, a health care advocate at Public Citizen, stated in response to Carusos’ conference call comments. “Sick patients and taxpayers are held hostage in order for the drug maker to extract extreme profits.”

New Breast Cancer drug effective against other types of Cancer

Palbociclib (Ibrance, Pfizer), a new oral drug whose efficacy in combating breast cancer has been demonstrated alone and in combination with endocrine therapy, also has the potential to combat other types of cancer, according to research conducted at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The findings were published in JAMA Oncology.
Palbociclib targets the rapid division of tumor cells by inhibiting the activity of the enzymes CDK4 and CDK6, which propel cell division in most cancers. It is the first CDK4/6 inhibitor to be approved for the treatment of breast cancer.
“This drug has minor effects on normal cells other than neutrophils,” said senior author Peter J. O'Dwyer, MD. “In tumors, it can cause shrinkage, or more commonly, arrest of growth. As we discover new functions for the CDK4/6 target of this medicine, we are likely to use it in combinations to make other anticancer agents work better.”
In addition to inhibiting the cell cycle, palbociclib has been shown, for example, to alter several recently described non–cell-cycle functions of CDK4/6, a finding expected to expand its therapeutic role, O’Dwyer added.

Cancer drug company, KaloBios, files for bankruptcy

KaloBios, the troubled drugmaker taken over by Martin Shkreli last month, is seeking bankruptcy protection less than two weeks after his arrest for securities fraud.
It is the second pharmaceutical with ties to the former hedge fund manager now in turmoil following his indictment on charges unrelated to his involvement with them, though the drugmakers are not lacking for problems of their own.
The other, Turing Pharmaceuticals Inc., is cutting jobs and seeking a new CEO after Shkreli resigned the position because of his arrest.Turing, under Shkreli, acquired the rights to a treatment for a rare parasitic infection that mainly strikes pregnant women and raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
A report published in May by the pharmacy-benefits company Express Scripts found that 576,000 Americans spent at least $50,000 on prescription drugs in 2014, a sum roughly equivalent to the U.S. median household income.
An investigation by the Senate Special Committee on Aging is now focused on Turing and three other pharmaceutical companies.
So when it was revealed that Shkreli had acquired a controlling stake in publicly traded KaloBios, a failing drug developer doing research on cancer treatments, its shares soared 20 percent in a day.

Most effective way to treat Lung Cancer

A new study conducted by the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA, which enrolled over 1,000 people who had PD-L1-expressing non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common type of lung cancer, appears to show that cancer immunotherapies are far superior to chemotherapy when it comes to treating lung cancer. In UCLA's study about two-thirds of the patients enrolled tested positive for PDL1-expressing tumors. All patients, regardless of PD-L1 expression, were randomly assigned into three groups: two who received differing doses of Merck's Keytruda, and one who got chemotherapy. As a whole, the results showed that patients receiving Keytruda were considerably more likely to have their tumors shrink significantly compared to the chemotherapy group. Additionally, patients receiving Keytruda also lived significantly longer than those who received chemotherapy. Patients on Keytruda also had less incidence of treatment toxicity than the chemotherapy cohort. Cancer immunotherapies have demonstrated remarkable responses in a number of different cancer types, lending hope that new treatments may be on the way.

Tiny drones to target Cancer

Dr. Wilfred Ngwa, a medical physicist in radiation oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is working to apply drone technology to cancer treatment.

Ngwa and his colleagues have developed tiny drones designed to target and kill cancer cells that have spread in the body. The drones are implanted into the tumors carrying immunotherapy medicine and microscopic nanoparticles that can amplify the effect of radiation therapy on cancer cells locally.

“Once they are implanted, as is currently done in the clinic,” Ngwa said. “They can be programmed to release these microscopic nanoparticles and the immunotherapy medicine so that they can work together with the radiation to train your white blood cells to fight cancer more effectively.”

After the cancer cells begin to die, he said the immunotherapy medicine acts as a “homing beacon,” calling in the patient’s white blood cells, which are then trained to kill the cancer cells and able to patrol the rest of the body, fighting cancer cells that have spread. The “drones” are made of FDA-approved, biodegradable polymers. The medicine is loaded onto them, and they are programmed to trigger the release of the treatment on the desired schedule. Once they’ve been implanted into a patient and have released the therapy, they biodegrade.

Preventing Cancer is not the priority in Drug Development

The way the patent system interacts with the Food and Drug Administration’s drug approval process skews what kinds of cancer clinical trials are run. There’s more money to be made investing in drugs that will extend cancer patients’ lives by a few months than in drugs that would prevent cancer in the first place.

