Urine test improves prediction of High-grade Prostate Cancer

An experimental urine test that detects genetic changes associated with prostate cancer identified 92 percent of men with elevated PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels who had high-grade cancers, according to a study published today in JAMA Oncology online.
"The test has the potential to be a significant improvement over PSA alone in distinguishing between low- and high-grade prostate cancer, especially in the PSA gray zone patient. It could reduce hundreds of thousands of invasive biopsies each year. Given the pain and risks associated with performing a prostate biopsy, that's not a trivial thing," said first author James McKiernan, MD, the John K. Lattimer Professor and chair of urology at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and urologist-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia. In addition, the test is the only urine-based assay that does not require a digital rectal exam prior to collection and is easily integrated in the clinic environment.
Although the PSA blood test is commonly used to screen for prostate cancer, its value has come under question. An elevated PSA level, above 4 ng/mL, only indicates that a patient may have cancer and does not reliably distinguish between low-grade cancer, which can be monitored without active treatment, and high-grade disease, which requires aggressive treatment with surgery or radiation therapy.  PSA tests yield a high number of false positive results, only 25 percent of men with an elevated PSA level have prostate cance, the US Preventive Services Task Force recommends against PSA-based screening.

Childrenin the UK with Cancer to get new gene test

Children with cancer at leading hospitals across the UK will be offered testing for genetic mutations in their tumors as part of a new initiative to begin to personalize children's cancer treatment.
Around 400 children with solid tumors at 21 hospitals across in the UK will start to receive the new genetic test, which is designed to pick up key mutations in tumors that drive cancer's growth and spread.
The initiative is the first stage of a wider program which eventually aims to provide testing for all children with solid tumors in the UK, and to direct them into clinical trials targeting particular mutations within their tumors.
Researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust designed the new test, which works by sequencing 81 different cancer genes, with funding from UK charity Christopher's Smile.
Testing will begin from 2016 and take about two years, with initial funding for the testing program from the NIHR Biomedical Research Center at The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR).
Tests will first be offered to children treated at The Royal Marsden, and then to patients at any of the other 20 hospitals in the UK which form part of the Children's Cancer and Leukemia Group.

Pricey Prostate Cancer drug's makers targeted by Congress

Lawmakers again are targeting the pharmaceutical industry over sky-high prescription drug prices, a hot issue this year in Washington and on the campaign trail that's been dragging down stock prices of many drugmakers.
Shares of Medivation tumbled Tuesday after a group of lawmakers started a campaign to potentially lower the price of a drug for advanced prostate cancer, Xtandi.
The drug is jointly marketed in the U.S. by Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma and its partner, Medivation Inc., which is based in San Francisco. Astellas sells Xtandi outside the U.S.
In a letter to the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health, Reps. Lloyd Doggett and Peter Welch and Sen. Bernie Sanders urged the agencies to step in to cut prices for Xtandi, saying it costs four times more in the U.S. than in some other developed countries.
They are asking for public hearings on the drug, which they say was developed at the University of California, Los Angeles, through taxpayer-supported research grants. The lawmakers want the NIH to consider overriding Xtandi's patent, which guarantees Medivation and Astellas exclusive sales for a decade or more. Overriding the patent would allow for Xtandi's price to be reduced.
"Under current law, NIH can take this step if federal funds supported a drug's development and the company is selling it at an unreasonably high price," the lawmakers said in a statement.
In the U.S., Xtandi has an average list price of more than $129,000 per year, though insurers negotiate significant discounts. Patients generally take if for several months. Xtandi is sold in Japan and Sweden for $39,000, and in Canada for $30,000, according to the statement.

Nanoparticle tracks Cancer Treatment’s effectiveness

Bioengineers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a new technique to help determine if chemotherapy is working in as few as eight hours after treatment. The new approach, which can also be used for monitoring the effectiveness of immunotherapy, has shown success in pre-clinical models. The technology utilizes a nanoparticle, carrying anti-cancer drugs, that glows green when cancer cells begin dying. Researchers, using  the “reporter nanoparticles” that responds to a particular enzyme known as caspase, which is activated when cells die, were able to distinguish between a tumor that is drug-sensitive or drug-resistant much faster than conventional detection methods such as PET scans, CT and MRI. 

Poor countries don't get the needed Cancer pain medication

There are two opioid crises in the world today. One is the epidemic of abuse and misuse, present in many countries but rising at an alarming rate in the United States. The other crisis is older and affects many more people around the world each year: too few opioids.

