The skyrocketing price of new Cancer Therapies

As therapies become more sophisticated and the cancerous targets become more specific, costs are skyrocketing for prolonging life, sometimes just weeks over what used to be possible.

Of the 12 new cancer drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2012, 11 were priced above $100,000 U.S. per patient annually.

Only three were found to improve patient survival rates and, of those, two increased survival by less than two months on average.

In just one decade, from 2005 to 2015, the cost of intravenous cancer drugs has tripled, from $112 million a year to $322 million.

Ipilimumab, marketed as Yervoy, is approved to treat late-stage melanoma, a particularly deadly cancer. The cost for four doses administered over 12 weeks: $120,000 (U.S.). The overall survival benefit? Just 3.7 months on average, not much longer than the length of the treatment.

There’s nivolumab, marketed as Opdivo and approved for use to treat late-stage melanoma.

The cost per year for an average patient: $157,000 (U.S.). The average amount of time before the disease began to worsen for those taking it? Less than six months in one recent clinical trial.

One new drug called cetuximab, which was being tested in a certain type of lung cancer.

In the trial, overall survival improved by just 1.2 months on average. The cost for an extra 1.2 months of survival? About $80,000 (U.S.).

“If we allow a survival advantage of 1.2 months to be worth $80,000, and by extrapolation survival of one year to be valued at $800,000, we would need $440 billion annually, an amount nearly 100 times the budget of the National Cancer Institute,

to extend by one year the life of the 550,000 Americans who die of cancer annually.

Researchers use skin cells to kill Cancer

Researchers at the University of North Carolina have pioneered a technique of turning skin cells into cancer-hunting stem cells that, in mice, found and killed remnant brain tumor cells.
Glioblastomas are aggressive, fast-growing tumors that form astrocytes, cells that make up the supportive tissue of the brain. Astrocytes reproduce quickly, and are supported by a large network of blood vessels, which is why the relatively rare cancer can be so difficult to treat, according to the American Brain Tumor Association.
"We wanted to find out if these induced neural stem cells would home in on cancer cells and whether they could be used to deliver a therapeutic agent," Dr. Shawn Hingtgen, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, said in a press release. "This is the first time this direct reprogramming technology has been used to treat cancer."
For the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers reprogrammed skin cells called fibroblasts to become neural stem cells and produce a tumor-killing protein. The cells, which in skin produce collagen and connective tissue, hunt and kill cancer cells.

Elderly Colorectal Cancer patients receiving value-less treatment

A study published online ahead of print in the journal Medical Care shows that over a recent 10-year period, the rate of metastatic Colorectal Cancer patients older than age 75 receiving three or more treatments increased from 2 percent to 53 percent. During this period, 1-year treatment cost increased 32 percent to reach an estimated $2.2 billion annually. However, median survival for these patients increased by only one month."In addition, these newer therapies carry more toxicities than many of the older therapies. These patients may get sicker and it costs them a lot of money with almost no survival benefit," says first author Cathy J. Bradley, PhD, associate director for Population Science Research at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and professor in the Colorado School of Public Health. The data included results from over 20,000 Medicare patients with metastatic colon or rectal cancer between the years 2000 and 2009. The study examined the percentage of these patients treated with chemotherapy or a target agent (bevacizumab). These agents have shown survival benefit in younger patients and those with earlier stage disease. For example, the current study showed gain in overall survival of about 8 months in patients aged 65-74. However, this same benefit was not evident in patients older than age 75 whose cancer had spread. In addition to demonstrating an overall cost increase of 32 percent in colon cancer and 20 percent in rectal cancer, the paper shows that much of this additional cost is borne by the patients. Specifically, patients paid approximately $16,000 in out-of-pocket costs for care in 2009, compared with $11,000 in 2000. Patients not treated with chemotherapy paid on average less than $5,000 in the 12 months following diagnosis. (For example, treatment with oxaliplatin cost $11,593 during the study, while treatment with common combination 5-FU/leucovorin cost $1,028.) In addition to the direct costs of these chemotherapies, these agents require supportive medicines to assist patients in coping with side effects and also incur additional hospital inpatient and outpatient charges.
"No one wants to give up. It's hard for anyone to say they've had enough," Bradley says. "However, in these situations palliative care may be a good option."

NHS England backs tighter control on Cancer Drug spending

Patient groups have reacted with alarm to plans to reassess the value to the NHS of many cancer drugs, which is likely to mean that some will be phased out because they do not offer value for money. A board meeting of NHS England has endorsed proposals that will impose much tighter control of spending on cancer drugs, requiring all those that have been paid for by the government’s £340m Cancer Drugs Fund to be re-evaluated by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice). Of the 47 drug treatments now available through the fund, Nice has already rejected 23 for general NHS use in the past because it found they were not sufficiently cost-effective.

The Rarer Cancers Foundation said the changes would set “cancer treatment back by a generation”. It claimed that nearly 22,000 people would be denied treatment per year. Proposals to reform the fund have been under discussion for some time, but NHS England has now officially adopted a plan that puts Nice at the center of decision-making. Breast Cancer Now is one of the patient groups that reacted with dismay.“These proposals do not offer sufficient reform on the existing Nice appraisal process. With the last six breast cancer drugs to be assessed by Nice being rejected, and with key issues left unaddressed, we’re concerned that clinically proven drugs will continue to struggle for approval on the new fund.”

Clinical trials for Childhood Cancer drugs are critical

After a child is diagnosed with cancer, the physician will discuss treatment options and the possibility of participating in a clinical trial with the child's parents. If the parents choose for their child to participate, they will sign a written consent document provided by the organization coordinating the trial. Parents have to decide relatively quickly if their child will participate in the trial so that treatment can begin. If parents opt out of the trial, the child receives treatment similar or identical to that offered in the standard arm of the trial.
Children in these clinical trials are randomly assigned by a computer to receive either the standard treatment or the experimental treatment. Neither the physician who is enrolling the patient nor the researchers in charge of the study have any input into which arm a particular child will end up on. Unfortunately, previous research demonstrates that parents struggle to understand how their child will be assigned to the standard arm or the experimental arm.
Phase III clinical trials compare a new treatment with an established one, to look for differences in survival rates and side effects between the two treatments. These differences are unknown at the start of the trial to everyone involved. This is called clinical equipoise and it is the foundation of the research design.
Parents often struggle with the fact that the physicians do not know which treatment is better. We are frequently asked to "do what is best for my child," but we do not know which arm of the study will be better, making it impossible for us to guide the parents. Some parents are comforted that the treatment arm their child is assigned to is randomly assigned and that the better outcome is unknown so that they do not have to make a decision. Others find the uncertainty disconcerting.

