Higher dose, shorter radiotherapy for Prostate Cancer

A new treatment approach for prostate cancer with higher radiotherapy doses over a shorter time works as well as current methods, but with fewer side effects according to a study. Cancer Research UK says the NHS needs to plan for the new approach that will also save it money.
The trial is reported in the journal Lancet Oncology and followed more than 3,200 men who were treated for prostate cancer between 2002 and 2011 at more than 70 UK centers.
The current standard radiotherapy schedule is 37 doses of 2 Gray (a measure of radiation) a day. This was compared with two alternative approaches, 19 doses of 3 Gray per day, and 20 doses of 3 Gray per day.
Five years later, the 20-dose schedule was no less effective than the current system.
The good news for men having prostate cancer treatment was that fewer but higher doses of intensity-modulated radiotherapy meant half the rate of side-effects than older NHS methods.

Clinical trials show success for new Cancer Treatment

Patients with advanced bladder, head and neck cancer, and classical Hodgkin lymphoma were among those whose lives were extended by immunotherapy.
Unlike surgery, radio or chemo, immunotherapy doesn’t directly target cancer cells. Instead, it retrains the immune system, which finds pathogens but doesn’t see cancer cells, to fight them.
Some cancer cells, for instance, multiply aggressively because they produce a signal called PD-L1 which deactivates the immune cells around them. Immunotherapy drugs called checkpoint inhibitors block that signal and free immune cells for the cancer-fighting cause.
In two trials of previously treated metastatic bladder cancer patients, the immunotherapy drugs atezolizumab (brand name Tecentriq), which was FDA approved last month, and nivolumab (brand name Opdivo), shrunk tumours by 30% in at least a fifth of patients.
On nivolumab, 45.6% of bladder cancer patients survived for at least a year, a follow-up study showed, “better than anything we’ve seen in the past”, according to oncologist Padmanee Sharma, who was involved in the trial.
Another checkpoint inhibitor called pembrolizumab (brand name Keytruda) was tested on heavily pre-treated patients with reoccurring or metastatic head and neck cancer.
In this study, 18% of 192 patients responded with either partial or full remission of tumours, and 65% of the responders continued to respond for 30 months. 

Brain Cancer treatment taps into sound waves

Brain cancer patients might benefit from an implantable ultrasound device that appears to enhance chemotherapy treatment. Researchers from the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris and other French institutions tested the experimental device on 15 patients with recurrent glioblastoma, a particularly deadly brain cancer. When the so-called SonoCloud was activated, sound waves opened the blood-brain barrier, letting in more chemotherapy. While this blood-brain barrier protects the brain from toxins, "it means a challenge for treating brain diseases and disorders, as 99 percent of potential therapeutic drugs are blocked by it." "This is significant," said Dr. Ekokobe Fonkem, a neuro-oncologist at Baylor Scott and White's Vasicek Cancer Treatment Center, in Temple, Texas. "One of the reasons glioblastoma, which is one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer, is very difficult to treat is because the blood-brain barrier prevents medications from getting across."

Tumor vaccine latest breakthrough in Cancer treatment

A step towards the revolutionary new cancer treatment has already been taken by researchers who tested it on three patients with melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
In each case, strong immune responses against the cancer were seen, although the early stage trial was not designed to measure the treatment’s effectiveness.The approach involves taking the genetic instructions for a specific cancer protein, encoded in a molecule of RNA, and using it to stimulate the immune system.
The RNA triggers the kind of immune response normally employed to see off viruses,
only in this case, the targets are cancer cells.
The German research raises the possibility of a vaccine that can be tailored for any kind of cancer, or even new versions of a disease that evolve as it progresses within the same patient.
‘This nano-medicine platform may give a strong boost to the vaccine field, and the results of forthcoming clinical studies will be of great interest.’

Hope for patients with hard-to-treat Breast Cancer

The team from Oxford University and the University of Nottingham found that using a drug called JQ1 can alter how cancer cells respond to hypoxia, or low oxygen, found in more than 50 per cent of breast tumors overall and most commonly in triple negative breast cancer, the form of the disease that is hardest to treat.
JQ1 works by stopping cancer cells adapting to the lack of oxygen. The study results showed that JQ1 slowed tumor growth and limited the number of blood vessels that were produced.
The study explains how the family of drugs to which JQ1 belongs works. Although this group of drugs, called bromodomain and extraterminal inhibitors or BETI, has been used to treat cancer before, this study sheds light on the role these drugs could play in hypoxia, which could prove vital for patients with hard-to-treat breast cancers.

New compound shows potential for triple-negative Breast Cancer

Researchers at the University of Michigan have identified a promising new compound for targeting one of the most aggressive types of breast cancer.

The compound, currently called UM-164, goes after a kinase known to play a role in the growth and spread of triple-negative breast cancer. UM-164 blocks the kinase c-Src and inhibits another pathway, p38, involved in this subtype. The researchers also found that the compound had very few side effects in mice.
"Triple-negative breast cancer is in dire need of new drugs. The treatments that have dramatically improved breast cancer outcomes don't apply to patients with this type of disease," says senior study author Sofia Merajver, M.D., Ph.D., scientific director of the breast oncology program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The U-M team took a different approach. While other c-Src inhibitors merely try to block the kinase, UM-164 binds to it and forces the kinase to turn off. Results of their study are published in Clinical Cancer Research.
"The reason our compound works is that we have a novel mechanism for binding the kinase. It has a response similar to removing the protein entirely from the cell, as opposed to only inhibiting the activity," says senior study author Matthew B. Soellner, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Michigan.

Two companies to pay MassHealth $200k for misleading marketing of Cancer drug

Two pharmaceutical companies pay more than $200,000 to the state’s Medicaid program, settling claims they provided misleading marketing to physicians and health care providers about the effectiveness of a lung cancer drug, according to Attorney General Maura Healey’s office.
Genentech and OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which was converted to a Delaware limited liability company, OSI Pharmaceuticals, LLC in 2011, manufactured, distributed, and marketed the drug Tarceva from 2006-2011.
The drug, which treats non-small cell lung cancer, was allegedly marketed and promoted to be effective in treating patients who were current or former smokers, according to the AG’s office. The treatment was not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, nor was there evidence by the company to support these claims, the AG’s office said.