Hospitals in the U.S. and Europe routinely prescribe opioids for chronic cancer pain, end-of-life palliative care and some forms of acute pain, like bone fractures, sickle cell crises and burns. But patients with these conditions in much of Asia, Africa and Latin America often receive painkillers no stronger than acetaminophen.
Many factors play into this crisis, but one could argue that the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), an independent monitoring agency established by the U.N., is a fundamental cause of untreated pain in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The global gap in access to opioids has been growing for a long time. In the U.S., consumption of morphine in 2013 was 32 times higher than in 1964 (increasing from 2.3 mg per person to 79.9 mg per person). In the same time period, morphine consumption Tanzania only doubled to 0.15 mg person. In India in 2013, this figure was only 0.11 mg per person.
Per capita medicinal opioid consumption in Asia, Central America, the Caribbean and Africa is far below the INCB's own minimum global standard.

Research team develops new treatment for Ovarian Cancer

The research team, led by Janet Sawicki, has published a study detailing its treatment technique that involves the systemic administration of a therapeutic molecule that targets a reduction of a specific protein in ovarian tumors but leaves healthy cells alone.

Targeting ovarian tumors was accomplished by using a novel nanocarrier bound to a molecule that directs uptake of a therapeutic to tumor cells.

The Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR) team partnered with scientists at Genisphere, a biotech company in Hatfield, Pa., to use their DNA nanocarrier platform technology, called 3DNA for the delivery of the molecule designed to suppress a protein called HuR.

“We have shown that suppression of HuR, a master regulator of hundreds of genes, disrupts multiple essential cellular molecular pathways needed by ovarian tumor cells to survive, a finding that sets this therapeutic approach apart from other therapies that target a single gene,” said Sawicki, a professor and deputy director at LIMR. “This work takes a significant step forward in the field of cancer siRNA therapeutics and advances the potential use of 3DNA technology in the clinic”

Supinoxin for the treatment of Triple Negative Breast Cancer

Rexahn Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing next generation therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, announced today that additional data supporting the Company's novel, investigational anti-cancer therapeutic, Supinoxin™ (RX-5902), for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer.
"The nonclinical data for Supinoxin - along with human pharmacokinetic data from the ongoing Phase I study, provides valuable evidence from which to best inform our selection of a recommended Phase II dose for further evaluation of Supinoxin," said Dr. Ely Benaim, Chief Medical Officer for Rexahn.  "Collectively, these data and the unique mechanism of action of Supinoxin, coupled with the high unmet medical need for new therapeutic options for patients diagnosed with TNBC, support our selection of TNBC as one of the initial indications for Supinoxin in the upcoming proof-of-concept Phase Ib/IIa clinical trial."

California's Henry Mayo Hospital has launched Lung Cancer Screening Program

Through its new Lung Cancer Screening Program, Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital’s goal is to screen patients at risk and diagnose lung cancer in the early stages. Early stage detection improves lung cancer treatment options and survival.
Under the Medicare-approved criteria, patients are eligible for lung cancer screening if they are between the ages of 55 and 74, have at least a 30-pack year history of smoking, are currently smoking, or have quit smoking for less than 15 years.
If an abnormality is detected through screening, Henry Mayo’s multi-disciplinary team of cancer specialists will determine if the patient has lung cancer utilizing diagnostic biopsy techniques including endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS); electromagnetic navigation bronchoscopy; CT-guided biopsy (percutaneous); and video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS biopsy).
“Our team will determine if the patient has cancer and at what stage of cancer they’re in,” said Mike Collins, Director of Interventional Pulmonology at Henry Mayo. “We will then provide patients with treatment options based on best practices. These treatments include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery and photodynamic therapy.”
To learn more, call (661)200-1343.

Model of tumor spreading helps doctors pick best Cancer treatment

The idea behind a new invention by scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine. In the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering, the team reports on its "metastasis-on-a-chip" system believed to be one of the first laboratory models of cancer spreading from one 3D tissue to another.
The research team is working to further develop the system in hopes that it can one day be used to quickly reveal the best way to treat an individual patient's cancer.
"We believe the metastasis-on-a-chip system has potential for making meaningful advances in cancer investigation and drug discovery," said Aleks Skardal, Ph.D., lead author and an assistant professor of regenerative medicine.
This is a relatively new focus of cancer research. For example, the scientists learned that a "stiffer" tumor was more apt to metastasize, suggesting the possibility of using drugs to alter the mechanical properties of a tumor to reduce its likelihood of spreading.
The system has the potential to address some of the shortcomings of current research methods. For example, the results from traditional 2D studies in laboratory dishes as well as studies in animals often are not applicable to human patients. Often, seemingly promising drug candidates may fail when they reach studies in humans.

Drug company doubles cost of Aid-In-Dying Medication

When California's aid-in-dying law takes effect this June, terminally ill patients who decide to end their lives could be faced with a hefty bill for the lethal medication. It retails for more than $3,000.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes the drug most commonly used in physician-assisted suicide, doubled the drug's price last year, one month after California lawmakers proposed legalizing the practice.
"It's just pharmaceutical company greed," said David Grube, a family doctor in Oregon, where physician-assisted death has been legal for 20 years.
The drug is Seconal, or secobarbital, its generic name. Originally developed in the 1930s as a sleeping pill, it fell out of favor when people died from taking too much, or from taking it in combination with alcohol. But when intended as a lethal medication to hasten the death of someone suffering from a terminal disease, Seconal is the drug of choice.
"It works very quickly and very gently," Grube says. "People fall asleep with no complications. It's a very gentle passing."

