La-Radio 893

5 (2 votes)

Healthcare Prof:

Researchers in the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center have discovered that “microtentacles,” or extensions of the plasma membrane of breast cancer cells, seem to play a crucial role in how cancers spread to distant places inside the body. Targeting these microtentacles may possibly prove to be a brand new way to avoid or slow the growth of these secondary cancers, the scientists say.

They report in an post to be published on-line March 15, 2010, inside the journal Oncogene that a protein known as “tau” promotes the formation of these microtentacles on breast tumor cells which break away from primary cancers and circulate within the bloodstream. While twisted remnants of tau protein have been observed in the brain tissue of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, this is the very first report that tau could play a role in tumor metastasis by altering the shape of cancer cells. These tau-induced microtentacles can support the cells reattach towards the walls of small blood vessels to generate new pockets of cancer.

“Our study demonstrates that tau promotes the creation of microtentacles in breast tumor cells. These microtentacles enhance the capacity of circulating breast tumor cells to reattach within the modest capillaries of the lung, where they are able to survive until they can seed new cancers,” says the senior author, Stuart S. Martin, Ph.D., a researcher in the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center and associate professor of physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Michael A. Matrone, Ph.D., is the study’s lead author.

Healthy cells are programmed to die – a process known as apoptosis – following they break off of epithelial layers that cover internal organs within the body. They also can be crushed if they are forced by way of tiny capillaries. Nevertheless, cancer cells are in a position to survive for weeks, months and also years within the body. As soon as they are trapped in modest blood vessels, the cells can squeeze by way of microscopic gaps in the vessels’ lining and spread to organs like the brain, lung and liver.

“We hope that by way of our research, we will be in a position to identify drugs which will target the growth of these microtentacles and support to quit the spread of the original cancer. Drugs that lessen tau expression may possibly hold possible to inhibit tumor metastasis,” Dr. Martin says.

He notes that metastatic cancers are the leading cause of death in people with cancer, but techniques utilized to treat primary tumors have limited success in treating metastatic cancer. In breast cancer, metastases can create years right after main tumors are very first discovered.

Tau is present in a subset of chemotherapy-resistant breast cancers and is also associated with poor prognosis, but Dr. Martin adds, “While tau expression has been studied in breast cancers for contributing to chemotherapy resistance, the protein’s role in tumor cells circulating inside the bloodstream hasn’t been investigated. And that’s the focus of our investigation.”

In this recent study, the University of Maryland researchers analyzed breast tumor cells from 102 patients and identified that 52 percent had tau in their metastatic tumors and 26 percent (27 patients) showed a important boost in tau as their cancer progressed. Twenty-two of these patients even had tau in metastatic tumors regardless of getting none in their primary tumors.

Dr. Martin says more studies are required to decide if tau is a clear predictor of metastasis. Given the complex nature of tumors, there most most likely are other elements involved in causing cancers to spread, he says.

“Metastasis is a really key concern for people diagnosed with cancer, and also the discovery of these microtentacles and also the role that tau plays in their formation is really a very exciting development that holds fantastic promise for creating new drugs,” says E. Albert Reece, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., acting president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore, has filed patents on the microtentacle discoveries of Dr. Martin’s lab group and is trying to partner with biopharmaceutical organizations on new drug development. The researchers identified these cell extensions whilst they were studying the effects of two drugs that avoid cell division, or mitosis. Most chemotherapy drugs target cell division, aiming to slow or quit tumor growth.

Dr. Martin says his team found that a well-liked chemotherapy drug, taxol, actually causes cancer cell microtentacles to grow longer and allows tumor cells to reattach faster, which may possibly have critical treatment implications for breast cancer patients. Their studies are continuing.

“We think more research is required into how chemotherapies that slow down cell division have an effect on metastasis. The timing of giving these drugs might be particularly essential. If you treat individuals with taxol prior to surgery to shrink the primary tumor, levels of circulating tumor cells go up 1,000 to 10,000 fold, potentially growing metastasis,” he adds.

The study being published in Oncogene was funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute, the USA Medical Research and Materiel Command, and also the Flight Attendants Medical Study Institute.

Source:
Karen E. Warmkessel
University of Maryland Medical Center

View drug info on Taxol.