That’s one of the findings from the work of Heidi Williams, an M.I.T. economics professor and recent MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant winner, who studied the problem along with Eric Budish, a University of Chicago economics professor, and Ben Roin, assistant professor of technological innovation, entrepreneurship and strategic management at M.I.T. To secure F.D.A. approval, after patenting a drug, drug companies race the clock to show that their product is safe and effective. The more quickly they can complete those studies, the longer they have until the patent runs out, which is the period of time during which profit margins are highest. Developing drugs to treat late-stage disease is usually much faster than developing drugs to treat early-stage disease or prevention, because late-stage disease is aggressive and progresses rapidly. This allows companies to see results in clinical trials more quickly, even if those results are only small improvements in survival.

Many more cancer trials focused on treatments for patients with late-stage cancers than for early-stage cancers, according to the study. Between 1973 and 2011, there were about 12,000 trials for relatively later-stage patients with a 90 percent chance of dying in five years. But there were only about 6,000 focused on earlier-stage patients with a 30 percent chance of dying. There were over 17,000 trials of patients with the lowest chance of survival (those with recurrent cancers) but only 500 for cancer prevention.

Melanoma treatment could benefit from nanotech drug

Current treatments are hampered because producing drug levels in the lymph node high enough to eliminate tumors creates problems with toxicity. Another drawback is the cancer often also becomes resistant to treatment.
The researchers say the new approach, which they have tested on laboratory animals, can also decrease drug resistance and the toxic effects that this type of chemotherapy often brings.
The nanotech drug-delivery system could also be a step forward in the treatment of any cancer that tends to spread through the lymphatic system, says lead author Adam Alani, an assistant professor in Oregon State University's College of Pharmacy.
In addition to melanoma, cancers of the breast, prostate, pancreas, gastric system, lung, and head and neck also tend to spread via the lymphatic system.
The main disadvantage of current treatments is that the levels of drugs required to have a therapeutic effect in the lymphatic system are too toxic. Also, giving the drugs one at a time tends to breed resistance to them.
Nanoparticles are tiny particles ranging between 1-100 nanometers in size, or about the same size as biomolecules such as proteins and antibodies. By controlling their chemistry, size and surface charge, scientists can engineer them to carry drugs to precise targets in the body.

Keytruda helps in fight to treat Lung Cancer

Pembrolizumab is shown to be effective against various types of cancer, including melanoma and lung cancer, where it has shown durable anti-tumor activity and acceptable toxicity in previously treated and untreated patients with advanced NSCLC.
The trial, which took place from August 2013-August 2015, enrolled 1,034 patients from 24 countries from Europe, the USA and Asia (including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan). Patients with tumors that expressed the highest amounts of PD-L1 responded better and lived, on average, twice as long as patients treated with docetaxel alone (14.9 months versus 8.2 months), said senior author Roy S. Herbst, M.D., the Ensign Professor of Medicine and chief of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven.
The immunotherapy was also definitively found for the first time to be effective in patients with low levels of PD-L1 in their tumors. In this study supporting the first-line approval, patients given KEYTRUDA 10 mg/kg every two weeks demonstrated a 37 percent reduction in the risk of death and those given KEYTRUDA 10 mg/kg every three weeks demonstrated a 31 percent reduction in the risk of death.

Study finds mechanism that causes normal cells to become Cancer

Researchers studying brain tumors said they have discovered a new biological mechanism that causes normal cells to become cancer cells, a finding that both challenges current treatment strategies and could lead to new approaches against the disease.
In a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature, the researchers reported that a mutation in what are called IDH genes causes changes in how DNA is folded into the nucleus of cells. This in turn enables abnormal interactions between other genes, turning on a process that promotes the development of tumors.
“This shows us there is a whole other side of how cancer can form and progress,” said Jeremy Rich, chairman of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.While the study focused on the brain tumor called glioma, researchers said mutant IDH genes are present in many other cancers, including leukemia, and colon and bladder cancers.The process appears to operate independently of the so-called driver mutations that fuel cancer. The finding may help explain why treating tumors with drugs targeted at such mutations. a strategy known as precision medicine, is having limited success. While such targeted treatment often dramatically shrinks tumors initially, in most cases, patients eventually relapse.
“This puts a further dent in our ability to think that silver bullets are ready-in-the making for many cancer types,” Dr. Rich said.