CAR trials for Leukemia and Lymphoma treatment

Researchers at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center have launched three clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of a novel cellular-immunotherapy that uses modified T cells, one of the immune system's primary weapons, to treat three different types of blood cancer that often defy existing therapies. "Lymphomas and leukemias affect thousands of Americans every year and unfortunately a good number of them die as a direct consequence of the disease progression or toxicity from existing treatments,"
Castro is principal investigator for all three clinical trials, dubbed ZUMA-1, ZUMA-2 and ZUMA-3. The trials utilize the recent development of so-called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. These are white blood cells that have been extracted from the patient and genetically modified to contain a gene that produces the CAR protein on the T cell's surface. The engineered CAR-T cells are then reintroduced into the patient with the hope they can bind to and exclusively kill cancer cells that express target proteins, such as CD19, a molecule found on cancerous B cells involved in most lymphomas and leukemias.
The potential treatment is called KTE-C19. The trials are a collaboration between Santa Monica-based Kite Pharma and multiple testing sites, including UC San Diego medical centers in Hillcrest and La Jolla. All three trials are currently recruiting participants.
ZUMA -1:Full eligibility criteria can be found at https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02348216?term=kite&rank=7
ZUMA-2:Full criteria can be found at https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02601313?term=kite&rank=6
ZUMA-3: Full eligibility criteria can be found at https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02614066?term=kite&rank=5

Device targets hard-to-treat Pancreatic Cancer

A team of UNC researchers has created a new device that targets cancerous pancreatic tumors, opening doors for many patients with pancreatic and other forms of cancer. James Byrne, a medical student at UNC, was the primary inventor of the device and creator of the drug cocktail used in it. “It uses an electric current to drive the drugs from the device to the tumor,” he said. Byrne’s adviser, Joseph DeSimone, helped in leading the research.

“It was my laboratory that conceived of this device and we were the ones fabricating the device,” DeSimone said. DeSimone said the National Cancer Institute wanted them to work on this. “We were using nanotechnology to deliver drugs to every other tumor but pancreatic,” DeSimone said. “ ... We said it wouldn’t work, and they really wanted us to focus on this.” DeSimone said the electric field drives drugs into tumors that are not easily treated through chemotherapy. “Most chemo is delivered by an IV and it relies on a rich blood supply and many tumors have a rich blood supply, but some don’t,” DeSimone said. DeSimone said pancreatic tumors and others are known for not getting much of a blood supply.

New Prostate Cancer test could save your Life

A new diagnostic test, the PHI blood test, improves the diagnosis of prostate cancer. The test uses three different prostate specific markers, which makes the test three times more specific for prostate cancer compared to the current PSA test. The test provides doctors with a more accurate picture in regards to a man’s PSA result.
According to Innovative Diagnostic Laboratory, the PHI test measures total PSA as well as two special forms of the protein: free PSA (fPSA), and pro2PSA. tPSA includes all types of PSA circulating in the bloodstream, whether free or bound to other proteins; fPSA is PSA that circulates as a free protein, unattached to any other proteins; and pro2PSA is a form of PSA that is highly expressed in prostate cancer tissue and is associated with more aggressive disease. Using these three values, a PHI score is calculated. The PHI score provides a more accurate measurement to assess prostate cancer risk than any known PSA-based marker alone. And by using pro2PSA, the PHI test can detect more aggressive cancers. This reduces the harm many men experience with overtreatment.

Cancer patients given wrong drug dose at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital

Up to 70 cancer patients being treated at Sydney's prestigious St Vincent's Hospital have received significantly less than the recommended dose of a chemotherapy drug.
The under-dosage began in 2012, but it is only now that St Vincent's has begun to inform surviving patients and their families.
For three years, up to 70 patients suffering from head or neck cancer were all given the same incorrect, low dose of the drug carboplatin by one of the hospital's medical oncologists, Dr John Grygiel.
The drug's protocol was approved nearly a decade ago by the NSW Cancer Institute.
It recommends a variable dosage according to the patient's kidney test, age and sex.
For the most common head and neck cancer treatments, the dose is usually between 200 and 300 milligrams.
Yet Dr Grygiel prescribed the same flat, 100 mg for all head and neck patients.
"I think that he felt that the dose he prescribed was genuinely effective and caused less side effects for patients," Dr Richard Gallagher, the director of cancer services at St Vincent's stated.
"I still don't understand where the mechanism or thought came from."
"I'm not happy that this has gone on. I freely admit there's clearly a breakdown in clinical governance."

New T-Cell Cancer Treatment

Dr. Stanley Riddell’s team at the Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center earned themselves a place in medical history. U.S. researchers used genetically modified T-cells in 35 terminally ill patients with leukemia, and 94 percent went into remission. Riddell’s T-cell research has only been applied to blood cancer but for the thousands of people in the United States alone suffering from blood cancer, this treatment could be the medical innovation they have waited years for. It is important to remember that the patients for this trial were all terminal, which meant they were incredibly weak even as their newly trained T-cells tried to fight against the more aggressive cancer cells.
Even though this research still has a long way to go before it becomes a typical cancer treatment, the attention that the stunning success rate has garnered will no doubt spark a wave of funding for similar T-cell therapy projects. There are dozens of top research institutions working around the clock to test experimental treatments and Riddell’s team is not the only one investigating the efficacy of engineering cells to fight off cancer attacks.

Eye movement affected in former Childhood Cancer patients

A study from Lund University in Sweden shows that commonly used chemo toxins impair the eyesight in childhood cancer survivors in a way that indicates an impact on the central nervous system. Nowadays, the lives of the majority of all children with cancer can be spared. However, the cure for the disease comes with a price: some of the survivors will suffer long-term injury from the treatment. A study from Lund University in Sweden now shows that commonly used chemo toxins impair the eyesight in childhood cancer survivors in a way that indicates an impact on the central nervous system.

It was not the former patients' visual acuity that had been damaged; rather their eye motor skills, the eyes' ability to follow moving objects.
It has been previously known that cisplatin, methotrexate, and ifosfamide, the types of chemo which the subjects of the study had been treated with, can penetrate the so-called blood-brain barrier, and thereby damage the nervous system. What has not been known, however, is whether the eye motor skills could be affected, and the consequences of that.

New image analytics offers guidance for Breast Cancer treatment

A new way to analyze magnetic resonance images (MRI) data appears to reliably distinguish between patients who would need only hormonal treatment and those who also need chemotherapy, researchers from Case Western Reserve University report. The analysis may provide women diagnosed with estrogen positive-receptor (ER-positive) breast cancer answers far faster than current tests and, due to its expected low cost, open the door to this kind of testing worldwide.

