Ovarian Cancer Not Detectable For Years

A recent scientific study indicates that ovarian cancer may not be detectable in the blood using current technology until 10 years after the disease first starts to develop.
The researchers say their work could make future efforts to develop diagnostic blood tests more efficient.

Dr Laura McCallum, Cancer Research UK’s science communications officer, said:

“Detecting cancer at an early stage when treatment is more likely to be successful is one of the most promising ways to reduce deaths from the disease. Biomarkers have the potential to offer a simple, non-invasive way to detect cancer early and scientists, including our own, are working hard to find ones that can do this reliably.
“Mathematical models like this, designed to predict the most effective biomarkers, could help improve the bench to bedside success of such tests in the future.”

Cancerous cells do not die. On the contrary, healthy cells continue replacing the old and dead cells. This makes the cancerous cells multiply amassing to a tumor. It is for the above reasons that the ovarian cancer tumors are very vigorous in body destruction. They mature to hostility without notice and thus silently killing.

Though the cancer appears asymptomatic in early stages, it is detectable in late stages. Most people are diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the 3rd to 5th stage of the disease. This is when almost nothing or too little can be done to cure the patient.

Breast Cancer Preventable and Reversible World Health News

Medical research discovers that breast cancer can be reversible and preventable. This is great news in the battle of cancer that many women are going through.

Study shows resistance is reversible

In dozens of experiments in mice and in human cancer cells, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists has closely tied production of a cancer-causing protein called TWIST to the development of estrogen resistance in women with breast cancer. Because estrogen fuels much breast cancer growth, such resistance — in which cancers go from estrogen positive to estrogen negative status — can sabotage anticancer drugs that work to block estrogen and prevent disease recurrence after surgery. Estrogen resistance develops in over half of women taking estrogen-blocking medications, such as tamoxifen, and exists from the start in many other women.

The Johns Hopkins-led team of cancer experts also reports that stalling TWIST production significantly reverses estrogen resistance.
“Now that we know TWIST has a major role in controlling estrogen resistance in breast cancer, we can investigate the value of anti-TWIST therapies and how they make possible postsurgical hormone therapy for all women who have had invasive breast cancer,” says senior study investigator and breast cancer biologist Venu Raman, Ph.D. “We suspect that TWIST production may be an underlying cause of estrogen resistance,” adds Raman, an associate professor in the Department of Radiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Kimmel Cancer Center.

Estrogen resistance, Raman says, not only renders tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors, such as anastrozole and letrozole, ineffective in women whose original estrogen receptor status was positive, but also rules out these standard treatment options for the one-quarter of women who at the time of their diagnosis already are estrogen receptor negative.

The latest findings of Raman and his team, to be published in the journal Oncogene online Nov. 7, are the first to demonstrate a detrimental link between TWIST activity and estrogen resistance. Previous work by Raman and others had shown that TWIST was more active in women with aggressive breast cancer and less active in women whose breast tumors were benign. But researchers had not yet established the direct connection to lowered levels of estrogen receptors.

In five separate cancerous cell lines grown in the laboratory, some from women with aggressive forms of breast cancer and the rest without, TWIST activity was shown in all cells to be strongly active where estrogen receptor activity was low. Further tests in human tissue samples showed the same result. In additional experiments in mice injected with breast cancer cells, researchers found that TWIST activation led to continuous and aggressive tumor growth despite tamoxifen therapy, while in mice tumors with low levels of TWIST, tumor growth waned within two months of treatment.

The new experiments are also believed to be the first to show that estrogen resistance is not a permanent condition, the researchers report. Halting TWIST production in two cell lines resulted in some return of anti-estrogen drug sensitivity. Almost 40 percent of cells tested reverted from being estrogen receptor negative to estrogen receptor positive, and some 30 percent of these cell receptors became tamoxifen sensitive, allowing the drug to target the cancerous cells.

Cancer Immunotherapy T-cell Antigen Receptor.