Developing more precise Lung Cancer imaging

Researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Washington are working on a solution and have developed a new, personalized respiratory-motion system that uses mathematical modeling to capture images of a patient's lung when it is depressed, offering a clearer, more precise image of the tumor to be destroyed.
The work is supported by a three-year, $250,000 National Science Foundation grant and promises to lead to improved, more precise radiation therapy. Shouyi Wang, an assistant professor in UTA's Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering Department and a data analytics expert, is the principal investigator on the grant.
Wang's approach monitors respiratory gating, or a patient's motion breath-by-breath, and uses the data collected to focus a radiology beam on the targeted area when the chest cavity is relaxed -- the stage that provides the best picture of a cancerous site.
"We will develop a powerful new mathematical model that considers different factors and takes into account all of the major variables, and predicts performance and the best method for a particular patient," Wang said. "Respiratory gating is a readily available technology, but it has been very slow to gain acceptance in managing respiratory motion in radiation therapy.
"We are going to build evidence that it works, that it can be better utilized, easily implemented and that it can be cost-effective."

Non-invasive early Cancer detection

AWSensors, is coordinating the European project LIQBIOPSENS to develop liquid biopsy technologies for the early detection of colorectal cancer. The new system will allow quick and easy cancer detection and monitoring at a third of the cost of existing, typically invasive, procedures.
The Spanish company AWSensors has developed technology for a high-sensitivity molecular detection system for use in cancer screening. It is based on a technique known as liquid biopsy: the analysis of small fluid samples, like blood or saliva, making it completely non-invasive. It is also fast, giving results within the hour. When combined with genomic analysis, it will be possible to obtain reliable early diagnoses and devise precision medicine approaches to cancer treatment.The new system will be tested on the blood samples of colorectal cancer patients over the next three years. This cancer is the second cause of death in Europe and one of the most common, alongside breast, lung and prostate cancers.
The current go-to method for reliable cancer diagnosis is tumor tissue biopsy, but this method is invasive, painful and expensive. It also only provides information of a single point in the evolution of the disease. The new system also has the advantage of being up to three times cheaper than other real-time methods, such as quantitative PCR, and can be carried out by non-specialists.
LiqBiopSens will therefore enable simple, inexpensive, non-invasive screening for early detection and periodic monitoring of tumors.

Gene therapy platform for Macular Degeneration

Physics researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington have developed a new platform that uses ultrafast near-infrared lasers to deliver gene therapy to damaged areas of the retina to enable vision restoration in patients with photo-degenerative diseases.
"Most therapies focus on slowing down or halting degeneration but cannot target already-damaged areas of the retina," said Samarenda Mohanty, assistant professor of physics and head of UTA's Biophysics and Physiology Group, who led the research. "Our capacity to specifically target these damaged areas cell by cell opens up a new world of possibilities for vision restoration."
The laser-based method creates a transient sub-mircometer hole that allows the gene for light-sensitive proteins, or opsins, to permeate into the damaged retinal cell. The genes are then activated to produce the opsins, which attach to the cell membrane and convert external light into the photocurrent signals that are basis of sight.

Groundbreaking Breast Cancer laser treatment

A promising new treatment for early stage breast cancer recently wrapped up its first round of clinical trials.
The treatment "Novilase Breast Therapy"- or laser ablation, replaces traditional surgery.
"So instead of excising the cancer, like we have traditionally done with lumpectomies we can insert a laser fiber into the center of the cancer and heat it thereby killing the cancer cells with heat as opposed to surgically excising it," said Dr. Barbara Schwartzberg who led the clinical trial at Rose Medical Center.
The trial participants came from 11 institutions, including Rose. Most of the locations were across the U.S. And that first clinical trial had a 91% success rate among the patients.
Schwartzberg says instead of patients going to the operating room, receiving anesthesia and a large scar after it's done; this method is done as an outpatient procedure with local anesthesia and excellent cosmetic outcome.
"Once they're done, they're up, band-aid, wrap, hug and they are on their way," says Schwartzberg.

Brain Cancer patients beat odds with experimental treatment

The tumor-treating fields, as the therapy is called, disrupts the division of cancer cells by delivering low-intensity, intermediate-frequency alternating electric fields. It is delivered through “transducer arrays” attached to the shaved scalp. The randomized control trial of the device would determine whether the therapy improved survival rates of patients with glio-blastoma multiform.
In 2014, the clinical trial was terminated because the results were so positive. There were 210 patients using the electric field device as well as receiving chemotherapy and 105 receiving chemo alone. After 38 months, the median overall survival rate for those using the device plus the chemotherapy drug temozolomide was 20.5 months. The median overall survival rate for those using temozolomide alone was 15.6 months. Put another way, 43 per cent of people who received the experimental therapy as well as the standard therapy were alive after two years, compared to 29 per cent who just received the standard therapy. The study was funded by Novocure Ltd., the company that manufactures the device.