"Until about 15 years ago, doctors had no way of telling aggressive cancer from non-aggressive, so the majority of women got chemotherapy, which can produce very harsh side effects," he said.
Since then, a genomic test for differentiating between aggressive and nonaggressive cancer was developed. The test requires doctors to send a biopsy sample to a company that analyzes it and assigns a risk score that the doctors then use to guide treatment.
"The test is used frequently in the United States, but it destroys tissue, requires shipping and costs about $4,000," said Madabhushi, who is a member of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. "The cost puts the test out of reach for people in middle- and low-income countries."
They discovered differences in gene expression, molecular changes that appeared as changes in textural patterns in the images. They converted the dynamic texture changes into quantitative measurements and used differences in the measurements to determine which patients needed chemotherapy and which did not. In 85 percent of the cases, the conclusions matched those of the genomic test.

"We think the dynamic texture data is robust and reliable," Madabhushi said. "It allows us to compare apples to apples." He expects the test, if further trials validate it, would cost "pennies on the dollar, compared to the $4,000 test." For the patient, the test requires an MRI scan, which many doctors already prescribe for those newly diagnosed with cancer. "So the test, for many, doesn't require the cost of a scan," Madabhushi said. He said a computer and program are the tools needed. No tissue would be shipped. Instead of waiting a week or two for results, the wait would be minutes.

New non-invasive Cancer treatment developed

Deep inside a University Texas-San Antonio key card protected lab in the bio-sciences building something awesome is happening in Cancer treatments.
"It's all focused on an anti-cancer therapy we developed about 2 years ago."
That's Matthew Gdovin. He's an associate professor of physiology in the bio department. He's leading a team of 18 students develop a way to kill cancer by turning it on itself.
"What we did was figured out a way to make them so acidic on the inside, the cells go into cell death, it's called apoptosis, they kill themselves."
They've taken on a common killer, triple negative breast cancer. It's one of the most aggressive and hardest to beat.
An otherwise harmless chemical compound called nitrobenzaldehyde is injected into the tumor, and then a beam of light takes aim. Put the two together: suicide by science. Two hours after the treatment, 95 percent of the cancer cells were killed.
"As a cancer biologist we want to improve the quality of life after cancer diagnosis and I think these results are pretty much showing we can actually do that."
Chemotherapy kills all the cells, good and bad, leaving many patients bald and sickly. This therapy will hopefully be able to attack the tumors surrounded by vital organs, leaving them intact, and the patient cancer free.
Gdovin and his team hope the treatment can be ready to be rolled out next year for phase 1 clinical trials.

Hope rises for Cancer treatment

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday granted breakthrough therapy designation to drug maker, AstraZeneca’s biggest new drug hope Durvalumab for the treatment in bladder cancer.
The experimental medicine is a “PD-L1’’ therapy that fights cancer by boosting the immune system.
The breakthrough therapy designation expedites the development and review of medicines intended to treat serious or life-threatening diseases.
The drug, Durvalumab, is also being developed as a treatment for lung, head and neck, gastric, pancreatic, liver and blood cancers.

‘Cancer Survivor’ taking on new meaning for Patients

Survival has more than one meaning. A traditional definition, called disease-specific survival, refers to people being alive five years after their diagnosis. But cancer advocates now consider survivor-ship as part of a continuum, from the moment people learn they have cancer, throughout treatment and beyond. Today, survivor-ship is not just a matter of identity but a growing realm of health care. It involves extra surveillance for secondary cancers, Alfano says. It's also a ​matter of monitoring for side effects of cancer treatments that unfortunately are toxic to body systems as well as tumors. ​Follow-up now means looking after peoples' mental and physical health, whether they're continuing to live with a manageable cancer or in absence of any signs of recurrence. It's important to create a better system of coordinated care for people who carry a cancer history, Alfano says, to link them to all the specialties they might need, including mental health services and physical, occupational and speech-language therapy. To address that, the American Cancer Society has worked with national clinical experts to develop survivor-ship care guidelines for specific types of cancer.

MUSC launches clinical trial for Lung Cancer

In an international first, people with lung cancer will find out if a new combination of drugs can kick-start their bodies' ability to fight back against the disease. They'll be part of a clinical trial now enrolling participants at the Medical University of South Carolina.(MUSC) The trial will focus on people with non-small cell lung cancer, the most common type. Medical oncologist John Wrangle, M.D., will serve as principal investigator on the three-year project. Mark Rubinstein, Ph.D., worked with him to design the trial. Rubinstein said the research will test the effectiveness of using the checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab with the immune stimulation drug ALT-803.
"Instead of simply cutting the brake cables of the immune cells using only a checkpoint blocker, we are also adding fuel in the form of ALT-803 so the immune cells will have optimal stimulation and ability to kill tumor cells."
The trial's formal name is a Phase IB/II Study of ALT-803 plus nivolumab in patients with pretreated, advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. To ask about enrolling, call Amanda Gilbert at 843-792-8795.

Trials moving ahead for treatment of Brain Cancer

The UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center has started phase 2 clinical trials, targeting glioblastoma patients. A new two-drug combination, currently in use in the clinical trials, might help people diagnosed with glioblastoma to fight the disease, according to a UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center press release.

Olivier Rixe, associate director for Clinical Research at the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center, who serves as a National Principal Investigator for these clinical trials, said the researchers reported positive results for the phase 1 trials.“The results were very promising. There were a certain number of patients who responded positively,” he said. "The scientists looked at safety of the drugs they are using to treat the tumor and found no side-effects of the treatment."“During the phase 1 clinical trials, some patients noted outstanding responses to this treatment," Rixie said. "One of the patients is alive two years after the treatment in phase 1 and almost no tumor in the MRI. We are extremely enthusiastic."

He hopes that the study will expand quickly, he said. “We are going to enroll 100 patients from across the U.S. for the phase 2 study.

Revolutionary Cancer Treatment

Scientists are claiming “extraordinary” success following the early trials for a potential cancer treatment in which modified white blood cells target certain types of cancer, according to an announcement Monday.
During two separate studies, patients were treated with the modified white blood cells, known as T-cells, which were removed from their bodies, tagged with “receptor” molecules that target cancer, and placed back into their bodies through infusion. In the study conducted with patients who suffered from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, 94 percent of the participants’ symptoms vanished entirely. In the second study conducted with patients who suffered from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, 80 percent of the patients responded positively to the treatments whereas over half of them became symptom-free. “This is extraordinary,” lead researcher professor Stanley Riddell from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle told Fox News. “This is unprecedented in medicine to be honest, to get response rates in this range in these very advanced patients.” The modified T-cells, which had been engineered with new targeting mechanisms known as chimeric antigen receptors, were essentially programmed to specifically seek out and destroy patients’ tumor cells. This innovative treatment currently is meant to be used as a last-ditch treatment for those suffering from certain types of terminal cancers when other treatment methods had failed, adding that the scientists are continuing their research into the treatment and seeking to expand its usage for treatment in other types of cancer.