Australian new technology for Prostate Cancer treatment

Researchers in Australia will test new technology to improve accuracy of radiation therapy for prostate cancer, potentially cutting the number of treatments a patient needs from 40 to five.
The TROG 15.01 SPARK trial will test kilovoltage intrafraction monitoring, or KIM, which images tumors while delivering treatment, allowing doctors to keep radiation beams on the tumor while also intensifying the treatment -- slashing the number of treatments needed.
The researchers are focusing on prostate cancer patients being treated with stereotactic prostate adaptive radiotherapy, but said if the trial is successful the technique could be applicable to treating other types of cancer as well.
"The KIM technology will enable safer radiation dose intensification, and therefore the SPARK trial cancer patients will be treated in five treatment sessions over two weeks," Paul Keall, a professor at the University of Sydney, said

New Prostate Cancer screening algorithm

A new assessment of the multiplex Stockholm 3 (STHLM3) prostate cancer screening algorithm suggests that, compared with current clinical screening, the test can significantly reduce the rate of unnecessary biopsies without compromising the identification of high-risk prostate cancer."We were quite astonished by this result," said Henrik Grönberg, MD, the study's lead investigator.
Applying the STHLM3 algorithm to a cohort of about 56,000 men who had been assessed in regular clinical practice would have resulted in a 55% reduction in prostate biopsies with either benign or low-risk results, reported Dr Grönberg, who is from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

New treatment reduces Precancerous Polyps

Inheriting a mutation in the APC gene leads to a nearly 100% lifetime risk of colorectal cancer. While colon cancer can be kept at bay by removing the large intestine, these patients also have up to a 15% risk of getting cancer in the small intestine, which is the leading cause of cancer death in this patient group. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), has identified the first prevention treatment for these patients, a two-drug combination that significantly reduces the number and size of precancerous polyps in the small intestine.
Deborah Neklason, PhD, a researcher on the study, says the current clinical trial used the information obtained in basic science to test a drug combination of sulindac (inhibitor of COX-2) and erlotinib (inhibitor of EGFR). "This trial is an effort to go at two pathways that intersect and see if we could drive down the development of polyps and cancer in the small intestine," says Neklason.
Ninety-two FAP patients were identified from the Huntsman Cancer Institute Hereditary Gastrointestinal Cancer Registry, one of the largest registries in the world, and were entered into a trial where half received drug and half placebo. The trial was blinded so neither the patients nor researchers knew who was getting the drug. Both groups of patients received an endoscopy before the trial began and again after six months in order to visualize and characterize the size and number of polyps before and after treatment.
At the time of the six-month endoscopy, the drug treatment group had significantly fewer (p<0.001) and smaller polyps than the placebo group with an overall reduction in polyps of 71% (p<0.001).

Prostate Cancer targeted with ultrasound

An ultrasound technique for killing cancer tumors without harming healthy tissue could transform the treatment of prostate cancer. Research presented at a meeting suggest the treatment is as effective as surgery or radiotherapy, but with fewer side effects. Led by University College Hospital (UCH) in London, UK, the study followed 625 men between 2004-2015, who were treated in the UK and who had localized, non-metastatic tumors; the tumors were in one part of the prostate and had not spread beyond the gland.
Hashim Ahmed, a consultant urological surgeon at UCH, told the meeting that 93% of patients who underwent HIFU alone to remove their prostate tumor were still cancer-free and did not need any surgery or radiotherapy 5 years after treatment.

Radiation combined with immune-stimulating drugs against Cancer

Radiation can't target every tumor or every cancer cell in the body. It isn't feasible to deliver radiation to each and every place tumor cells have migrated once the disease metastasizes throughout the body.
That is where a phenomenon called the "abscopal effect" comes in. Abscopal means "away from target," and is a radiation biology term that describes a fascinating phenomenon: sometimes treating a tumor with radiation in one part of the body causes the elimination and cure of a nontreated tumor at a different location. Many scientists attribute this effect to the activity of immune cells, triggered by radiation, mounting an effective attack against untreated tumors. It has also been observed in cancer patients in the clinic. In the past few years, there have been several high-profile reports of abscopal responses in patients with lung, melanoma and other cancers. These patients all received some form of cancer immunotherapy in addition to the radiation therapy.
Researchers still aren't sure exactly how to make abscopal responses happen consistently. The challenge is to figure out what exactly is responsible for the abscopal effect so that it can be reproduced reliably in more patients treated with combination therapy.
Questions remain about what the best radiation dose is to cause this effect, the optimal timing to give radiation relative to the cancer immunotherapy, what specific types of cancer are most likely to respond this way and which immunotherapy (from the ever-growing list) is the best for causing this effect in combination strategies.
The overall good news is that radiation can make tumor cells tickle T cells into action. Thus, cancer immunotherapies may help repurpose the use of one of the oldest cancer treatments in new ways.

