September 6, 2006, 8:07 PM CT

Boxing gloves help cancer patients

Welcome to My Knockout! We offer unique gifts to encourage those "fighting" a daily battle whether physical or emotional. Cancer, AIDS, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, depression, alcoholism, heart disease, or even weight loss are just a few examples of people that need encouragement.

Give them a daily reminder to "keep fighting" and "never give up". Flowers are beautiful but wilt after a few days. Cards are wonderful but get misplaced. My Knockout gloves will last forever and be a daily reminder to your champion!........

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September 6, 2006, 8:03 PM CT

What is Cancer Happens?

What is Cancer Happens? Rebecca Gifford was a young adult, fresh out of college and eager to begin an exciting new job when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. During the next two years, Rebecca endured chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, the loss of her independence and the near-collapse of both her career and her social life. With a little humor and lot of frankness, Rebecca tells it like it was -- hair loss, confinement, therapy groups, lack of sex, relationship challenges, family strain, funerals, morphine, premature menopause, professional humiliation, and more.

Coming of Age As she is trying just to live long enough to come of age, she's faced with many of the issues other twentysomethings endure whether they have cancer or not. Like her peers, she desperately tries to figure out what kind of adult she wants to be. But she has to try to figure out who she is both with and without cancer -- and then recognize the difference.........

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September 6, 2006, 8:00 PM CT

The 5 Carcinogens Living in Your House

That can kill me? Cancer wears many different disguises. Sometimes it looks like a cigarette, other times sunburn. And then there are the times when you're face-to-face with it and don't even know it. In order to unmask the monster, we asked Bill Jameson, Ph.D., a researcher with the National Toxicology Program, to help us create this list of hidden carcinogens. As Jameson points out, "knowing what you might be exposed to can be your best defense".

THE CARCINOGEN: Sawdust.

THE SOURCE: Garage workbench and anywhere else sanding is done.

THE DANGER: Invades your nostrils, causing nasal cancer.

THE DEFENSE: Buy a sander with a bagging feature, and wear a dust mask.

THE CARCINOGEN: Di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP).

THE SOURCE: PVC pipes and food wrapped in plastic.

THE DANGER: Causes liver cancer and shrunken testicles in rats.

THE DEFENSE: Avoid meats the supermarket has prepared and wrapped in plastic.

THE CARCINOGEN: Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).

THE SOURCE: Nonstick surfaces.

THE DANGER: Early studies show a possible link to liver cancer.

THE DEFENSE: Put away the nonstick pans and cook with pans coated with olive oil.

THE CARCINOGEN: Heterocyclic amines (HCA).........

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September 3, 2006, 8:06 AM CT

Muscle Fibers Can Become Cancerous

Mature muscle fibers, rather than their less-developed neighbors, are the tissues that turn malignant in a soft-tissue cancer that strikes children and teens, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children's Medical Center Dallas have found.

The research, performed in fruit flies, not only provides a clue to how the cancer arises, but also means that scientists can use the flies to search for other genes involved in the cancer.

"Never before has any animal model system shown that new cells can be generated from differentiated skeletal muscle," said Dr. Rene Galindo, lead author of the study, assistant professor of pathology at UT Southwestern and a pediatric pathologist at Children's.

"Skeletal muscle had been viewed as being biologically fixed," he said.

The research is available online and is being published in the Sept. 5 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers focused on alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a subtype of rhabdomyosarcoma, the sixth most common childhood cancer. Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma is an aggressive, often fatal form of cancer that occurs primarily in the trunk, arms and legs of older children or teenagers.

The disease starts when one of two genes, called PAX3 and PAX7, fuses with another gene called FKHR, or "Forkhead."........

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September 3, 2006, 7:38 AM CT

Combined Treatment For Brain Tumor

One therapy for treating brain tumors alerts the immune system to the presence of foreign material. A second therapy enhances the first and prolongs the immune system's response. Now, in an animal study conducted at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute, researchers have combined the two in a form that appears effective when injected directly into a malignant brain tumor.

The result, extended length of survival, even after "rechallenge," is detailed in the Sept. 1 issue of the journal Cancer Research.

Dendritic cell immunotherapy, pioneered at the Institute in the treatment of deadly, recurring brain tumors called gliomas, is one component of the experimental procedure. The treatment is usually performed after a patient's tumor has been surgically removed. Proteins from the tumor are collected, cultured and introduced in a Petri dish to dendritic cells taken from the patient's blood. The "new" dendritic cells are then injected into the patient's bloodstream. When they encounter lingering tumor cells, they initiate an immune response.

Dendritic cells are specialized "antigen-presenting cells" responsible for alerting the immune system to foreign matter and eliciting an attack. They normally exist in the body to clear debris, such as dead cells, detecting antigens in the process.........

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September 2, 2006, 10:11 PM CT

MRI To Detect Breast Cancer Spread

MRI is better than MDCT for determining if and how far breast cancer has spread into the breast ducts and should be used before patients receive breast conserving treatment, a new study shows.