New diagnostic device "Smells" Prostate Cancer

A new device has successfully detected prostate cancer through "smelling" the illness using a gas chromatography sensor, a new study has shown.
Researchers from the United Kingdom hope that their findings could pave the way for a urine diagnostic test that could make invasive diagnostic procedures a thing of the past.
The study involved 155 men, 58 of which were diagnosed with prostate cancer, 24 with bladder cancer, and 73 with hematuria, which is characterized by blood leaking into urine. Results from the GC sensor system indicated that through detectable patterns of volatile compounds, urine samples can show the presence of urological cancers.
The GC sensor system, known as Odoreader, was developed by professors Chris Probert of University of Liverpool and Norman Ratcliffe of University of the West of England Bristol, and employed especially developed algorithms in measuring urine samples.
The device features a 30-meter (98-feet) column that allows compounds in the urine to move at various rates, thus producing a sample in a readable format. It then reads the patterns that surface, the prostate gland's proximity to the bladder, for instance, results in a different algorithm if there is cancer present.

With the phase III CheckMate-141 trial being stopped early due to the anti–PD-1 agent nivolumab having met its primary endpoint of overall survival improvement in head and neck cancer, Robert Ferris, MD, PhD, couldn't be more elated. - See more at: http://www.targetedonc.com/publications/special-reports/2016/head-and-neck-cancers-issue4/nivolumab-could-change-head-and-neck-cancer-treatment-paradigm#sthash.Fr6wkCLa.dpuf

"To have an anti–PD-1 agent be proven to improve survival in head and neck cancer in a randomized phase III trial, and the potential for a new FDA approval in the near future is a game changer." - See more at: http://www.targetedonc.com/publications/special-reports/2016/head-and-neck-cancers-issue4/nivolumab-could-change-head-and-neck-cancer-treatment-paradigm#sthash.Fr6wkCLa.dpuf

Interferon not beneficial for most stage III Melanoma

Final results for the Sunbelt Melanoma Trial, published online this month in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, show that thanks to current diagnostic techniques, most stage III melanoma patients do not benefit from treatment with interferon. The first of more than 3600 trial participants were enrolled in 1997. Patients with small amounts of melanoma detected in a single lymph node were either treated with high-dose interferon therapy or simply observed.
"We started the Sunbelt Melanoma Trial to determine whether interferon therapy was warranted in this relatively lower risk group of stage III patients," McMasters said. "What we found was that there was no evidence that interferon was necessary or helpful for this substantial group of melanoma patients. That saves many patients the toxicity and expense of interferon therapy, which is like having the flu, only worse, for a whole year. While the study did not quite meet its accrual goals and was underpowered to detect very small differences in survival, there was not even a trend for improvement in survival with interferon. Based on these findings, it would be hard to recommend interferon therapy for patients with minimal cancer in just one lymph node. Most patients have the smaller level of cancer detected in the lymph nodes.
While interferon is still one of the two FDA-approved drugs for adjuvant therapy for high-risk melanoma, McMasters believes options now in the pipeline and further research into the molecular behavior of cancer cells will reveal more advantageous treatments for those with limited lymph node metastases.
"Newer studies of melanoma adjuvant therapy using immune checkpoint agents, such as PD-1 inhibitors, show much promise,"

A University of Texas at Arlington electrical engineer has developed a novel cancer cell detection method that will improve early diagnosis through a tool that tracks cellular behavior in real time using nanotextured walls that mimic layers of body tissue.
Samir Iqbal, an associate professor in the Electrical Engineering Department, detailed his team's results in a recent Nature Scientific Reports paper called "Effects of Nanotexture on Electrical Profiling of Single Tumor Cell and Detection of Cancer from Blood in Microfluidic Channels."


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-02-electrical-device-cancer-rapidly-cellular.html#jCp

Saliva test for identifying, tracking Cancer

A rapid, accurate test that can detect bio-markers of lung cancer in saliva is soon to be trialed in patients. The news marks a milestone in over 10 years of research led by oral cancer and saliva diagnostics researcher Prof. David Wong, of the School of Dentistry at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) .Liquid biopsy holds the promise of rapid, less invasive identification of cancers and easier tracking of disease progress during treatment.
The device uses electric field-induced release and measurement (EFIRM) to detect non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) biomarkers in saliva.
The EFIRM device analyzes the contents of exosomes, tiny bags of molecules that cells release now and again. The device forces the exosomes to release their contents and carries out bio-recognition of the released biomolecules at the same time.
The approach has a high accuracy compared with current sequencing technology, says Prof. Wong, explaining that the trial in lung cancer patients is taking place in China this year. The study is a collaboration between UCLA and West China Hospital of Sichuan University.

Lung Cancer drug works better with Coca-Cola

Patients with the leading form of lung cancer may be able to look to Coca-Cola Classic to solve a common medicinal challenge, new research suggests.
As the Dutch scientists explain it, the effectiveness of the powerful lung cancer drug Tarceva (erlotinib) depends on the pH level of the stomach. But many people on Tarceva must also take a proton pump inhibitor heartburn medication, such as Nexium or Prilosec, which raises stomach pH to more alkaline levels.
That higher pH can lower the absorption rate for Tarceva, cutting its effectiveness in fighting non-small-cell lung cancer, research suggests.
One prior study involving healthy volunteers found the use of Prilosec lowered blood concentrations of Tarceva by 61 percent.
In the new study, researchers led by Dr. Roelof van Leeuwen, of Erasmus MC Cancer Institute in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, wondered if the solution might be to reverse stomach pH "by taking Tarceva with the acidic beverage cola," namely Coca-Cola Classic.
The study focused on 28 people with non-small-cell lung cancer who were taking Nexium plus Tarceva. For two weeks, half of the patients took about 8 ounces of water with their meds for the first seven days, and then the same amount of Coca-Cola Classic for the next seven days. The following two weeks, the patients took the beverages in the reverse order.
  "Coke intake led to a clinically relevant and statistically significant increase" in the absorption of Tarceva for patients taking Nexium.

Overactive Thyroid linked to Breast Cancer

Women who have an overactive thyroid gland might be at greater risk for breast cancer, a new study suggests.
A team of Danish researchers found that women with the condition, called hyperthyroidism, appeared to face an 11 percent increase in their risk for breast cancer, compared to women with a normal-functioning thyroid gland.
On the other hand, women with the opposite problem, a condition called hypothyroidism, where abnormally low levels of thyroid hormones are produced, saw their risk for breast cancer dip 6 percent below that of women with normal thyroids.The findings stem from a 36-year review that identified nearly 80,000 Danish women with an overactive thyroid and more than 61,000 women with an underactive thyroid. All of the women were cancer-free when they entered the study, which ran from 1978 to 2013.