Patients with Prostate Cancer in England will now have early access to Zytiga

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) now agrees that abiraterone is affordable.
It had previously said the treatment was not cost-effective for the NHS until cancers were more advanced.
The drug costs £3,000 a month, but a lower price has been agreed with the manufacturer Janssen.
Janssen also submitted fresh data about the drug's effectiveness to NICE.
Abiraterone, also known as Zytiga, is a hormone therapy, and unlike chemotherapy which kills the cancerous cells, it stops more testosterone from reaching the prostate gland to stifle the tumor.
Instead, patients in England had to rely on their doctors applying to the Cancer Drugs Fund, a special pot set aside for cancer drugs not routinely available on the NHS.
Now NICE says the new evidence submitted by Janssen means it can offer the drug to more patients - those with spreading prostate cancer who have only mild symptoms and who have not responded to androgen deprivation therapy and have not yet been offered chemotherapy.
It is estimated that 5,900 people with this category of prostate cancer might be eligible each year in England.
Prof Carole Longson, from NICE, said: "There are few treatments available for patients at this stage of prostate cancer so this is very good news."
Heather Blake, from Prostate Cancer UK, said: "This long awaited decision is fantastic news and brings an end to years of uncertainty for men and their loved ones. After 18 months our calls have finally been heard as NICE and the manufacturer have managed to negotiate a way forward. However it cannot continue to take so ludicrously long to get men what they need."

Hydrogel help doctors target tumors in Cancer Treatment

Scientists in Australia created a hydrogel that mimics human tissue, allowing cancer drugs to be tested against tumor samples for efficacy in potential treatment. The 3D-printed gel is is based on collagen and can be used to create microenvironments that, when infused with tumor cells, create models of a patient's cancer, scientists at Queensland University of Technology report in a study.
The gelatin methacryloyl-based hydrogel can be created in one to two weeks and can be modified to mimic the firmness of cartilage or the softness of breast tissue. Once infused with cells from a patient's tumor, the scientists say several drugs can be tested simultaneously.
The scientists said their accomplishment, beyond finding the hydrogel allows for drug testing, is quality control to allow researchers to easily reproduce it.
"Our big breakthrough is we can produce this high-quality material on a very large scale inexpensively," Hutmacher said. "It is highly reproducible which means we have been able to produce this hydrogel hundreds of times, not just once or twice in the lab, so researchers worldwide will be able to create it."

The High Cost of Battling Cancer

New findings on cost implications for cancer survivors was published in the journal Cancer. They were based on the 2011 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey of 1,380 people who reported being diagnosed with cancer. In 2014 practically every new cancer-treatment drug approved by the FDA was priced at more than $120,000 a year. The cost for each additional year lived by a patient as a result of new drugs increased from $54,000 in 1995 to $207,000 in 2013. The survey questions covered a range of financial problems that stemmed from cancer treatment, including going into debt and bankruptcy. A dozen of the survey questions also probed the current physical and mental health of the respondents, including whether they ever suffered from depression because of their financial problems.

• Twenty-nine percent of cancer survivors reported cancer-related financial burdens, including those who have health insurance.
• Eight percent of cancer survivors lacked insurance coverage during the course of their treatment.
• Eight percent of cancer survivors borrowed money, incurred debt or declared bankruptcy.
• One in five said they worried about paying large medical bills.
• Ten percent were unable to cover the cost of medical care visits.
• Major financial problems significantly increased the risk of depression and worry about a recurrence of cancer. People with three or more financial problems had clinically significant worse physical and mental health than other survivors.
• Younger people, women, members of racial or ethnic minorities and those who had short-survival cancers were more likely than others to feel severe financial burden.

The study also isolated the impact of different types of financial problems on the quality of life of cancer survivors. For example, declaring bankruptcy was linked to a 25 percent reduction in quality of life.

First in Michigan, Firefighter Cancer fund

It's a year later than they'd expected, but firefighters in Michigan are hopeful that the legislature may put money into a fund that covers those exposed to cancer-causing toxins on the job.
Gov. Rick Snyder in 2015 signed legislation that created the First Responder Presumed Coverage Fund to cover firefighters with specific types of cancer (respiratory tract, bladder, skin, brain, kidney, blood, thyroid, testicular, prostate or lymphatic) presumed to have been contracted from on-the-job exposure to carcinogens. The Senate Appropriations Committee Wednesday voted on a bill to put $1 million of one-time money into the fund for the current fiscal year, which runs through Sept. 31, 2016. Sen. Marty Knollenberg, R-Troy, offered the amendment that inserted the $1 million.
"It will ensure that firefighters that put themselves in harm's way each and every single day will receive the benefits that they deserve," Knollenberg said.
Medical studies in recent years have closely linked firefighter job exposure to certain types of cancer. But cancer from long-term exposure typically is not covered by Worker's Compensation. That's why the legislature created this separate fund, but without money it couldn't be activated.