Healthcare Prof:

Pfizer Inc. announced today that two Phase 3 studies of Sutent? (sunitinib malate) in advanced breast cancer didn’t meet their primary endpoints. The SUN 1064 Phase 3 study of sunitinib in combination with docetaxel for the first-line therapy of patients with advanced HER-2 negative breast cancer did not show a statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival compared with docetaxel alone. Additionally, the SUN 1099 Phase three study of sunitinib plus capecitabine, in previously-treated advanced breast cancer patients, didn’t show a statistically important improvement in progression-free survival compared with capecitabine alone.

“Sunitinib has been thoroughly evaluated in advanced HER-2 negative breast cancer, and while we are disappointed within the outcomes, these trials have helped us define the limits and opportunities for the compound and far better understand the complex biology of this disease,” said Dr. Mace Rothenberg, senior vice president of Clinical Development and Medical Affairs for Pfizer’s Oncology Business Unit. “Pfizer Oncology is committed to the rigorous evaluation of investigational therapies in breast cancer, which in spite of recent advancements, continues to claim far too several lives each year.”

There had been much more adverse events, including serious adverse events, within the investigational arm than within the comparator arm of every study. A continuing analysis of efficacy and safety information will be completed and presented at a medical meeting inside the near future.

Sutent is currently approved for each gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) right after illness progression on or intolerance to imatinib mesylate, and advanced / metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) based on efficacy and safety data from significant, randomized Phase three clinical trials. Sutent has played a considerable role in advancing the treatment landscape and remains normal of care in its approved indications. To date, more than 82,000 patients globally have been treated with sunitinib inside the clinical setting and in trials across several tumors.

Pfizer remains committed to the development program for sunitinib and is continuing to study its potential role inside the treatment of other solid tumors such as advanced non-small cell lung cancer, advanced castration-resistant prostate cancer, advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, and as adjuvant therapy for renal cell carcinoma, in Phase 3 trials.

Pfizer Oncology is dedicated to further understanding and creating agents to greater match specific patients with remedies and improve benefits from selected therapies.

About Advanced Breast Cancer

Breast cancer could be the most common cancer and also the leading trigger of cancer-related death among females globally. Compared to early stage breast cancer, useful therapy for advanced breast cancer, which consists of inoperable locally advanced and metastatic illness, remains a clinical challenge within the oncology community. Extra remedy options are desperately required to address this continuing unmet medical require.

About Sutent (?) (sunitinib malate)

Sutent is an oral multi-kinase inhibitor approved for the therapy of GIST right after illness progression on or intolerance to imatinib mesylate and advanced / metastatic RCC.

Sutent works by blocking several molecular targets implicated within the growth, proliferation and spread of cancer. Two important SUTENT targets, vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) and platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDGFR), are expressed by a lot of varieties of solid tumors and are thought to play a crucial role in angiogenesis, the approach by which tumors acquire blood vessels, oxygen and nutrients required for growth. Sutent also inhibits other targets crucial to tumor growth, including KIT, FLT3 and RET.

Important Sutent (?) (sunitinib malate) Safety Data

Women of childbearing age who are (or turn into) pregnant throughout therapy really should be informed of the prospective for fetal harm while on Sutent.

Decreases in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) to below the lower limit of regular (LLN) have been observed. Patients with concomitant cardiac conditions must be carefully monitored for clinical signs and symptoms of congestive heart failure.

Patients ought to be monitored for hypertension and treated as essential with normal antihypertensive therapy. Complete blood counts (CBCs) with platelet count and serum chemistries should be performed at the beginning of every therapy cycle for patients receiving remedy with Sutent.

The most common adverse reactions in GIST and RCC clinical trials had been fatigue, asthenia, diarrhea, nausea, mucositis/stomatitis, vomiting, dyspepsia, abdominal pain, constipation, hypertension, rash, hand-foot syndrome, skin discoloration, altered taste, anorexia and bleeding.

For far more data on Sutent and Pfizer Oncology, which includes full prescribing details for Sutent (sunitinib malate), please visit http://www.pfizer.com.

About Pfizer Oncology

Pfizer Oncology is committed to the discovery, investigation and development of innovative remedy alternatives to improve the outlook for cancer patients worldwide. Our strong pipeline, one of the most robust inside the industry, is studied with precise focus on identifying and translating the most effective scientific breakthroughs into clinical application for patients across a wide range of cancers, including breast, lung, prostate, sarcoma, melanoma, and various hematologic cancers. Pfizer Oncology has biologics and modest molecules in clinical development and much more than 200 clinical trials underway.