Researchers find protein that plays key role in Brain Cancer

A team of physicians and scientists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham discovered that a kinase protein, mixed lineage kinase 4, also known as MLK4, plays a crucial role in survival of patient-derived brain cancer stem cells in pre-clinical animal models. The findings suggest that MLK4 could potentially be a useful target for cancer treatment. Until recently, MLK4 was considered a poorly characterized kinase. The UAB team, however, identified this gene from a stepwise screening of molecules that are elevated in cancer stem cells isolated from brain cancer patients.
Most importantly, brain cancer patients with higher MLK4 expression have shorter survival despite the current intensive therapies including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Unfortunitily, there are no MLK4-targeting therapies or clinical trials currently available for patients. "There is no doubt that society desperately needs new and effective therapies for this life-threatening brain disease. Improvement of patient survival for the past 50 years has been counted by months and not years," said Ichiro Nakano, M.D., Ph.D., professor in the UAB Department of Neurosurgery.

Younger T cells improve immunotherapy for Children's Cancer

Pediatric oncologists from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have investigated techniques to improve and broaden a novel personalized cell therapy to treat children with cancer. The researchers say that a patient's outcome may be improved if clinicians select specific subtypes of T cells to attack diseases like acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and lymphoma.
"Our main finding is that younger T cells are critically important in T cell immunotherapy," said pediatric oncologist David M. Barrett, M.D., Ph.D., at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Collecting and expanding these cells could increase the number of children with cancer who could benefit from this innovative treatment." The T cell therapy, developed with Barrett's and Grupp's collaborators at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is a form of immunotherapy, manipulating the body's own immune system. Specifically, the scientists modify T cells, the workhorses of the body's immune system, to attack B cells, other immune cells that become cancerous in specific cancers such as ALL. The researchers first extract a patient's own T cells and reprogram them to hunt down and eliminate B cells after those modified T cells are returned to the patient. Barrett and colleagues followed 50 child and adolescent patients in a clinical trial of B-cell cancers at CHOP, of whom 38 had ALL and 12 had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). The study team measured immune system markers and fully characterized their T cell populations once a month for six months following a patient's initial diagnosis. The study team found that early-lineage T cells, classified as either naive T cells (newly minted cells) or stem central memory T cells (self-renewing, highly proliferative cells) were the most effective in immunotherapy. Those early-lineage T cells also expanded best in the laboratory, before they were returned to each patient for T cell therapy.
Significantly, early-lineage T cells were also more vulnerable to chemotherapy than older cells.

More young Breast Cancer patients getting gene test

A growing number of young women with breast cancer are being tested for the BRCA gene mutations that substantially raise the risks of breast and ovarian tumors, a new study shows.
Researchers found that of nearly 900 women who developed breast cancer at age 40 or younger, most had undergone BRCA testing within a year of their diagnosis.
And the percentage went up over time: By 2013, 95 percent had been tested, according to findings published online Feb. 11 in JAMA Oncology.
Experts called the results good news, since BRCA testing has long been recommended for women diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 50. "This is great, it's heartening," said Dr. Jeffrey Weitzel, director of clinical cancer genetics at City of Hope, in Duarte, Calif.
But, he added, women in the study were largely white, well-educated and had health insurance, and it's unlikely that disadvantaged U.S. women would show the same high rate of BRCA testing.

The Danger of TPP and the "Pharma Bro" Problem

On World Cancer Day, the fatal greed of Big Pharma was spotlighted in unexpected ways. Smirking "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli, who had unapologetically jacked up medicine prices from $13.50 to $750 per tablet, invoked his right against self-incrimination when hauled before Congress in a fraud investigation.
Meanwhile, two cancer patients; Zahara Heckscher and Hannah Lyon, were arrested at the headquarters of the Pharma lobby protesting another unconscionable act of Pharma greed: the 'death sentence' clauses the industry pushed into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP would be "worst-ever trade agreement for access to medicines." If passed, the TPP would lock in policies that not only allow price gouging, but essentially require all TPP-signatory governments to provide monopoly rights allowing drug companies to charge whatever they want. This would block access to essential life-saving medicines for many people with cancer.
About one out of eight women in this country will get breast cancer. Members of Congress should look their wives, mothers, sisters, daughters and granddaughters in the eye.
Then they should vote against the TPP.

Medicare may experiment with caps to Cancer-drug reimbursements

The U.S. is mulling changes to how the Medicare program pays physicians for administering expensive cancer drugs and other medications given in doctors’ offices, according to a memo from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The memo tells Medicare contractors who process payments to set up a system allowing the government to vary by geographic location how much it reimburses doctors for the drugs they administer. The government could then set up a pilot program to test how limiting reimbursement in Medicare Part B, which pays for seniors’ medical services and supplies, affects doctors’ choice of drugs. Medicare typically pays doctors a drug's average sales price, plus an added 6%, for treatments they administer in their offices, including cancer infusion therapies and pricey new products whose price tags can exceed $100,000 a year. The current reimbursement system "does not take into account the effectiveness of a particular drug, or the cost of comparable drugs, when determining the Medicare payment amount."
Those factors are regularly looked at by countries around the world when it comes to government drug coverage. In the U.K., for instance, manufacturers often have to offer up discounts to get their new treatments past cost-effectiveness gatekeepers. Germany's iQWIG requires new therapies to deliver an additional benefit beyond already-available drugs if they want to secure premium pricing.

Scientists find Leukemia's surroundings key to Cancer's growth

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered that a type of cancer found primarily in children can grow only when signaled to do so by other nearby cells that are noncancerous. Most cancer research to date has focused on understanding the inner workings of cancer cells, and the majority of existing therapies target malignant cells in isolation, working to shrink or remove them through surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. However, in recent years, more scientists have begun to explore not only the cancer "seed" but its surrounding "soil," meaning other factors in the microenvironment surrounding a cancer that cause tumors to grow and spread. Scientists believe that understanding how cancer feeds on its environment could lead to new ways to starve it of conditions required for growth.
"It's only more recently that people have really appreciated that tumors are complex organs in and of themselves with all of the heterogenous cell types that can talk to each other and promote each other's survival and proliferation," says Lauren Ehrlich, an assistant professor of molecular biosciences.
Ehrlich's team found for the first time that a neighboring cell in the soil around T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) creates the necessary condition for that cancer to grow. Without the interaction with the outside cell, the cancer collapses, unable to grow or survive the way it does in a T-ALL patient.