X4 to begin trials of Cancer Drugs

Cambridge-based X4 Pharmaceuticals is run by one of Termeer’s former employees at Genzyme, Paula Ragan, who worked in various business development roles there from 2007 to 2012. While the Series A investment the company is announcing today (a round led by Cormorant Asset Management) has been known for a few months now, Ragan said in an interview that the company is about to become more high-profile

“This is really our coming out party,” she said. “We’ve been around, building momentum for the past year-plus.”

By the end of March, Ragan plans to begin an initial trial of a drug that inhibits production of a certain protein called CXCR4. Ragan explains that the protein acts as a beacon to attract cells to surround a tumor, effectively hiring the tumor from the body’s T cells that would otherwise destroy them. By blocking CXCR4, the drug can eliminates one way that solid cancers try and evade detection.

Laser treatment shows promise for early Breast Cancer

Using a laser to heat and destroy tumors, called laser ablation, may be an effective way to treat small breast cancers, potentially saving some women from a lumpectomy, new research suggests.
The laser ablation technique used in this study is called Novilase Breast Therapy. It involves placing small probes in the center of the cancer and then using heat from the laser to destroy the tumors.
“It works,” said Dr. Barbara Schwartzberg, a breast cancer surgeon at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute at Rose Medical Center in Denver. Schwartzberg is also the chief medical officer for Novian Health, the company behind Novilase Breast Therapy, and the sponsor of the study.
The researchers behind the new study evaluated 60 women with early stage, small breast cancers that measured up to 2 centimeters in diameter, or about three-quarters of an inch. The women were treated at various sites in the United States and the United Kingdom.
After laser ablation treatment, the tissue that was heated slowly shrinks and forms a scar, according to the Society for Interventional Radiology. The women in the study also had radiation therapy.
Four weeks after the ablation treatment, the treated tissue was removed through surgery. The researchers then examined this tissue to look for remaining cancer cells. The women also had MRIs.
The researchers found that 91 percent of the patients had complete destruction of the cancer when the laser procedure was performed according to technical guidelines. Overall, there was an 84 percent complete tumor destruction rate with the laser treatment, the study found.

Lung Cancer Treatment granted accelerated approval

U.S. health regulators on Friday said they have granted accelerated approval to Roche Holding's drug for advanced lung cancer in patients with a specific genetic mutation.                                                The drug, alectinib, to be sold under the brand name Alecensa, was approved to treat patients with advanced ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose disease has worsened after, or who could not tolerate, treatment with Pfizer's Xalkori.
"Today's approval provides a new therapy for a group of patients who would have few treatment options once their disease no longer responds to treatment with Xalkori," Richard Pazdur, head of the Food and Drug Administration's Hematology and Oncology Products division, said in a statement.

Aspirin doesn't help Breast Cancer outcomes

Researchers found no link between taking aspirin and improved breast cancer outcomes, however the drug's effect on breast density may help with earlier diagnosis, according to two new studies presented at a conference on breast cancer.
Several studies have shown aspirin to cut the risk of colorectal, breast and other cancers.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania presented the new studies at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. "Past studies have found that aspirin may hold anti-cancer benefits. However, many of them were preliminary, preclinical, and didn't support a clear mortality benefit. They also didn't look at prior use of aspirin," said Dr. Julia Tchou, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. "Our data did not support the notion that this century-old pill has protective qualities and down-the-road benefits for breast cancer patients. However, larger patient cohort studies are needed to confirm our results."

FDA grants Orphan Drug Designation for treatment of Ovarian Cancer

TapImmune, Inc. (TPIV), a clinical-stage immunology-oncology company specializing in the development of innovative peptide and gene-based immunotherapeutics and vaccines for the treatment of cancer & metastatic disease, announced today that it has received Orphan Drug Designation from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration's Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD) for its cancer vaccine TPIV 200 in the treatment of ovarian cancer. The TPIV 200 ovarian cancer clinical program will now receive benefits including tax credits on clinical research and 7-year market exclusivity upon receiving marketing approval.