Prostate Cancer urine test more accurate

The PSA test is the standard measure of prostate cancer, but is fraught with problems and not always accurate. But German researchers have found a urine test that tracks RNA molecules linked to cancer may offer a better, more accurate way to detect the disease.
This study, presented at the European Association of Urology Congress (EAU16) in Munich this week, was conducted by the University of Leipzig and the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology. The German researchers have identified a series of non-coding RNA molecules that could potentially be combined into a single urine test to detect prostate cancer. Such a test holds promise for offering greater sensitivity and specificity than the current biomarker tests and thus make population screening much more viable."Given that our initial results show a high specificity for prostate cancer in urine tests, the prospects are good that we will be able to translate this into a better test for prostate cancer," Wirth said.

CAR T-cell Cancer therapy trial

Under the direction of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, Wilmot is one of 16 institutions in the United States selected to administer CAR T-cell therapy, a process in which a patient’s immune system is manipulated to attack cancer, not from the outside with traditional methods such as surgery, radiation or drugs, but from within.
Friedberg’s team will re-infuse into Foster his own immune cells, called T-cells, which were extracted three weeks ago and shipped to a laboratory in California where they were re-engineered into leaner, meaner, and smarter, cancer-killing machines.
They have been customized to target Foster’s specific cancer called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, the most common form of non-Hodgkin’s disease, in which the body produces too many abnormal lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. While curable in two-thirds of the 15,000 patients diagnosed in the United States each year, for those who don’t respond to the first lines of chemotherapy treatment, survival is often measured in months.
Foster has entered the Wilmot Cancer Institute at the University of Rochester Medical Center where the doctor has become the patient in a immunotherapy clinical trial being overseen by Dr. Jonathan Friedberg of URMC's nationally recognized lymphoma program. Results in patients involved in other trials have been extremely encouraging, to the point where researchers believe CAR T-cell therapy could become the first course of treatment for lymphomas and other cancers, including lung and prostate. The challenge now is replicating the results on an expanded basis nationally.

New Cancer treatment doesn’t herald the End of Breast Cancer

You may have recently heard about an intriguing new finding in breast cancer research, in which doctors were able to shrink and even destroy tumors in as little as 11 days. The U.K.’s Daily Mail called the findings “staggering” and The Guardian labeled it “astounding.” But while any step toward better treating cancer is a step in the right direction, it’s a bit too early to be shouting from the rooftops about this particular advance.
First off, here’s a breakdown of what actually happened: Results of a small trial funded by Cancer Research UK were recently presented at the 10th European Breast Cancer Conference in Amsterdam. In the trial, 257 women with an aggressive form of breast cancer known as human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) were split into four treatment groups: One was given no treatment for 11 days before they were scheduled for breast cancer surgery, another was given the drug lapatinib (also known as Tyverb), another was given trastuzamab (also known as Herceptin), and the last was given a combination of Tyverb and Herceptin.
Herceptin was the first drug that the Food and Drug Administration approved for HER2 breast cancer, and it works by binding to the receptor from outside the cell and disrupting the activation, explains Sanati. Tyverb, on the other hand, binds to the HER2 receptor from inside the cell.
While the latest trial is being heralded as a huge success, it’s worth pointing out that the new combination therapy didn’t work for everyone: The majority of women in that group (83 percent) still had breast cancer tumors that were the same size as they were when the trial began.

How Rob Ford’s new Cancer treatment came to Canada

It was midsummer 2010 when Yaron Panov was told he only had a few months to live. Doctors had diagnosed him with a form of malignant liposarcoma, the same rare and aggressive cancer afflicting Councillor Rob Ford. Six years later, Panov is alive and well thanks to several, small beady-eyed mice that unshackled him from the dire prognosis. Now, Ford, Toronto’s former mayor, is turning to the same treatment through a clinical trial at Mount Sinai Hospital named after Panov. The program will make Ford one of the first patients in Canada to take advantage of the U.S.-Israeli biotech firm Champions Oncology’s “TumorGraft” platform.

The “precision chemotherapy” treatment relies on mouse ‘avatars’, essentially your own personal medical guinea pig, to help oncologists identify the most effective treatment for a specific patient.

“You actually have a ‘mini-me’ with the tumor implanted in mice,” said Schwartz.

By testing various drug cocktails on the rodent, the technique spares the patient from enduring the painful toxic effects of chemotherapies. 

Their efforts led to the launch of the Panov Program trial at Mount Sinai Hospital, the first clinical site that has enrolled patients, including Ford, in the newly-opened study.

