May 6, 2007, 5:41 PM CT

PET-CT detects muscular lymphoma

PET-CT is better for early detection of muscular lymphoma than CT alone, as per a new study conducted by radiologists at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

For the study, PET-CT was used to image 305 patients with lymphoma. Twelve of these patients had muscular involvement in which 10 were biopsy proven and two were proven by imaging follow-up.

As per the study, six of these patients had predominantly muscular lymphoma with or without bone involvement and three had nodal lymphoma and developed muscular involvement on subsequent imaging. Two of the 12 patients had liver metastases and one patient had an extensive malignancy that involved the face and underlying structures. In one case, a lymph node that waccording tosistently enlarged on CT remained negative on all PET studies.

"Our results demonstrate that radiologists should remember that lymphoma can involve muscles, though a number of radiologists are less diligent in their analysis of musculature in lymphoma cases," said Saravanan Krishnamoorthy, MD, lead author of the study. "Also, the PET abnormalities often precede the CT changes, suggesting that muscle involvement by lymphoma may be an important part of staging that is neglected if only CT is performed," said Dr. Krishnamoorthy.

"This study shows that PET-CT is excellent in identifying lymphoma, both in lymph nodes and in extranodal sites. Therefore, staging will be both more accurate and precise; likewise, response to therapy will be both more accurate and precise," said Dr. Krishnamoorthy......... Posted by: Andria      Read more         Source

May 6, 2007, 5:40 PM CT

Percutaneous radiofrequency ablation of liver tumors

Percutaneous imaging guided radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of hepatocellular carcinoma is a safe and effective technique, with benefits such as reduced post-procedural pain and length of hospital stay, as per a research studyconducted by scientists from Changi General Hospital in Singapore.

Radiofrequency ablation of a liver tumor may be performed in many ways, said Hui Seong Teh, MD, lead author of the study. Two usually used techniques are the percutaneous approach and open surgery. There have been few studies that compare the efficacy of the two methods, Dr. Teh says.

The study showed that the percutaneous approach is better tolerated by the patients, with significantly less post-procedural pain. Based on an objective scoring system, average pain score was 0.1 for patients who underwent the percutaneous technique, in comparison to 1.4 for those who had ablation performed with open laprotomy. Patients also have a much shorter stay in the hospital if they were treated using the percutaneous method, Dr. Teh says. The average length of stay in hospital was 2 days for patients who had the percutaneous method, in comparison to 10 days for those who had open RFA. The shorter length of hospital stay allows patients to resume their activity of daily living faster and enable their early return to active economy, says Dr. Teh......... Posted by: Andria      Read more         Source

April 17, 2007, 5:08 AM CT

Increased Survival In Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

A phase III trial of 1,298 colorectal cancer patients has found that a combination of the drugs cetuximab (Erbitux) and irinotecan showed a significant improvement in progression-free survival over just irinotecan alone, according to an international team of researchers.

The Erbitux Plus Irinotecan in Colorectal Cancer (EPIC) study looked at survival in metastatic colorectal cancer patients who had already shown resistance to conventional therapies. The research was presented today at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.

By the end of the study, a significantly larger number of patients who received the combination of cetuximab, an antibody against the epidermal growth factor and irinotecan, an enzyme-inhibiting cancer drug, survived without their cancers progressing further. The tumor response rate in this group was also significantly higher. The study was sponsored, in part, by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck KGaA.

"Patients who received both cetuximab and irinotecan experienced longer periods of time spent, on average, without further progression of the disease," said Alberto F. Sobrero, M.D., of the San Martino Hospital's Department of Medical Oncology in Genoa, Italy. "From a patient perspective, any improvement in progression-free survival, as well as tumor shrinkage, is worthwhile. These data confirm that, despite a moderate increase in side effects, cetuximab is a key therapeutic agent in the optimal treatment of advanced colorectal cancer"......... Posted by: Andria      Read more         Source

April 16, 2007, 10:10 PM CT

Pancreas Cancer Risk Model

People with a family history of pancreatic cancer now have a way to accurately predict their chance of carrying a gene for hereditary pancreatic cancer and their lifetime risk of developing the disease. Developed by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers, the novel computer software tool is designed to help genetic counselors and physicians decide who would most benefit from early screening.