TPIV 200 is a multi-epitope peptide vaccine that targets Folate Receptor Alpha which is overexpressed in multiple cancers including over 90% of ovarian cancer cells.  In Phase I clinical studies conducted at the Mayo Clinic in patients with breast and ovarian cancer this vaccine was shown to be safe and well tolerated and to give robust cellular immune responses in 20 out of 21 evaluable patients.  Further, the data showed that 16 out of 16 patients in the observation stage still showed immune responses.

Therapy for Prostate Cancer may increase Alzheimer's risk

Men taking androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for prostate cancer were almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in the years that followed than those who didn’t undergo the therapy, an analysis of medical records from two large hospital systems by Penn Medicine and Stanford University researchers has shown. Men with the longest durations of ADT were even more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The findings do not prove that ADT increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. But the authors say they clearly point to that possibility, and are consistent with other evidence that low levels of testosterone may weaken the aging brain’s resistance to Alzheimer’s. “We wanted to contribute to the discussion regarding the relative risks and benefits of ADT, and no one had yet looked at the association between ADT and Alzheimer’s disease,” “Based on the results of our study, an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease is a potential adverse effect of ADT, but further research is needed before considering changes to clinical practice.”

Drug-laden “popping bubbles” treatment for Liver Cancer

In an interdisciplinary collaboration between prominent academic and industry investigators, researchers have discovered a novel method for repositioning an FDA-approved anti-cancer compound so it can specifically target liver cancer tumors. A “triple attack” technique combining chemotherapy, thermal ablation, and hyperthermia provided a highly targeted, yet minimally invasive approach.“In this study, we re-purposed the topical agent bexarotene (Targretin), currently in limited use for cutaneous manifestations of T-cell lymphomas, and re-engineered it for use in solid tumor applications by forming self-assembling nanobubbles,” explained Dipanjan Pan, assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the study. “These tiny bubbles filled with Targretin in ‘prodrug’ form can be ‘popped’ to release the drug inside liver cancer cells, activating the prodrug during cellular internalization process. The probability of its undesired systemic release is minimal due to this highly selective activation mechanism, which helps to spare the healthy cells.”

Using a deadly virus to kill Cancer

The virus, called Lassa, is the cause of a particularly nasty hemorrhagic fever endemic to West Africa. The research sounds terrifying, but a team from Yale and Harvard universities is using part of Lassa’s genetic code to make another virus safe enough to inject into the human brain, where it will hunt down and kill cancer cells. Lassa’s partner in this search-and-destroy mission is vesicular stomatitis virus, or VSV. Most people who contract it never get sick, and those who do usually have only flulike symptoms. But if it infects the brain, VSV becomes deadly. Ironically, it’s the more fearsome Lassa that makes the usually innocuous VSV safe for use in that delicate organ.
The Lassa-VSV virus is a chimera, an organism that’s created by combining the genomes of two different organisms to make something new. It kills brain tumors without damaging healthy neurons, apparently because it can bind with normal cells but doesn’t actually infect them.When researchers implanted two tumors into mouse brains, one in each hemisphere, and then injected the mice with Lassa-VSV, the virus infected and killed one tumor, then diffused through the brain to attack the second one without infecting brain cells along the way.

Coffee chemicals may ward off type 2 diabetes

The prevalence of coffee and diabetes in modern media makes a great deal of sense: almost 1 in 10 Americans are diabetic, and more than half of American adults drink coffee daily.

The US spends roughly $40 billion on coffee per year, and in 2012, the total estimated cost of diagnosed diabetes in America was $245 billion. There are more than 1,000 distinct chemical compounds in coffee. This includes quinic acid, 3,5-dicaffeoylquinic acid, acetylmethylcarbinol, dimethyl disulfide, putrescine, niacin, trigonelline, theophylline and of course, caffeine. 

Recent research conducted by Søren Gregersen and colleagues at the Department of Endocrinology and Internal Medicine at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark may have narrowed the search to as what effects occur.  The present study found that cafestol and caffeic acid increased insulin production in the presence of glucose. Cafestol was also found to increase glucose uptake into muscle cells at a similar rate to current diabetes drugs. "This newly demonstrated dual action of cafestol suggests that cafestol may contribute to the preventive effects on type 2 diabetes in coffee drinkers."

This

study will add another welcome avenue of research into potential treatments for diabetes. 