The research initiative will test just how well Champions’ approach works. It will involve testing chemotherapies on a cancer patient’s mice avatars and then applying those effective treatments to the patient.

Drug combo eradicated Breast Cancer tumors in 11 days

A cancer drug duo could one day eliminate the need for chemotherapy for women with HER2-positive breast cancer; in a new study, a combination of two drugs was found to completely eradicate or significantly shrink breast cancer tumors within 11 days of diagnosis. Lead researcher Prof. Judith Bliss, of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in the UK, and colleagues recently presented the results of their EPHOS B Trial at 10th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-10) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Based on their findings, the researchers suggest that therapy involving a combination of trastuzumab and lapatinib prior to surgery could be an effective treatment option for women with HER2-positive breast cancer, potentially eliminating the need for chemotherapy.

Double mastectomies for Breast Cancer tripled

The number of women who have a double mastectomy for breast cancer has tripled in 10 years, according to new research, even though this aggressive surgery has not been associated with a survival benefit.

Most women who are diagnosed with breast cancer undergo surgery as part of their treatment. There are three types: breast-conserving surgery, such as lumpectomy or partial mastectomy; unilateral mastectomy, which removes the entire breast affected by cancer; and double or bilateral mastectomy, which removes both the affected and unaffected breast. The researchers found that the number of women who had bilateral mastectomy increased from 3.9% in 2002 to 12.7% in 2012, whereas the rate of unilateral mastectomy dropped from 35.8% to 28.9%. The rate of breast-conserving surgery held steady during that period of time at about 59%. In the current study, researchers looked at the outcomes of more than 200,000 women in the database who had surgery prior to 2007. They estimated that the 10-year survival rates were similar for the three types of surgery: 91.8% for breast-conserving surgery, 83.8% for unilateral mastectomy and 90.3% for bilateral mastectomy.

New Cancer treatment to be tested

The Swedish Medical Products Agency and the Regional Ethics Committee have approved the initiation of a clinical trial for a completely new form of neuroendocrine cancer treatment that uses an oncolytic virus. The virus owes its development to donations from thousands of people all over the world. Professor Magnus Essand and researchers Justyna Leja-Jarblad and Kjell Öberg at Uppsala University have been developing a completely new treatment for neuroendocrine tumors. The treatment consists of an oncolytic virus which is remarkably effective at destroying neuroendocrine tumors. Donations from thousands of people, including a large gift of two million Swiss francs from the late businessman Vince Hamilton, has allowed the Oncolytic Virus Fund to collect enough money to enable Magnus Essand and his research group to start clinical studies. These will be the first clinical studies in the world on a genetically modified virus which specifically attacks neuroendocrine tumours. The virus treatment has been named AdVince in recognition of Vince Hamilton's commitment to and strong support for this research. The Swedish Medical Products Agency and the Regional Ethical Review Board in Uppsala recently gave the OK to start treating patients. There are many requirements which must be fulfilled in order to carry out clinical testing on humans. From when the AdVince virus treatment was first produced, it has taken two years to obtain the go-ahead.
 The treatment will be carried out at the teaching hospital Akademiska sjukhuset and will be led by physician Kjell Öberg, professor emeritus of oncological endocrinology at Uppsala University.

Battling Mucus to beat Cancer

What do cancer cells and a runny nose have in common? The answer is mucus; and researchers at the Stephenson Cancer Center at the University of Oklahoma have shown it may hold the key to making cancer treatment better.
Most of us know about the thick, gooey stuff we blow from our noses when we have a cold. In that instance, mucus protects the normal tissue in the nose from drying out and helps the body recognize and fight off invaders like bacteria and viruses.
Mucus also has been shown to play a role in cancer's resistance to chemotherapy drugs, shielding cancer cells from the very drugs intended to kill them, thereby allowing the cancer cells to grow and multiply rapidly. Now, researchers at the Stephenson Cancer Center have identified a way to potentially break through that defense when it comes to pancreatic cancer. The Stephenson Cancer Center team has identified a gene target called GCNT3 that may offer promise in improving the treatment of pancreatic cancer. GCNT3 plays an important role in the biosynthesis of mucins, a principal component of mucus.
"GCNT3 is minimally expressed in the normal pancreas, but our research showed that it is significantly overexpressed during the development of pancreatic cancer," said Mohammed. "This overexpression correlates to excessive mucin production, rapid tumor growth and reduced patient survival."
Rao explained the mucins effectively form a mesh that functions as shield keeping chemotherapy drugs and the body's own immune system from killing the cancer cells.