"Patients have a lower survival rate if their surgical margins are positive for tumor cells. A positive surgical margin is commonly the result of inadequate resection of the cancer's intraductal component," said Akiko Shimauchi, MD, at Tohoku University in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. "Accurate preoperative diagnosis of the intraductal component allows the surgeon to achieve a cancer-free surgical margin," she said.

The study included 69 patients with proven invasive cancer, 44 of which had an intraductal component, said Dr. Shimauchi. MRI correctly identified 33 of the 44 cases, while MDCT correctly identified 27. "MRI revealed the presence of the intraductal component with significantly higher sensitivity (75%) in comparison to MDCT (61%), Dr. Shimauchi said.

"The lesions that were missed by both examinations were the ductal extension type, i.e. the tumor included a dominant mass with an outward extension of cancer cells, with a relatively small ductal component," said Dr. Shimauchi. MRI was better able to detect the smaller ductal components than MDCT, she said.........

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August 31, 2006, 5:10 AM CT

Tumor Necrosis Factor Blockers May Not Cause Cancer

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune, inflammatory disease marked by progressive joint and organ damage, face a high risk of developing cancer. Their vulnerability, especially to lymphoma and leukemia, may be due to the nature of RA. Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) including tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF) antagonists, a type of biologic DMARD have also been implicated. TNF blockers, which work by attaching to and impeding chemical messengers behind inflammation, have had a significant impact on the treatment of RA. They have also been linked to lymphoma among users. In fact, reports of lymphoma prompted the Food and Drug Administration to mandate adding a cancer risk warning to the labels of three TNF blockers: etanercept (Enbrel), infliximab (Remicade), and adalimumab (Humira).

Motivated by persistent concerns and inconclusive studies, researchers at Harvard Medical School's Brigham and Women's Hospital set out to investigate the association between treatment with TNF blockers and occurrence of cancer in a large sample of patients with RA. Their results, featured in the September 2006 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/arthritis), indicate that biologic DMARD therapy poses no greater risk for cancer than therapy with a standard prescription DMARD, methotrexate (MTX).........

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August 24, 2006, 10:13 PM CT

HIV Drug To Prevent Cervical Cancer

Researchers at the University of Manchester are developing a topical treatment against the human papilloma virus (HPV) which is responsible for pre-cancerous and cancerous disease of the cervix as well as other genital malignancies.

In the UK many thousands of women undergo surgery to remove precancerous lesions of every year. Instead they may be able to apply a simple cream or pessary to the affected area. The discovery may be even more significant in developing countries which lack surgical facilities and where HPV related cervical cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer in women.

Drs Ian and Lynne Hampson at the School of Medicine's Division of Human Development and Reproduction are developing the treatment from a type of drug that is given orally to treat HIV. This protease inhibitor can selectively kill cultured HPV infected cervical cancer cells and, since it is already available as a liquid formulation, it is possible it may work by direct application to the cervix.

The research, funded by the Humane Research Trust, is would be published in the recent issue of the journal Anti-Viral Therapy (2006; 11(6): in press) and is also being presented at the International HPV meeting in Prague on 5 September.

Group leader Dr Ian Hampson, who is based at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester, said: "It is very exciting to find such a significant new use for this HIV drug which is already licensed and FDA-approved for oral administration. We are currently exploring the means of delivering this drug directly to the affected tissue. We would then move to a clinical trial that would be supervised by our head of unit Professor Henry C. Kitchener. If this proves successful we could see the treatment available fairly rapidly".........

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August 24, 2006, 6:57 PM CT

New Cancer Drugs Out There

Tykerb also known as Lapatinib is a new breast cancer drug currently undergoing for breast cancer patients who have over expression of HER2 gene. A recent clinical study has demonstrated that Lapatinib is effective in treating patients with breast cancer who have HER2 amplification and are no longer responding to Herceptin, which is the most common drug used in that setting.........

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August 23, 2006, 5:12 AM CT

Targeting Protein S14 In Breast Cancer Treatment

William Kinlaw, an associate professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, has been working on a protein called S14 since 1990. Over the past few months, however, the news about S14 has picked up. Through a series of recently published academic studies, Kinlaw and colleagues are ready to pronounce S14 a potential drug target in treating breast cancer.

"Over the past three years, we've learned about S14 and its role in communicating information about the nutrient and energy supply to genes mandatory for fat metabolism in breast cancer cells," says Kinlaw, who is also affiliated with the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. "With this knowledge has also come the understanding that most breast cancers have found a mechanism to turn on the S14 gene".

He explains that these tumors are 'addicted' to S14, because it is mandatory for the activation of a group of genes that allow the cancer cells to make fat. Kinlaw and his team have observed that breast cancer cells die if S14 is removed, and their analysis of human breast tumors indicates that S14 is critical for metastasis.

"This makes sense, as fat is a crucial fuel for breast cancers," he says. "We believe this is particularly so during a tumor cell's attempt to journey from the breast to other parts of the body, because the normal breast tissue supplies machinery that allows tumor cells to acquire fat from the bloodstream. Our data support the hypothesis that once the cells leave this metabolically friendly breast environment, the ability to manufacture their own fat becomes a make-or-break issue".........

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