MEDICAL RESEARCH CANCER REPORT

Corresponding Author:
Daniel J. Powell Jr., Dept of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 421 Curie Blvd Room 1313 BRB II/III, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States

Abstract

Adoptive immunotherapies composed of T cells engineered to express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) offer an attractive strategy for treatment of human cancer. However, CARs have a fixed antigen specificity such that only one tumor-associated antigen (TAA) can be targeted, limiting the efficacy that can be achieved due to heterogeneous TAA expression. For this reason, a more generalized and effective application of CAR therapy would benefit from the capability to produce large panels of CARs against many known TAAs. In this study, we demonstrate a novel strategy to extend the recognition specificity potential of a bioengineered lymphocyte population, allowing flexible approaches to redirect T cells against various TAAs. Our strategy employs a biotin-binding immune receptor (BBIR) composed of an extracellular-modified avidin linked to an intracellular T cell signaling domain. BBIR T cells recognized and bound exclusively to cancer cells pre-targeted with specific biotinylated molecules. The versatility afforded by BBIRs permitted sequential or simultaneous targeting of a combination of distinct antigens. Together, our findings demonstrate that a platform of universal T cell specificity can significantly extend conventional CAR approaches, permitting the tailored generation of T cells of unlimited antigen specificity for improving the effectiveness of adoptive T cell immunotherapies for cancer.

Received December 2, 2011.
Revision received January 18, 2012.
Accepted February 3, 2012.

From: http://ping.fm/Q6TxV

Insomnia Cancer Hypertension Medications in Trouble

Synthon Pharmaceuticals is shutting down its operations in Research Triangle Park.
The company made the announcement on Tuesday. It did not disclose how many employees will be affected.

Synthon said its analytical labs, packaging plant and regional offices would be closed as of Aug. 31.

“Synthon is constantly looking for innovative opportunities to achieve world class efficiency furthering its ability to reach its stated goal of providing cost effective high quality alternative therapeutics to as many people as possible,” said Michael Kotsanis, chief commercial officer for the firm, in a statement.

“In this context we consider it a challenge to place our products on the market in the earliest stage possible and sell them at competitive prices.”

In 2004, Synthon chose to locate its US manufacturing and headquarters In Research Triangle Park rather than Alamance County. At that time its US headquarters were in Chapel Hill. The company had originally planned to build the plant near Mebane. Instead, it has acquired the former Magnequench International facility and 10 acres of land in RTP.

Synthon said the facility will lead to the creation of 157 jobs as it was built over the next two years.

The state of North Carolina will provide $200,000 in incentives for job creation, according to then-Gov. Mike Easley’s office.

“We will migrate our packaging activities from RTP where the scale did not allow for optimal efficiency to sites where the scale will allow us to leverage the scale and reduce costs that can ultimately be passed on to our customers and help them provide more care and cover more patients,” Kotsanis said of the shutdown decision. “These more efficient sites are either at our market facing partners or at our manufacturing locations.”

From: http://ping.fm/AibhO

Semuloparin for Thromboprophylaxis in Patients Receiving Chemotherapy for Cancer – NEJM

Results

The median treatment duration was 3.5 months. Venous thromboembolism occurred in 20 of 1608 patients (1.2%) receiving semuloparin, as compared with 55 of 1604 (3.4%) receiving placebo (hazard ratio, 0.36; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.21 to 0.60; P<0.001), with consistent efficacy among subgroups defined according to the origin and stage of cancer and the baseline risk of venous thromboembolism. The incidence of clinically relevant bleeding was 2.8% and 2.0% in the semuloparin and placebo groups, respectively (hazard ratio, 1.40; 95% CI, 0.89 to 2.21). Major bleeding occurred in 19 of 1589 patients (1.2%) receiving semuloparin and 18 of 1583 (1.1%) receiving placebo (hazard ratio, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.55 to 1.99). Incidences of all other adverse events were similar in the two study groups.

Conclusions
Semuloparin reduces the incidence of thromboembolic events in patients receiving chemotherapy for cancer, with no apparent increase in major bleeding. (Funded by Sanofi; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00694382.)
Additional members of the SAVE-ONCO Study Group are listed in the Supplementary Appendix, available at NEJM.org.

Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Chicago, June 3–7, 2011.
Supported by Sanofi.
Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org.

We thank Katherine Roberts of Excerpta Medica for editing an earlier draft of the manuscript, the nursing staff of the participating centers for their enthusiastic cooperation, and the patients included in the study for their trust and support.
Source Information

From the Division of Internal and Cardiovascular Medicine and Stroke Unit, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy (G.A.); Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC (D.J.G.); the Thrombosis Research Institute and University College London, London (A.K.K.); the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, McGill University Health Center, Montreal (W.F.); Spine Center Copenhagen, Copenhagen University Hospital Glostrup, Glostrup, Denmark (M.R.L.); the Clinical Pharmacology Unit, University Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne, France (P.M.); Klinikum Frankfurt, Höchst, Germany (P.M.); Sanofi, Bridgewater, NJ (U.C., F.L.); and McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada (A.G.G.T.).

From: Ping.fm

Physical activity for cancer survivors meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

Cancer survivors who have successfully completed their primary cancer treatment often expect to resume their work or daily life at a level similar to that before the cancer diagnosis. While cancer treatment has been shown to be effective in prolonging survival, it can be intensive and can lead to increased fatigue, decreased physical activity, and a reduction in quality of life.1 2 3 In addition, these unwanted effects of treatment can be prolonged and hinder the patients’ return to normal life.4 5 6

Physical activity is a potentially appealing intervention that could alleviate sequel related to cancer and assist patients in returning to the health status they had before treatment.
A systematic review published in 2005 summarized the evidence supporting the recommendation of physical activity during and after treatment related to cancer7; and a meta-analysis published in 2006 reported more favorable outcomes when physical activity was carried out after treatment.8 In a recent study published in 2011, starting an exercise programme after the completion of treatment was shown to be acceptable to over three quarters of patients.9 Several randomized controlled trials have assessed the efficacy of physical activity on indicators of physical and mental health in patients after cancer treatment,8 and these trials reported significant improvement after physical activity.

Daniel Y T Fong, assistant professor1,
Judy W C Ho, consultant surgeon2,
Bryant P H Hui, research assistant3,
Antoinette M Lee, assistant professor4,
Duncan J Macfarlane, associate professor5,
Sharron S K Leung, assistant professor1,
Ester Cerin, associate professor5,
Wynnie Y Y Chan, public health nutritionist6,
Ivy P F Leung, dietitian7,
Sharon H S Lam, part time lecturer (nutritional science)8,
Aliki J Taylor, honorary senior clinical research fellow9,
Kar-keung Cheng, professor9

From: http://ping.fm/8DUWg

Europe launches investigation into health risks of faulty breast implants

The European Commission has launched an in-depth scientific investigation into the potential risks to health of faulty breast implants. While preparing to update existing legislation, it will also examine with national authorities how surveillance of medical devices can be strengthened under the present rules.

The initiatives were taken after the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks concluded, in an opinion published on 2 February, that there were insufficient data to draw firm conclusions on the potential health risk to women with Poly Implant Prosthèse (PIP) silicone breast implants.

From: http://ping.fm/ImQ5c

Komen Reverses Move to Cut Planned Parenthood Funding

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Feb 03 – The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation backed down from its decision to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and birth control services, a move that had thrust the world’s largest breast cancer charity into a deeply politicized controversy.

Komen faced a massive outcry from its own supporters as well as Planned Parenthood’s, who believed Komen had came under pressure from anti-abortion activists.

“We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives,” Komen said in a statement on Friday signed by its board of directors and its founder Nancy Brinker.
Komen had said earlier this week it would cease to fund grants for breast cancer screening to Planned Parenthood under new eligibility rules. The guidelines precluded grants to groups under investigation by U.S. authorities, and Planned Parenthood is the subject of a probe by U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida.

Komen said it will amend its new funding criteria to “ensure that politics has no place in our grant process.” The guidelines will make clear that a group under investigation will be disqualified only if the probe is “criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.”