Battle lines drawn over Medicare Cancer Drug pricing proposal

Cancer specialists clashed Wednesday over a Medicare proposal to test new ways to pays for drugs given in doctor's offices and hospital outpatient clinics.
The proposal by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services applies to Part B drugs, a class that covers certain cancer drugs, antibiotics and eye-care medications. Some cancer drugs are among the costliest on the market, ranging from $9,000 to $100,000 a month, according to America's Health Insurance Plans. Last year, Medicare paid doctors and outpatient clinics $20 billion for Part B drugs.
Medicare patients also pay whopping out-of-pocket costs for these drugs, through coinsurance that totals 20 percent of the drug's price. Unlike employer-based health plans, "Medicare doesn't have a limit on out-of-pocket spending," says Tricia Neuman, director of the Kaiser Family Foundation's program on Medicare policy, noting that cancer therapy can drive patients into bankruptcy.
The controversy arises out of a long history of heated debate about how best to pay for medications that must be administered by doctors. The system was set up at a time when these medicines were cheap, "like Band-Aids and bags of saline," says Dr. Peter B. Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and formerly a senior adviser on Medicare to the Bush administration.
Over time, he says, prices soared, driven by incentives that prompted doctors to prescribe higher-priced drugs and pharmaceutical companies to charge more for them. The goal now is to change those incentives and reward physicians for providing higher quality care at lower cost.
"The current perverse incentive system doesn't benefit patients or the system."

Medicare considers overhaul of doctors’ payments for Cancer drugs

Medicare officials proposed Tuesday to test new ways of reimbursing doctors who administer drugs in their offices and hospital outpatient clinics, with a long-term goal of encouraging greater use of treatments that are high quality but less costly.
The proposal by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would apply to Medicare Part B, which covers drugs such as infused cancer medications and injectable antibiotics. Last year, Medicare spent about $20 billion on Part B drugs.
Patrick Conway, chief medical officer for CMS, said in a telebriefing that the plan isn’t designed to save money. But he left little doubt that the ultimate aim is to eliminate incentives that may encourage doctors to select higher-priced medications that benefit their bottom lines but not their patients. Conway called the current system, in which doctors are paid the average sales price plus 6 percent for handling and administration costs, a “perverse incentive structure that doesn’t benefit patients or the system.” He said oncologists have told CMS they sometimes feel pressure from their health-care systems to pick more expensive drugs to bolster profits.

New Cancer Drug an Old Red Dye

Rose Bengal, a cheap industrial chemical that turns yarn and food bright red, has been used as a diagnostic staining agent for some time. Now, some scientists are looking at its potential to fight various forms of cancer. Final results from an ongoing 225-patient melanoma trial of the experimental drug compared to chemotherapy are expected in early 2018. The hope is that the drug, known as PV-10, will prevent melanoma from progressing beyond Stage III, in which the disease has spread but not yet to other organs, and allow patients with more advanced cancer to live longer.
“This is one of the really neat examples of what we call repurposing, taking drugs that been around for years … and suddenly realizing that they may have an oncologic value,” said Dr. Vernon Sondak, head of cutaneous oncology at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida.
While some doctors are encouraged by the research, government approval is years off and not guaranteed. The company must replicate its early results on a bigger scale, and a U.S. Food and Drug Administration decision is not expected before 2019.

Drug-loaded nanocarriers in Cancer targeted drug delivery

Nanoparticulate delivery systems in cancer therapies provide better penetration of therapeutic and diagnostic substances with the cancerous tissue in comparison to conventional cancer therapies.
Current cancer therapy approaches are based in surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, being the chemotherapy the one that shows the greater efficiency for cancer treatment, mainly in more advanced stages. A major problem with this conventional chemotherapy is its toxicity and it also destroys healthy tissues resulting in systemic toxicity besides beneficial characteristics of killing cancer cells. Anticancer drugs also destroy healthy tissues resulting in systemic toxicity.
A possible solution to avoid these adverse influences is targeted drug delivery, which is a safer mode of delivering the medication at the desired site of its action in increased concentrations compared to other sites for maximal beneficial effect. The extremely small size of nanoparticles makes it advantageous and potentially superior to use for targeted drug delivery. In addition, these nanoparticle platforms allow for selective targeting of cancer cells or tumor vessels either by incorporating novel or standard anticancer drugs and/or the delivery of therapeutic genetic modulators.

Scientists hope to revolutionize Cancer Treatment

Scientists at Cancer Research UK and the University College London claim to have found the Achilles’ heel of cancer, which could lead to more efficient treatments even for hopeless, terminal cases.
UCL researchers discovered that our immune system could trace all cancer cells spreading throughout the body because they carry a ‘flag.’ No matter how much these cancerous cells mutate, the organism can recognize them.
Current treatments often fail to completely destroy the cancer cells because they evolve quickly, cunningly altering their makeup to evade drugs. According to the new research, even when they mutate, cancer cells still carry signature molecules called antigens.
Antigens are toxins which the immune system can spot, but the immune cells that have the power to battle those antigens are in too small numbers in the body to be effective.
Scientists believe they can harvest these specialized immune cells, multiply them artificially, and send them back in to wipe out the cancerous cells, even when they have spread to multiple organs in the body.