By operating collaboratively with academic institutions, individual researchers, cooperative research groups, governments, and licensing partners, Pfizer Oncology strives to cure or control cancer with breakthrough medicines, to deliver the right drug for the right patient in the right time.

Source
Pfizer Inc.

View drug data on Sutent.

Healthcare Prof:

TechniScan, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: TSNI) is featured on NVIDIA’s recently posted blog about speeding the amount of time it takes to get breast imaging outcomes into the hands of physicians and patients. NVIDIA will be the globe leader in visual computing technologies and inventor of the graphics processing unit (GPU).

TechniScan’s Warm Bath Ultrasound (WBU?) system utilizes NVIDIA Tesla GPUs to compute its complicated algorithms used in making 3 dimensional images of the breast.

“Waiting for medical outcomes of diagnostic breast imaging is extremely stressful for women. The anxiety and stress can play havoc both mentally and physically,” said David Robinson, chief executive officer at TechniScan. “NVIDIA Tesla GPUs have reduced the time it takes to approach our data from 4.five hours to less than 20 minutes.”

As a result, females can get the results of their imaging while they’re still in the hospital or clinic along with a assessment from their radiologist. Considering that far more than 90 percent of suspicious spots or lesions are benign, several girls can rest at ease soon after their ultrasound is negative for breast cancer.

Currently ultrasound is utilized as a secondary diagnostic imaging procedure when mammography is ambiguous on a breast lesion. Mammography can also miss some breast cancers, which makes goods like the automated, entire breast, WBU? technology from TechniScan much more relevant in breast imaging.

It’s the sheer amount of data the WBU? system gleans that is impressive. The scanner rotates all the way around a woman’s breast, capturing a scan each and every 2 degrees, after which composites a detailed 3-D image. Each image is around 8 to 9 million voxels (the 3-D equivalent of a pixel) and demands a lot more than 120 million Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) calculations to build.

“NVIDIA Tesla GPUs had been twice as fast as our previous cluster solution and cost half as a lot,” said Jim Hardwick, TechniScan’s senior software engineer. “It’s essential for us to deliver results although the patient is still in the clinic, and NVIDIA has produced this possible.”

NVIDIA Tesla GPUs are getting employed to tackle computational challenges in a lot of fields, such as oil exploration, drug discovery and medical imaging. Its blog, nTersect, usually profiles stories in these areas.

About TechniScan, Inc.

Based in Salt Lake City, TechniScan, Inc. is actually a medical device company engaged in the development and commercialization of a non-invasive imaging tool designed to provide physicians with automated ultrasound images of the human breast. The system uses a procedure known as Warm Bath Ultrasound (WBU ?) to supply physicians with automated, 3-D, ultrasound images of the physical structures inside the breast. TechniScan’s WBU? imaging device is limited by U.S. law to investigational use unless, and till, cleared by the FDA.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release that are not historical facts are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements may be identified by the use of words such as “anticipate, “believe,” “expect,” “future,” “may,” “will,” “would,” “should,” “plan,” “projected,” “potential,” “intend,” and similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties as well as other elements that could trigger the actual outcomes, performance or achievements of TechniScan, Inc. (the “Company”) to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The Company’s future operating results are dependent upon numerous factors, which includes threat factors discussed inside the Company’s periodic filings using the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are obtainable for review at www.sec.gov, such as the Company’s Present Report on Form 8-K filed on October 16th, 2009. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether consequently of new data, future events or otherwise.

Source: TechniScan, Inc

3.five (two votes)

Healthcare Prof:

5 (1 votes)

Many women live with breast cancer that will not respond to normal medical therapy, a condition that researchers in the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare want to alter by aggressively targeting specific genes.

Improving quality of life and potentially keeping the cancer under control for a longer period of time are goals of a brand new clinical trial in the cancer center’s TGen Clinical Study Services, a partnership of Scottsdale Healthcare as well as the Translational Genomics Investigation Institute (TGen).

The pilot study is supported by the Side-Out Foundation, a group founded by volleyball enthusiasts to help wage war on breast cancer.

Women or men with advanced breast cancer that has progressed by way of three prior remedies are eligible for the trial, accessible within the western U.S. only at Scottsdale Healthcare’s Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center.

“Many are living with refractory, or advanced, breast cancer that has not responded or continues to grow in spite of normal remedies,” explains Nurse Practitioner Gayle Jameson, principal investigator. “What we are offering here is actually a entire new method for treating patients with refractory breast cancer.”