“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”

Planned Parenthood, which provides a variety of health services for women, said it was “enormously grateful” that Komen amended its funding rules and said it looked forward to continued close relationship with the group. Komen grants have helped fund 170,000 clinical breast exams and more than 6,400 mammogram referrals in the past five years.

KOMEN CALLS SPECIAL MEETING

At a special board meeting late on Thursday, the Komen organization agreed in principle to issue an apology and change the language of the organization’s funding criteria, board member John Raffaelli told Reuters.

“Our policy was that in our original board meeting (on the funding) and it didn’t come out very clearly,” Raffaelli said. “It got screwed up.”

The reversal circulated within minutes on social media sites like Twitter, where much of the furious debate over Komen’s move had been waged in the past three days.

Nancy Healey, executive director of Susan G. Komen for the Cure in central and southern New Jersey, said she had no doubt the public outcry led the group to reverse its decision.

“We sent official letters to the headquarters,” she said. “Komen is a grassroots organization. The displeasure and the outrage was heard and the decision was reversed. I’m thrilled.”

The Komen reversal also spurred disappointment among social conservatives, showing that the organization still faces fallout from the crisis.

Representative Kevin Brady, a member of the U.S. House Republican leadership team, said it was “really unfortunate” that Komen reversed its decision.

“To be giving grants to an organization that effectively ends so many lives — (it) just seems to me they made the right decision before and they’re making the wrong decision now,” Brady told Reuters.

The Komen foundation, known for its pink ribbon symbol and Race for the Cure fundraisers, was founded by Brinker after the 1980 death of her sister, Susan Komen, of breast cancer. The organization has collected more than $1.9 billion for breast cancer research and programs and has affiliates in more than 100 U.S. cities and 50 countries.

Komen had said its decision to cut funding to Planned parenthood reflected a move to eliminate duplicate grants and tighten eligibility rules.

From: http://ping.fm/a9E91

Cancer charity halts grants to Planned Parenthood :: WRAL.com

Image by ladybugbkt via Flickr

NEW YORK — The nation’s leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, is halting its partnerships with Planned Parenthood affiliates — creating a bitter rift, linked to the abortion debate, between two iconic organizations that have assisted millions of women.

The change will mean a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams.

Planned Parenthood says the move results from Komen bowing to pressure from anti-abortion activists. Komen says the key reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation in Congress — a probe launched by a conservative Republican who was urged to act by anti-abortion groups.

The rupture, which has not been publicly announced as it unfolded, is wrenching for some of those who’ve learned about it and admire both organizations.

“We’re kind of reeling,” said Patrick Hurd, who is CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia — recipient of a 2010 grant from Komen — and whose wife, Betsi, is a veteran of several Komen fundraising races and is currently battling breast cancer.

“It sounds almost trite, going through this with Betsi, but cancer doesn’t care if you’re pro-choice, anti-choice, progressive, conservative,” Hurd said. “Victims of cancer could care less about people’s politics.”

Planned Parenthood said the Komen grants totaled roughly $680,000 last year and $580,000 the year before, going to at least 19 of its affiliates for breast-cancer screening and other breast-health services.

Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said the cutoff results from the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities. According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it’s the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions.

Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, has depicted Stearns’ probe as politically motivated and said she was dismayed that it had contributed to Komen’s decision to halt the grants to PPFA affiliates.

“It’s hard to understand how an organization with whom we share a mission of saving women’s lives could have bowed to this kind of bullying,” Richards told The Associated Press. “It’s really hurtful.”

Reaction to the news was swift and passionate. On Twitter, it was one of the most discussed topics Tuesday evening, with some tweets praising Komen’s decision and others angrily vowing never to give to it again.

Two Democrats in Congress — Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Rep. Michael Honda of California — issued statements denouncing Komen’s action.

“I am stunned and saddened,” said Honda, whose longtime chief of staff, Jennifer VanderHeide, had breast cancer last year. “I call on Komen to reconsider this decision, stand strong in the face of political pressure and do the right thing for the health of millions of women everywhere.”