An estimated 10 percent of aggressive and highly fatal cases of the disease are caused by inherited genes. Even if there is a 100 percent chance that an individual carries a pancreatic cancer gene, their risk for developing the disease is only 20 to 25 percent over their lifetime, says Alison Klein, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of the National Familial Pancreas Tumor Registry at Johns Hopkins. So, while its a rare disease, the need for screening in these persons is important.

The risk calculator, based on similar tools for breast and colon cancer, calculates a percentage score of probability that a person carries a pancreatic cancer gene. Called PancPRO, it also computes an individuals lifetime risk of developing the disease.

Eventhough scientists have still not identified specific genes that cause the disease, they can estimate high risk based on clusters of family members with a history of pancreatic cancer. We know how genes behave, and coupled with information about a family - who has the disease, their age, family size, and causes of death - our model can provide a good estimate of an individuals risk, says Klein......... Posted by: Andria      Read more         Source

April 15, 2007, 9:20 PM CT

Cancer Drug Targets Critical Proteins

A drug under study to treat various cancers selectively kills cancer cells because of its affinity for a modified version of a critical heat shock protein they contain, scientists have found.

They found in cancer a modified version of heat shock protein 90, or hsp90, which like most heat shock proteins, promotes cell survival.

They then showed that in breast cancer and leukemia, this modification, called acetylation, confers a strong attraction to investigational drug 17-AAG, says Dr. Yonghua Yang, postdoctoral fellow in molecular oncology in the laboratory of Dr. Kapil Bhalla, director of the Medical College of Georgia Cancer Center.

"17-AAG blocks the activity of hsp90, which normally binds with ATP, an energy source for cells," says Dr. Yang, who received a training award to present his research at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting April 14-18 in Los Angeles.

An unfortunate side effect is that 17-AAG also immediately induces hsp70, which can compensate for the cell-supporting activity of hsp90, says Dr. Yang, noting that like hsp90, hsp70 presents a modified form in cancer.

The net effect is that while the drug ably finds its target, to maximize effectiveness it may need to be modified or used in conjunction with another drug to also block hsp70, Dr. Yang says. MCG scientists are in discussions with Novartis and Kosan Pharmaceuticals about how to make one or the other happen......... Posted by: Andria      Read more         Source

April 15, 2007, 9:11 PM CT

Efforts To Develop A Melanoma Vaccine

In recent years, scientists have worked to develop many vaccines to help the immune system fight tumors. Cancer vaccines are not intended to prevent cancer; rather, they are used to boost immune responses to preexisting tumors. Unlike traditional chemotherapy, vaccines have relatively low toxicity and, potentially, a high degree of efficacy.

To date, these vaccines have rarely been designed to directly stimulate one of the body's most critical immune responders, the helper T cells. Though helper T cells contain receptors on their cell surfaces that are capable of recognizing and binding to tumor-related antigens, researchers have been stymied by the complex and time-consuming process mandatory to isolate and clone the antigens for vaccine development.

In working to identify a key tumor antigen in melanoma and other cancers, researchers at The Wistar Institute have now developed a novel way to clone an antigen recognized by a helper T cell. Already, Herlyn's group has used the new cloning technique to identify a new tumor antigen called ribosomal protein L8, or RPL8. Findings on the new cloning method and the newly identified tumor antigen will be published as a Priority Report in the April 15 issue of Cancer Research.

The new antigen-cloning approach may allow researchers to design vaccines capable of directly stimulating helper T cells, aiding the development of vaccines not only for cancer but also for infectious diseases, says Dorothee Herlyn, D.V.M., senior author on the study and a professor in the Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis and Immunology programs at Wistar......... Posted by: Andria      Read more         Source

April 15, 2007, 8:45 PM CT

Mold By-product Kills Multiple Myeloma

Mayo Clinic Cancer Center scientists have observed that chaetocin, a by-product of a common wood mold, has promise as a new anti-myeloma agent. Results of their study, being presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting, show the by-product to be more effective than currently used therapies at killing multiple myeloma cells. The complete findings are also available online in Blood.

"There were many fascinating findings," says Keith Bible, M.D., Ph.D., oncologist and the studys primary investigator. "In addition to observing a number of favorable aspects of chaetocin, we discovered some avenues for further research into other possible anti-myeloma agents".