New Anti-radiation product to assist in Cancer Radiation Treatment

The President of New Venture Medical, Geoff Perry, has announced the release of an anti-radiation product from their Research and Development group. This is a revolutionary breakthrough in the treatment of cancer using radiation and the treating of environmental radiation exposure. It will assist in the healing of radiation burns, even when open sores are present. It will also protect only the healthy cells from radiation damage. It selectively helps and protects the healthy cells and not tumors.

The initial product is for radiation exposure and this will be available as an injectable liquid or as a sublingual pill or a topical cream. The product is designed to work at the subatomic level in the individual cell's mitochondria. It has significant impact not only in the treatment of cancer, but any exposure to radiation. It has the ability to penetrate through the brain/blood barrier enabling it to be effective against cell phone radiation emissions.

This is the first product released by NVMG. The company, over the next few months, will release a new product against even drug resistant malaria. It has shown to be effective at a 98% level in human tests, this includes drug resistant malaria. In as little as 15 days, even during the blood cycle of the disease, it has eliminated the parasite. There is currently no treatment effective during the blood cycle on the market.

There is a twin action HER/2 Breast cancer vaccine and a Lyme's disease vaccine under development. The HER/2 vaccine has a twin action.  Current vaccines and others under development are useless if the cancer is present. NVMG's vaccine will work even if cancer is present. It initiates the standard vaccine response, but the vaccine also attacks that specific cancer cell as well.

Research data just reviewed indicate an ability to create a vaccine and treatment protocol for the Zika virus is viable and could be completed by the end of 2016.

'Molecular movie' opens door to new Cancer treatments

An international team of scientists led by the University of Liverpool has produced a 'structural movie' revealing the step-by-step creation of an important naturally occurring chemical in the body that plays a role in some cancers.
S-Adenosylmethionine (SAMe) is a major methyl donor that is produced by the highly conserved Methionine Adenosyltransferase (MAT) family of enzymes. Methylation is an underpinning process of life and provides control for biological processes such as DNA synthesis, cell growth and apoptosis.
Tight regulation of the level of SAMe is essential for maintaining a healthy cell and dysregulation of SAMe is considered important in many diseases including liver and colon cancer.
The international team, which includes researchers from the Center for Cooperative Research in Biosciences, Spain, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, used X-ray crystallography to successfully unravel how the catalytic subunit MATα2 synthesises SAMe, with details of every atom's location and behaviour as the synthesis takes place.
The work was led by Professor Samar Hasnain and Dr Svetlana Antonyuk who are co-directors of the University's Barkla X-ray Laboratory of Biophysics and utilised some of Europe's most powerful X-ray synchrotron sources, including ALBA in Spain and DIAMOND in the UK."Though the relationship between SAMe and tumour growth has been known for some time, this molecule also has other important functions inside the cell that cannot be altered and there is currently no way of acting against it without affecting these other life-sustaining functions.
"The good news is that MATα2 is only over-expressed in adults with tumors therefore representing an excellent therapeutic target, which could open the door to the creation of highly targeted drugs that act exclusively on this enzyme rather than attacking other regions of the body."

Nanoparticles with X-rays can kill Cancer cells

Researchers from the Center for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP), an Australian Research Center of Excellence, have shown that nanoparticles used in combination with X-rays, are a viable method for killing cancer cells deep within the living body.
The research is based on the successful quantification of singlet oxygen produced during photodynamic therapy for cancer. Singlet oxygen molecules (a highly reactive form of oxygen) are able to kill or inhibit growth of cancer cells in the body due to their toxicity.
Co-lead author on the paper, Ewa Goldys, Deputy Director of the CNBP and Professor at Macquarie University, explains, “Photodynamic therapy is where light sensitive compounds are placed near diseased cells, then activated by light, producing short lived molecular by-products that can destroy or damage the cells being targeted.”
“In this case, X-rays (a form of light) were used to stimulate cerium fluoride (CeF3) nanoparticles which had been placed near a group of cells. Singlet oxygen was produced as a by-product of the X-ray and CeF3 interaction, which was then successfully measured.”
Goldys believes the research is significant, as this is the first time that anyone has been able to quantify accurately, the number of singlet oxygen molecules produced in this type of procedure.
“Singlet oxygen molecules are a far more reactive form of oxygen but they can only kill cancer cells if generated in sufficient quantity,” says Goldys.

Phase 3 trial results in newly diagnosed Glioblastoma treatment

Novocure’s phase 3 pivotal clinical trial results of Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) in combination with temozolomide in newly diagnosed glioblastoma (GBM) have been selected for inclusion in the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Clinical Cancer Advances 2016: Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer. The report, reviews the recent top advances and emerging trends in clinical cancer research that are leading to improved cancer treatments for patients. Novocure’s phase 3 pivotal trial compared TTFields therapy in combination with temozolomide to temozolomide alone in 695 patients with newly diagnosed GBM. The trial met its endpoints at the interim analysis. The trial’s results demonstrated superior progression-free and overall survivals in patients receiving TTFields therapy in combination with temozolomide compared to temozolomide alone (median progression-free survival of 7.2 months compared to 4.0 months.
Julie M. Vose wrote in the report. “I hope these achievements will inspire all of us to do our part to further accelerate the pace of research and discovery to help millions of people who are living with cancer and the millions more who will face a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime.” 

Update on Tarextumab Phase 2 Programs on Pancreatic and SCLung Cancers

OncoMed Pharmaceuticals Inc., a clinical-stage company developing novel anti-cancer stem cell and immuno-oncology therapeutics, announced updates on the tarextumab (anti-Notch 2/3, OMP-59R5) Phase 2 programs in pancreatic cancer (the “ALPINE” study) and small cell lung cancer (the “PINNACLE” study).  OncoMed will continue the PINNACLE Phase 2 trial of tarextumab in small cell lung cancer following a review of unblinded safety and efficacy data from both the ALPINE and PINNACLE studies by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the PINNACLE Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB).  The PINNACLE study remains blinded to OncoMed, investigators and patients.  OncoMed has discontinued dosing of tarextumab in the Phase 2 ALPINE clinical study. 

“After communicating with the FDA and the PINNACLE trial DSMB we have received feedback that appropriate safety monitoring is in place to continue the PINNACLE trial,” said Paul J. Hastings, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of OncoMed.  “While we remain blinded to the PINNACLE trial data, differences in pancreatic and small cell lung cancer biology, combined with our understanding of the potential mechanisms of tarextumab, give us confidence to continue the PINNACLE Phase 2 clinical trial.”
Ongoing analyses conducted by OncoMed revealed subgroups of patients with decreased survival and a subgroup which appears to exhibit improved survival with tarextumab.  OncoMed will continue to analyze the ALPINE data, and present the data at a future medical meeting.