Anti-abortion groups, in contrast, welcomed the news. The Alliance Defense Fund praised Komen “for seeing the contradiction between its lifesaving work and its relationship with an abortionist that has ended millions of lives.”

From: http://ping.fm/BBLn3

Role of Antidiabetics in Pancreatic Cancer Risk Unclear

 January 31, 2012 — A case–control study of general practice patients in the United Kingdom suggests that the use of metformin is not associated with a significant wholesale drop in risk for pancreatic cancer as some previous studies have suggested. Rather, researchers saw a reduction in pancreatic cancer risk only in women who filled 30 or more metformin prescriptions during an extended period of time.

In contrast, the authors found that use of antidiabetics such as sulfonylureas and insulin were associated with an increased risk for pancreatic carcinogenesis, report Michael Bodmer, MD, from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland, and colleagues in an article published online January 31 in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.
Drawing on data from the United Kingdom–based General Practice Research Database, the investigators identified a cohort of 2763 patients (1276 men and 1487 women) who had a first-time diagnosis of pancreatic cancer between 1995 and 2009, along with 16,578 matched control patients. Of those, 307 (11.1%) of the patients in the case group had diabetes, as did 1347 (8.1%) in the matched control patients.

To assess the effect of antidiabetic drugs on pancreatic cancer risk, the investigators stratified patients according to the duration of use (short-, medium-, or long-term), based on the number of prescriptions filled for metformin, sulfonylureas, and/or insulin during the study period. Confounders such as smoking, body mass index, alcohol consumption, and duration of diabetes mellitus also were factored into risk estimates.

The authors found that the largest reduction in pancreatic cancer risk (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 0.43; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.23 – 0.80) occurred in women who had been prescribed metformin 30 or more times. This compares with a higher adjusted risk (AOR, 1.59; 95% CI, 0.95 – 2.66) for men with diabetes who received 30 or more metformin prescriptions.

For the study group as a whole, however, investigators observed a non–statistically significant progression of risk reduction as use of the agent continued for longer periods. They reported AORs of 1.01 for from 1 to 9 metformin prescriptions (95% CI, 0.67 – 1.54), 0.92 for 10 to 29 prescriptions (95% CI, 0.62 – 1.35), and 0.87 for 30 or more prescriptions (95% CI, 0.59 – 1.29).

These newly published results vary from those of Li et al, who reported reduced risks (OR, 0.38; 95% CI, 0.22 – 0.69; P = .001) for male and female metformin users alike in a 2009 study of 973 patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

Dr. Bodmer and colleagues report in the current paper that long-term use of other antidiabetics may be associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer. “[L]ong term use of sulfonylureas (adj. OR: 1.90, 95% CI: 1.32-2.74) and insulin (adj. OR 2.29, 95% CI: 1.34-3.92) were associated with a materially increased risk of pancreatic cancer,” the authors write.

The investigators note cautiously that the women in the study group appeared to have a greater risk than the men, with regard to sulfonylureas-related cancer risk, whereas it was the men who demonstrated an elevated risk with long-term insulin treatment.

“As with metformin, these results are based on a limited number of exposed cases and controls and require careful interpretation, since no previously reported data are available suggesting different effects of sulfonylureas or insulin across genders,” the authors caution.

Various confounders, drug combinations, and observational controls have been modeled into previous studies that sought to quantify the theorized effects of metformin, insulin, and other antidiabetic agents on pancreatic and nonpancreatic tumor development. One analysis found that patients with diabetes who relied on insulin alone faced as much as 4.5 times the estimated risk for pancreatic cancer, as measured in cancer events per 1000 patient years

Although scientists have targeted different primary outcome measures with each research effort, Dr. Bodmer and colleagues note that their most recent inquiry does not alter a central observation: Diabetes mellitus appears to be both a cause of and a risk factor for pancreatic cancer.

The work was partially supported by the Swiss Cancer League and the Research Fund of the University of Basel. The authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

Am J Gastroenterol. Published online January 31, 2012.

From: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/757743?sssdmh=dm1.754711&src=nldne