Beta blockers lead to new triple negative Breast Cancer treatments

New research published in the March 2016 issue of The FASEB Journal, shows that a commonly prescribed class of high blood pressure drugs may have the potential to slow the growth of triple negative breast cancer tumors. These drugs, called "beta blockers" work by counteracting the pro-growth effect caused by adrenaline by affecting the the beta2-adrenoceptor.
They found that an aggressive breast cancer tumor cell has a cell surface protein called "beta2-adrenoceptor" that can binds both beta-blockers and the stress hormone adrenaline. When bound to adrenaline, the beta2-adrenoceptor on these tumor cells stimulates a positive signaling loop to accelerate invasion. When bound to beta-blocker, however, the accelerated invasion of these cells was decreased.
"This is excellent research that shows us that we still do not know the full potential of many of the drugs sitting in most medicine cabinets," said Thoru Pederson, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "Not only does this shed light on how to potentially improve the effectiveness of triple negative cancer treatments, but it also sheds light on the full effect that these common drugs have on our bodies."

The most promising Cancer Therapy in Decades

As cancers develop, they also evolve and diversify. Cells on one side of a tumor can end up with very different mutations (and neoantigens) from those just centimeters away. This concept, known as ‘heterogeneity,’ partly explains why the war against cancer has been so entrenched. Consider the much-vaunted “targeted therapies”, drugs that go after mutations specific to a patient’s cancer. If those mutations are found only in some parts of a tumor, the treatment will leave a reservoir of cells that can grow anew, or even evolve resistance to the drug. That’s why many people get great results with targeted therapies, but then rebound within a few months.
Heterogeneity matters to the immune system, too. Some mutations develop early on in a tumor’s life and are found in all of its cells. Let’s call them trunk mutations. Others are latecomers and found in just a fraction of the tumor cells. Those are the branches.
Quezada and Swanton’s teams found that patients had better survival rates if their tumors have lots of trunk neonatigens, but not branch ones. They also responded better to pembrolizumab, one of those checkpoint inhibitors that works by unleashing the immune system (and the drug Jimmy Carter recently took). The team studied 34 patients and found that almost everyone whose tumors had a wide trunk and sparse branches responded well to the drug. By contrast, the poorest responders almost all had thin trunks and luxuriant branches. They found the same pattern among 64 melanoma patients treated with two different drugs.“This is the first evidence that there are seeds of a tumor’s own destruction nestling in the tumor itself,” says Swanton.“We need to work out how to activate these T-cells.”“We’re not naïve,” says Swanton. “We know there is a long way to go. This is the first step in an exciting journey.”

Two-pronged attack increases potency of new Cancer Drugs

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (Australia) researchers have discovered that the treatment of the most deadly form of blood cancer may be improved by combining two recently developed drugs.

The combination of birinapant and p38 inhibitors showed promise in preclinical studies as a new treatment for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). Both drugs have been studied alone in clinical trials for treating cancer, offering hope that the combination could be safely given to people with AML who have few other treatment options.
Dr Najoua Lalaoui, Professor John Silke and colleagues from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute made the discovery when searching for ways to enhance birinapant's anti-cancer effects. Their findings were published in the latest edition of the journal Cancer Cell.
Dr Lalaoui said the team was excited to discover that the combination of p38 inhibitors and birinapant had a much stronger anti-cancer effect than either agent alone. "Both p38 inhibitors and birinapant have been safely used in humans in clinical trials," she said. "We are hopeful that the combination of these agents could be an effective anti-cancer treatment.""Birinapant has been used in clinical trials for several types of cancers. Our latest research is part of an exciting next step, fine tuning how birinapant can be used in the clinic to enhance its anti-cancer effects," Professor Silke said. Birinapant is being developed by TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals Corporation based in Malvern, US.

$3B will be wasted on unused portion of Cancer Drugs

High prices for cancer medicines aren't the only reason they cost insurers and patients so much.
Waste pads the bill, a study finds, because infused cancer drugs are distributed in the U.S. in vials that usually contain more medicine than most patients need. Most of the time that excess is thrown out, even though it's perfectly good, and worth hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York estimate that wasted cancer medicine in the U.S. this year will add up to nearly $3 billion in excess costs.
Their finding comes as the federal government and much of the health care system try to reduce waste and overall medical spending, which accounts for about one-sixth of U.S. gross domestic product. The study, focused on the top 20 drugs for multiple cancer types packaged in single-dose vials and for which the dose depends on the patient's weight, finding that 1 percent to 33 percent of those 20 cancer drugs, on average, remains in vials after each dose is administered.

Based on the available vial sizes in the U.S., the researchers estimated that makers of those 20 drugs this year will receive an extra $1.84 billion from charges for unused medicine, or about 10 percent of their expected U.S. sale.
Insurers and cancer patients will pay at least another $1 billion on unused medicine in 2016, based on the markups hospitals and doctors charge over a vial's price every time they infuse patients with those cancer drugs, the researchers concluded.