Multiple myeloma is an incurable bone marrow cancer that kills more than 11,000 people each year in the United States, reports the American Cancer Society. Dr. Bibles team has demonstrated for the first time that chaetocin has promising anti-myeloma activity. They observed that chaetocins promise includes the ability to:

• Kill myeloma cells harboring a diverse array of genetic abnormalities.
• Cause biological changes and induce oxidative stress in myeloma cells, leading to their death.
• Selectively kill myeloma cells with superior efficacy to commonly-used anti-myeloma drugs including dexamethasone and doxorubicin.........
  
  
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April 15, 2007, 8:34 PM CT

Enhancing chemotherapy's efficacy

Integrating the use of drugs targeted to specific cancer proteins into current chemotherapy regimens to improve the efficacy of systemic therapy is an important clinical goal at Fox Chase Cancer Center. Fox Chase research presented during the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Los Angeles has observed that a new chemical agent, MCP110, has a synergistic effect both in vitro and in vivo when used with current chemotherapy drugs such as taxanes (Taxol and Taxotere) and vinca-alkaloid compounds such as vincristine.

This synergistic effectin which the effect of two agents is greater than the sum of their individual effectsappeared when using the combination of MCP110 and Taxol on laboratory cell cultures of human Kaposis sarcoma and mouse models carrying human lung and colon cancer cells.

Together, these findings indicate that MCP compounds have potential to be effective in combination with other anticancer agents, the authors concluded.

Vladimir Khazak, Ph.D., now director of biology at NexusPharma, Inc., in Langhorne, Pa., and formerly a postdoctoral associate in the Fox Chase laboratory of molecular biologist Erica A. Golemis, Ph.D., presented the research in an AACR poster session. The work also appears in the March 1 issue of the AACR journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (In vitro and in vivo synergy of MCP compounds with mitogen-activated protein kinase pathwayand microtubule-targeting inhibitors)......... Posted by: Andria      Read more         Source

April 12, 2007, 6:00 PM CT

Low education and lower quality of life for prostate cancer patients

Among men who have received similar therapys for prostate cancer, those with less education especially those who did not graduate from high school experience a significant drop in their quality of life after therapy compared with men who have more education, as per a research studyled by scientists at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC).

These men did not start out with a lower quality of life before cancer, says lead author Sara J. Knight, PhD, a staff psychology expert at SFVAMC. Whats surprising is that after therapy, they have clinically significant problems across the board mental and emotional as well as physical in managing their lives.

The authors acknowledge that low educational level is often linked to lower income, which can lead to lower quality of life, but stress that for the men in their study, low education alone was linked to lower quality of life, irrespective of income. In our analysis, its their lower educational level that has made them more vulnerable to the effects of prostate cancer and its therapy, says Knight, who is also an assistant professor of psychiatry and urology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

The paper is available in the on-line Early View section of the journal Cancer.

The scientists analyzed the results of a self-reported quality-of-life survey completed by 248 patients who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1989 and 2002 and treated at three Veterans Affairs medical centers. Treatments included surgery, radiation treatment, hormone treatment, and observation or watchful waiting......... Posted by: Andria      Read more         Source

April 11, 2007, 11:11 PM CT

Measuring calcium intake in men with prostate cancer

Measuring a mans daily calcium intake is an effective way of identifying patients with prostate cancer with a higher than average risk of osteoporosis, as per the recent issue of the urology journal BJU International.

Scientists from the Autonoma University School of Medicine, Barcelona, Spain, looked at a cross-section of 372 men with prostate cancer. 72 per cent were receiving androgen-deprivation treatment (ADT) and 28 per cent had undergone a radical prostatectomy. Their average age was just under 70.

They observed that 49 per cent of the men had osteoporosis, including 55 per cent of those who had received the ADT hormone treatment and 35 per cent of those who had had a prostatectomy.

These figures are considerably higher than the prevalence of osteoporosis in the general male population, where its estimated that about 20 per cent of all male osteoporosis cases occur in the 61 to 70 age group.

A dietary questionnaire revealed that only seven per cent of the men were consuming more than 1000 mg of calcium a day - the average daily calcium intake was 610mg in men with osteoporosis and 683mg in those without.

These levels are well below the 1000mg recommended for all 25-65 year-olds by the US National Institutes of Health and the 1500mg recommended for men over 65......... Posted by: Andria      Read more         Source