Device hits Pancreatic tumors, sparing the body

A team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has revealed that an implantable device can deliver a particularly toxic cocktail of drugs directly to pancreatic tumors to stunt their growth or in some cases, shrink them, all while showing signs that the rest of the body would be spared toxic side effects.
"We use the device to hit the primary tumor hard," said UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center member Jen Jen Yeh, M.D., who is also an associate professor in the department of pharmacology and the UNC School of Medicine department of surgery. "It's an exciting approach because there is so little systemic toxicity that it leaves room to administer additional drugs against cancer cells that may have spread in the rest of the body." The cocktail FOLFIRINOX, a combination of four chemotherapy drugs that has been shown to shrink tumors or halt their growth in nearly a third of pancreatic cancer patients. It's one of today's first-line treatments for pancreatic cancer, but it is not suitable for all patients due to its degree of toxicity when delivered through the bloodstream. The new device delivers the drugs directly to the tumor, providing a viable alternative to sending this toxic cocktail through the bloodstream, limiting harsh effects throughout the rest of the body.
"We are striving to get our device into clinical trials within the next several years," said Joseph M. DeSimone, Chancellor's Eminent Professor of Chemistry in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences and William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at NC State University. "The prospect of halting tumor growth with our device, and potentially shrinking tumors, could help more patients qualify for surgery." Surgically removing a tumor is currently the best chance of cure for patients with pancreatic cancer, but only 15 percent of patients have operable tumors.

Study reveals new pathway to treat Prostate Cancer

A subset of treatment-resistant prostate cancer pathologically resembles small cell lung cancer rather than typical prostate cancer, Weill Cornell Medicine and University of Trento investigators discovered in a new study. The scientists say their findings may lead to more effective ways to diagnose and treat neuro-endocrine prostate cancer.
Therapies that cut off the hormone androgen, which fuels tumor growth, are commonly used to treat patients with advanced prostate cancer. While this is initially effective, patients often stop responding and develop treatment resistance. Some of these tumors transform from typical prostate cancer, called adeno-carcinoma, into neuro-endocrine prostate cancer, an event that scientists have increasingly observed but knew little about how or why it happened.
Weill Cornell Medicine investigators collaborated with scientists at the University of Trento. They used next-generation sequencing technologies to examine resistance across a spectrum of patients and discovered the genetic, epigenetic and molecular features that underlie neuro-endocrine prostate cancer. Their findings illuminate the disease's distinctive characteristics, which may enable researchers to develop bio-markers to help identify this subset of patients with prostate cancer less likely to respond to the next line of hormonal-based therapies. This large data-set can now also be used by researchers to develop new therapeutic approaches for patients.

Drop in Prostate Cancer screening

After U.S. guidelines advised against routine tests, declines in prostate cancer screening have been sharper among primary care doctors than urologists, according to a new study that suggests the medical community remains divided over the best way to look for these tumors.
In late 2011, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a government-backed panel of independent physicians, recommended against routine prostate cancer tests for all men. They cited concerns that widespread screening often caught harmless tumors that didn't need treatment and led to unnecessary procedures with side effects like impotence and incontinence.
The next year, testing rates for prostate cancer among men aged 50 to 74 years old dropped to about 16 percent among primary care physicians, from roughly 37 percent in 2010 before new guidelines took effect.
But among urologists, use of the test for a substance in the blood called prostate-specific antigen (PSA) decreased only about 4 percentage points to about 35 percent over the same period, researchers report in JAMA Internal Medicine.
"There is much evidence that men with limited life expectancy do not benefit from PSA testing, and I think experts can agree on that," said senior study author Dr. Quoc-Dien Trinh, a urologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
"The rest is a matter of opinions and expert panels," Trinh added. "I do feel strongly that some men are more at risk of prostate cancer and I'm concerned about what will happen to these men given the current USPSTF recommendations and trends in PSA testing."

New research from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

New findings from a study led by Dr. Marco Mielcarek
and colleagues in the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center offer new hope for reducing the risk of graft-vs.-host disease, or GVHD, in patients who receive transplants of matched related and unrelated donor blood stem cells for leukemia and other high-risk blood cancers.
GVHD occurs when newly transplanted donor cells attack the organs of the transplant recipient, regarding them as foreign. It affects up to 80 percent of patients who receive donor stem cell transplants. Symptoms, including skin rashes, nausea, diarrhea, weight loss and liver problems, among others, may develop within a few months after transplant (known as acute GVHD) or much later, and symptoms sometimes last up to a lifetime (known as chronic GVHD), which can significantly reduce quality of life.
The study found that treating patients with an immune-suppressing drug called cyclophosphamide three and four days after transplantation, followed by another immunosuppressive drug called cyclosporine on day five, reduced the relative risk of chronic GVHD by more than half: from the expected 35 percent to 16 percent.
The researchers also found that this post-transplant treatment reduced the risk of severe acute GVHD from the expected 10 to 15 percent to zero.

The regimen used in the Hutch study had been adapted to blood stem cell transplantation from a regimen that had been introduced by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and had been shown to reduce chronic GVHD after bone marrow transplantation.

Many Cancer survivors face increased risk of heart disease

Many adult cancer survivors face an increased risk of heart disease, worsening their long-term survival odds beyond the effect of tumors alone, a U.S. study suggests.
In a study of about 110,000 people, survivors of certain cancers, including tumors in the lung, ovaries, bone marrow and lymph system, had a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular disease than individuals with no history of malignancies, the study found.
Among the 36,000 cancer survivors in the study, just 60 percent of the those who developed cardiovascular disease survived after eight years, compared with 81 percent of cancer patients without heart problems.
“The findings from the current study speak to the growing long-term morbidity associated with cardiovascular disease in cancer survivors, and to the critical importance of strategies to improve cardiovascular health in at risk survivors long after completion of cancer therapy,” said lead study author Dr. Saro Armenian of City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, California.
Previous research has linked cancer chemotherapies known as anthracyclines to weakening of the heart muscle. Research has also tied some radiation therapy to cardiac rhythm disorders and structural damage in arteries and heart valves.