Depressed head and neck Cancer patients have higher recurrence risk

Depression is a significant predictor of five-year survival and recurrence in head and neck cancer patients, according to a new study from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The research team focused their analysis on a single cancer type. By limiting the sample set and adjusting for factors known to affect outcome, such as age, tumor size and previous chemotherapy, they were able to uncover a more profound effect of depression.
The researchers followed 130 MD Anderson patients newly diagnosed with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), a type of head and neck cancer in which the tumor originates at the back of the throat and base of the tongue.
At the beginning of their radiation therapy, patients completed a validated questionnaire to identify those with symptoms of clinical depression. Researchers monitored the participants, all of whom completed treatment, until their last clinic visit or death, a median period of five years.
Depression was the only factor shown to have a significant impact on survival.
Patients scoring as depressed on the questionnaire were three-and-one-half times less likely to have survived to the five-year interval, compared to those who were not depressed on this scale. The degree of depression was also found to be significant, as every unit increase on this scale resulted in a 10 percent higher risk for reduced survival.
The results were replicated with a different psychological health survey and were not influenced by how soon following diagnosis the depression assessment was done.

New leads in the struggle against Leukemia

The research initiative generating these leads, Beat AML, is led by the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University and The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS). Beat AML brings together academic health centers and biopharmaceutical companies to accelerate discoveries that will improve outcomes for patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a blood cancer lacking effective treatments. Less than 25 percent of newly diagnosed patients survive beyond five years.
A total of nine pharmaceutical and biotech companies have joined the collaboration, providing 27 potential treatments for analysis on the research platform. Recent additions are: argenx; AstraZeneca; Genentech; Janssen Research & Development, LLC; Seattle Genetics; and Takeda Pharmaceuticals International Co. Among the participants that joined early on are Aptose Biosciences and Constellation Pharmaceuticals.
"Acute myeloid leukemia is now the most frequently diagnosed leukemia in adults, while the current standard of care is based on 40-year-old chemotherapy agents with a very poor cure rate," said Louis J. DeGennaro, Ph.D., LLS's president and CEO. "LLS, together with its partners in the Beat AML collaboration, has gone on the offense against this deadly disease to lead the way to new treatment options desperately needed by patients."

Cancer Treatment Centers of America® earns Top Hospital Award

For the first time, The Leapfrog Group has named Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) at Midwestern Regional Medical Center (Midwestern) to its annual list of Top Hospitals. This recognition showcases the hospital's commitment to providing safe, efficient and high quality patient care.  Out of the 1,600 hospitals that reported information to The Leapfrog Group, CTCA at Midwestern was one of only 98 to receive the honor of being named a Top Hospital. On November 27, 2015 CTCA at Midwestern opened a 168,078 square-foot, six-story inpatient tower to better serve patients from around the country and internationally. The new tower offers 72 innovative, single-occupancy inpatient oncology rooms, and common space designed to bring comfort and convenience to patients and their loved ones. When designing the tower, the same elements that made CTCA at Midwestern a Top Hospital were considered of utmost importance, including superior patient care, safety and efficiency. Only six percent of hospitals eligible receive the Top Hospital award, which is given to urban, rural and children's hospitals that publicly report their performance through the annual Leapfrog Hospital Survey and meet the high standards defined in each year's Top Hospitals Methodology. The selection is based on the results of the survey, which measures hospitals' performance on patient safety and quality, focusing on three critical areas of hospital care: how patients fare, resource use and management structures established to prevent errors. Performance across many areas of hospital care is considered in establishing the qualifications for the award, including survival rates for high-risk procedures and a hospital's ability to prevent medication errors.

CTCA serves patients from around the world at its hospitals in Atlanta, Suburban Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Tulsa. For more information, visit cancercenter.com, Facebook.com/cancercenter and Twitter.com/cancercenter.

Singapore finding leads to new Cervical Cancer treatments

The team from the NUS Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) found new molecular interactions involved in the development of tumors in cervical cancer.
They found that the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer, interacts with a protein called EDD1 to destabilize a tumor suppressor protein, which stops the formation of tumors.
The three-year study also showed that an increase in a tumor suppressor protein called TIP60, found in the human body, could prevent the growth of cancer cells.
The protein acts as a "guardian of the cell" against cancerous growth, said Assistant Professor Sudhakar Jha, principal investigator at CSI Singapore, who was involved in the study.

The discovery is an exciting one, he says, as understanding the interactions is a critical first step towards coming up with treatments to target HPV-induced cancers.
Current treatment methods such as surgery and chemotherapy come with their limitations, he noted. "The problem with chemotherapy is that it kills not just the cancer cells but also other normal cells," said Prof Jha.
The roles of EDD1 and TIP60 had not been well explored in previous studies and this is the first to show how the protein EDD1 interacts with TIP60.
While still in its early stages, the finding could help develop treatments to either restore the tumour suppressor protein to normal levels or target the EDD1 protein. In patients with cervical cancer, the levels of TIP60 are 80 per cent lower than normal levels.

Lung Cancer patients gain access to new treatment

Another approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that helps in the fight against lung cancer, the fourth in two months. The FDA approved necitumumab (Portrazza) in combination with standard chemotherapy to treat patients with advanced (metastatic) squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have not previously received systemic therapy for their advanced disease.

Necitumumab binds to the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a protein commonly found on squamous NSCLC tumors, and blocks EGFR from binding its ligands, thus preventing tumor growth. Necitumumab is the first monoclonal antibody type of EGFR inhibitor to be approved in lung cancer, whereas there are a number of tyrosine kinase type of EGFR inhibitors (TKI) already FDA approved and used in clinical practice. These TKIs include gefitinib, erlotinib, afatinib, and osimertinib.
"This marks the fourth approval by the FDA in less than two months for a therapeutic designed to treat lung cancer. This is remarkable. It demonstrates the amount of progress being made in the field and the new hope that exists for lung cancer patients, especially those with squamous histology," said Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Pathology at the University of Colorado Cancer Center.

Australian researchers create new Brain Cancer treatment

A new three-pronged therapy to treat some of the most aggressive malignant brain tumors is twice as effective than current treatments, researchers from UOW have found.
The therapy, developed by scientists at UOW's Centre for Medical Radiation Physics (CMRP) and recently published in journal Physics in Medicine and Biology, combines radiation, chemotherapy and a radio-sensitising drug in vitro. It has been shown to more than double tumour cell death compared to a radiation-only control in high-grade glioma brain tumours.
On average, approximately 1600 brain cancers are diagnosed each year in Australia; that is roughly one person diagnosed every five hours. "In Australia, the five-year survival rates for brain cancer are low compared to other cancers. Radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery act only as palliative treatment options for these patients and we haven't seen any improvements in treatment in the past 30 years."
Dr Oktaria said her team combined two types of drugs prior to applying radiation, a radiosensitiser (BrUdR), which makes the tumour more sensitive to the radiation, and a chemo drug (MTX), which helps to block the growth of tumor cells after the radiation has been delivered.
"The combination of drugs and radiation enables more radiation dose to reach the target. This means that a much lower dose, 2.3 times less, can be used to kill 90 per cent of the tumour cells."
"This is expected to improve local tumour control while reducing adverse effects caused by the exposure of healthy brain tissue to radiation, which can impair brain function and cause problems with memory and speech."
The research, conducted at the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute at UOW and the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, also proved promising as it uses a conventional x-ray machine, meaning hospitals do not need to be provided with new equipment to utilize the treatment.

Please Give to Sydney 12-year-old with Hodgkin's Lymphoma Cancer Fund

The family of a 12 year old Sydney boy who are fundraising so he can access an expensive cancer drug have said they are "incredibly embarrassed" to have to rely on the goodness of Australians to complete their son's treatment for Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Following two months of intensive chemotherapy, Angus successfully beat the Hodgkin Lymphoma in his neck into remission.

February, the family's fears came to fruition when the cancer returned in Angus' neck and abdomen.

The treatment was more intense, chemotherapy then radiotherapy, followed by a stem cell transplant.

The drug brentuximab can reduce the chances of another relapse by 40 to 50 percent.
However, the cost of the drug is $11,000 per dose and Angus will need 16 treatments, the total cost coming to $186,000. Unfortunately, for Angus, the drug is not listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme as an appropriate treatment for Hodgkin's Lymphoma, due to insufficient data in Australia!

Founded is the charity Rare Cancers Australia after identifying a gap in support for patients who suffer from less common cancers, have set up a special fundraising website called "Sick or Treat" on Toby's behalf, where fully tax deductible donations can be made.

Rare Cancers Australia and the pharmaceutical company behind brentuximab have been able to subsidise the cost of the drug to $100,000, with $32,000 already raised on Angus' behalf.

Donations to help Angus gain access to brentuximab can be made via the Rare Cancers Australia Sick or Treat website.