World Cancer Day 2016

President Obama shined the national spotlight on cancer research, announcing a new White House Task Force dedicated to finding a cure for this disease. Since February 4 is World Cancer Day, it’s the perfect occasion to look back on what we’ve accomplished in the field of cancer research, and look forward toward the next generation of cancer therapy.
The good news is that early detection, early prevention, and innovative treatments have led to a 23% decline in the cancer death rate over the last two decades. With more powerful, less toxic, and increasingly individualized therapies, more and more people are able to stop saying “I’m a cancer patient” and start saying “I’m a cancer survivor.”
Even more promise lies in highly personalized therapies that use patients’ genes to tailor their treatment. Vaccine therapies are also gaining momentum, as is CAR-T cell therapy, which modifies patients’ T cells so they can recognize and attack cancer cells. Each in different stages of development, these areas of study need additional funding so doctors can perfect treatments and save more lives.

Nutrient deprivation kills Kidney Cancer cells

Duke University researchers have discovered a promising target for renal cell carcinomas. A study appearing online Feb. 1, 2016 in Cancer Research shows that the majority of these cancers rewire their metabolism in a way that leaves them addicted to an outside nutrient called cystine.
By depriving the cancer cells of the amino acid cystine, the researchers were able to trigger a form of cell death called necrosis in mouse models of the disease.
"We found that the same machinery that makes these tumors so aggressive also makes them vulnerable to nutrient deprivation," said senior study author Jen-Tsan Ashley Chi, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Duke University School of Medicine. "It is like we are beating it at its own game."
Tang subjected the cancer cells to a nutrient deprivation test, removing each of the 15 amino acids from their growth media, one by one. Most of the time, the cells weathered the change quite well, slowing down their growth but otherwise remaining healthy. But Tang found that when cystine was removed, the cells swelled up and floated to the surface, a sure sign of necrotic death.
Cystine is responsible for maintaining high levels of antioxidants that disarm free radicals of oxygen; so when the researchers got rid of this nutrient, the cancer cells essentially died by their own hand of free radical damage.

Such particles could be used as vaccines that are delivered through food or drink. The idea is that you would drink the vaccine, and after passing through the stomach the virus-like particles would get absorbed in the intestine and deliver vaccines to the body.
But the particles could also be used to attack cancer. Stark and Cheng did some tinkering with the proteins, so that they carry sticky cysteine amino acids on the outside. They could then chemically link other molecules to these cysteine groups.
They worked with a molecule called LXY-30, developed by researchers at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, which is known to stick to breast cancer cells.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-02-hepatitis-virus-like-particles-potential-cancer.html#jCp

Scientists get Cancer cells ‘addicted’ to drugs that kill them

The technique, called “mito-priming”, has been hailed by researchers as a breakthrough in the fight against the disease.
Scientists the Beatson Institute in Glasgow, which is run by Cancer Research UK and closely linked to Glasgow University, developed the technique as a research tool while trying to understand how cancer cells die.
The discovery means mito-priming can be applied to identify new anti-cancer drugs to screen their effectiveness, in particular, so-called “BH3-mimetics” medications.
BH3-mimetics, a new class of cancer drugs developed to specifically kill tumor cells, target a family of proteins called BCL-2 proteins, which function to keep cancer cells alive. While not yet in use in clinical practice, BH3-mimetic anti-cancer drugs are showing promise in late-stage clinical trials, particularly in the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL).

New study on how Breast Cancer spreads

Researchers at disease research institute Fred Hutchinson and Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, confirmed that clusters of cancer cells travel together as they spread to other organs, or metastasize, which is one of the first steps toward finding a way to stop them. It also found those clusters need to stick together to survive. These findings will provide insights into metastasis and could point to potential drug therapies to prevent or slow the spread of breast cancer.

Advancement in Cancer Treatment with Pencil Beam Scanning

The most precise cancer treatment available is now even sharper at the Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute (HUPTI) thanks to the addition of Pencil Beam Scanning (PBS).

According to Ion Beam Applications (IBA), the Belgian equipment manufacturer for HUPTI, Pencil Beam Scanning, also known as spot scanning, allows for a higher degree of precision and minimizes the overall exposure and radiation to healthy tissue. The first patient selected for PBS treatment at HUPTI is underwent treatment for prostate cancer completed in early December. Three additional patients have joined the PBS treatment program.

"We've been working on new advancements for the past several years," said Tyvin Rich, MD, HUPTI Radiation Oncologist. "Pencil Bean Scanning is a very elegant, conformal treatment that features improvements in the delivery of proton therapy."

Used for the first time in 2008, PBS has treated over 1,800 patients and is only available in select proton facilities in the U.S.

Obama proposes $1 billion for Cancer research

The White House is putting a dollar sign in front of its ambitious effort to cure cancer, announcing $1 billion in funding over the next two years.
The money will go to develop vaccines, improve cancer detection, research immunotherapy treatments, analyze the genetic makeup of tumors, share data and a focus on cancer in children.
The announcement came as Obama and Vice President Biden were scheduled to launch the first official meeting of the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force, a State of the Union initiative with a goal to "end cancer as we know it."
Obama first announced the cancer "moonshot" in his State of the Union address last month, saying he would put Biden in charge of the effort. Biden's son, Beau, died of brain cancer last May.
In an e-mail to supporters Monday, Biden said the job of the task force will be to "clear out the bureaucratic hurdles,
and let science happen."

DNA analysis can determine Breast Cancer Risk

According to new research, DNA analysis of normal breast tissue can be used to calculate a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer later in life. The research team at the University College London took a look at 668 breast tissue samples from 50 cancer-free women and 42 women with cancer. They analyzed both normal and cancerous tissue.
In more than 30 percent of cases, the research team found that the alterations in DNA expression matched those of cancer samples. According to researchers, this could indicate the reprogramming of cells from normal to cancerous in patients.
According to the study papers, researchers said, “Importantly a large component of the detected variable epigenetic signature was enriched in the corresponding breast cancer tissue, supporting the view of the researchers that this variable epigenetic signature marks susceptible precursor cells crucially involved in breast cancer development. Furthermore, those cases of breast cancer which were exhibiting epigenetic changes were associated with significantly poorer prognosis and a decreased level of survivorship from the disease.”

Genetic cause identified in rare Pediatric Brain tumor

Diagnosis and treatment decisions for a recently recognized type of children's brain tumor should be improved by the discovery of the genetic mechanism that causes it, say researchers who identified the unusual DNA abnormality in angiocentric gliomas. Currently there is no definitive pathological test to help identify this rare type of low-grade glioma.
"Now we know these angiocentric gliomas have a different biology, and we have an exact way of identifying them so that patients can avoid this additional therapy that has life-long consequences," said Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Because of these findings, the researchers said, angiocentric glioma should be classified as a separate biologic entity, with the presence of the gene fusion confirming the diagnosis. "This could aid in distinguishing angiocentric glioma from tumors with higher potential for recurrence that could require further treatment," they said. The authors have developed the first genetic test now available for these patients through collaboration with cytogeneticist Azra H. Ligon, PhD.