IntelliSpace Portal 8.0 platform for the treatment of Cancer

Royal Philips' IntelliSpace Portal 8.0 helps address the changing demands in radiology that result from an increasing prevalence of cancer and its economic toll. It delivers new applications, like fast 3-D quantitative renderings of tumors, in a fully integrated oncology suite to improve diagnostic confidence and patient care. A key but challenging clinical need for today's radiologists is determining how tumors are reacting to new local image guided treatment approaches, such as tumor ablation and chemoembolization. Currently, this is done by evaluating 1-D or 2-D MRI-images taken after the procedure, which give only limited insight and no quantified information. With the growing interest in finding new 3-D quantification options, IntelliSpace Portal 8.0 now includes, as an option for qualified researchers, a quantitative technology (qEASL), which can be used in conjunction with its Multi-Modality Tumor Tracking (MMTT) application. With this technology, researchers can make a specialized analysis of 3-D imaging scans (e.g. CT and MRI) with the aim to enhance measurement of living and dying tumor tissue by giving them a visual indication of how cells respond to therapy.

Scientists create a multifunctional endoscope to detect Cancer

A scientific team from the Center for Nanoparticle Research within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) has developed a multifunctional endoscope that integrates transparent bioelectronics such as lasers with theranostic nanoparticles (NPs), therapy to test new medication and tailor a unique treatment plan for a patient. Conventional endoscopes lack the spatial resolution necessary to detect and treat small cancers and other abnormalities.
The team, led by the director of the Centre for Nanopaticle Research Professor Taeghwan Hyeon, demonstrated a multifunctional surgical endoscope system to diagnose and treat intestinal diseases, such as colon cancers. This 'smart' endoscope system contains transparent bioelectronics, which provides pH-based sensing combined with radio frequency ablation (RFA); a medical procedure in which part of the electrical conduction of a tumor is ablated using heat generated from a medium frequency alternating current.
The system's additional sensors for monitoring mechanical contacts and mapping temperatures provide accurate physiological sensing capabilities during cancer detection and ablation. The transparency enables optimal integration of a number of multifunctional sensing and therapeutic components on the endoscope tip without blocking the line of sight of the camera or light. By loading transparent bioelectronics on the camera of the endoscope, the tissue observed through the camera in fluorescence mapping and phototherapies can be exactly matched with the characterized ablated tissues by transparent devices. The system also has custom-designed biocompatible NPs with phototherapeutic and chemotherapeutic agents, which can be delivered locally and activated with light. According to the team's paper, this multifunctional endoscopic system could be useful for the detection of flat or depressed abnormal growths.

Cancer cells can poison normal cells

Now a team of researchers from the University of Delaware, Nemours/A.I. duPont Hospital for Children, St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix and Therapy Architects LLC in Wilmington, Delaware, has reported that cancer cells can actually cause neighboring normal cells to become cancerous. They found that cancer cells produce an enzyme, a protease, which splits a cell-cell adhesion molecule called E-cadherin from normal cells. The action of the protease liberates the segment of E-cadherin that projects outside the cells. This segment, designated soluble E-cadherin, or sE-cad, then associates with a signaling molecule called epidermal growth factor receptor on normal cells and converts them to cancerous cells.
"The serum of adult cancer patients contains high levels of sE-cad," says Pratima Patil, who received her doctorate in biological sciences from the University of Delaware earlier this year. "Our finding documents that tumor cells modify normal epithelial cells, disrupting their cellular architecture, and use them as accomplices to generate sE-cad, which is known to facilitate tumor progression."
This finding opens up new cancer research areas, including determining how cancer cells interact with neighboring normal cells and promote cancer development. 

Pigeons used to diagnosis Cancer

Brazilian folk tradition holds that if your asthma is acting up, you might consider sharing dinner with a bird. Feeding leftovers to a white-naped jay in particular is thought by some healers to transfer the illness to unsuspecting avians. If that doesn’t work, the roasted, powdered liver of the black vulture also apparently helps open restricted airways.
Birds and certain bird bits, their beaks, their feathers, their livers, are involved in traditional remedies throughout the world, practices that trace back to Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt and early China. It turns out birds may play a helpful role in modern western medicine too. A new study suggests that the common pigeon can reliably distinguish between benign versus malignant tumors and, in doing so, could help researchers develop better cancer screening technologies.
In the study, 16 pigeons were trained to detect cancer by putting them in a roomy chamber where magnified biopsies of possible breast cancers were displayed. Correctly identifying a growth as benign or malignant by pecking one of two answer buttons on a touchscreen earned them a tasty 45 milligram pigeon pellet. Once trained, the pigeons’ average diagnostic accuracy reached an impressive 85 percent. But when a “flock sourcing” approach was taken, in which the most common answer among all subjects was used, group accuracy climbed to a staggering 99 percent, or what would be expected from a pathologist. The pigeons were also able to apply their knowledge to novel images, showing the findings weren’t simply a result of rote memorization.