Biopsied tissue is going to be analyzed for exclusive characteristics and abnormal genes in cancer cells, which are then targeted for remedy with FDA-approved anticancer medications. “We may possibly discover that a tumor has a gene mutation that responds to a drug not typically utilized in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ method,” explains Jameson.

“What we are doing here is precisely matching a therapy to a particular type of cancer cell mutation and abnormal protein signaling pathways that may activate cancer cell growth. The patient would then be treated with 1 or far more medications based on the info supplied by the analyses.”

Researchers call the Side-Out study the “next generation of breast cancer therapy,” expanding on what was learned about molecular profiling in an earlier clinical trial in the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center. The new study, managed by TGen Drug Development (TD2), is open to a total of 25 patients at only two sites, the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare and Fairfax Northern Virginia Hematology Oncology.

Results of the earlier trial, known as the Bisgrove Study, showed that molecular profiling can identify distinct treatments that support keep cancer in check for significantly longer periods, and in some cases even shrinking tumors. Clinical trials at the cancer center are administered by the Scottsdale Healthcare Study Institute.

Research in the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare enables molecular and genomic discoveries to reach the patient bedside as swiftly as possible via clinical trials of therapies directed at specific targets in patients’ tumors.

Established in 2004, the Side-Out Foundation’s mission is to raise money for the war against breast cancer by way of the sport of volleyball. Major contributing laboratories inside the Side-Out study are Caris Life Sciences, and George Mason University’s Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine.

Patients seeking extra data about eligibility to participate in clinical trials at the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare could contact study patient care coordinator Joyce Schaffer, RN.

Source:
Steve Yozwiak
The Translational Genomics Study Institute

4 (two votes)

Healthcare Prof:

3 (1 votes)

Conventional biological wisdom holds that living cells interact with their environment through an elaborate network of chemical signals. As a result many therapies for the treatment of cancer and other diseases in which cell behavior goes awry focus on drugs that block or disrupt harmful chemical signals. Now, a new road for future therapies could have been opened with scientific evidence for a never observed just before way in which cells can also sense and respond to physical forces.

A team of researchers using the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) as well as the University of California (UC) Berkeley has shown that the biochemical activity of a cellular protein system, which plays a important role in cancer metastasis, could be altered by the application of a direct physical force. This discovery sheds essential new light on how the protein signaling complicated known as EphA2/ephrin-A1 contributes towards the initiation, growth and progression of cancerous cells, and also suggests how the activity of cancer cells might be affected by surrounding tissue.

“This first evidence that the EphA2/ephrin-A1 receptor-ligand complex, which was previously thought to be strictly a chemical sensor, can actually sense mechanical properties as well,” says chemist Jay Groves, who led this analysis. “This coupling of mechanical and chemical signaling, which could never have been seen with classical biological approaches, helps explain some of the biological mysteries concerning the onset and progression of cancer.”

Groves holds a joint appointment with Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division and UC Berkeley’s Chemistry Department. He is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator. With members of his investigation group Khalid Salaita and Pradeep Nair, plus Rebecca Petit, he has co-authored a paper on this investigation that was published inside the March 12, 2010 concern of the journal Science. The paper is titled, “Restriction of Receptor Movement Alters Cellular Response: Physical Force Sensing by EphA2.” Other co-authors had been Joe Gray, Richard Neve and Debopriya Das of Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division.

Cancer and EphA2/ephrin-A1

The term “metastasis” comes from the Greek word for “displacement,” and it really is employed to describe the approach whereby cancer cells detach from a tumor, enter the bloodstream and spread to other tissues all through the body. For example, cancerous breast cells can spread to a lung and form a new breast cancer tumor there. Central to metastasis will be the EphA2/ephrin-A1 receptor-ligand complicated.

EphA2 can be a member of the receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) family of enzymes that are important regulators of cellular processes. The over-expression of EphA2 has been linked to a number of human cancers, such as melanoma, lung, colon and prostate, but is especially prominent in breast cancer. Some 40-percent of all breast cancer patients show an over-abundance of EphA2, with the highest levels identified within the most aggressive cancer cells. Ephrin-A1 is a signaling protein that’s tethered to the surface of a cell’s outer membrane. It binds to EphA2 in a neighboring cell like a important fitted into a lock. When ephrin-A1 binds with EphA2, the newly bound complexes become activated and gather in a cluster.

“The host cell will then literally give the clusters a distinctive tug, applying a force that pulls the clusters across the surface of the cell to a centralized location,” Grove says. “What we discovered is that by applying an opposing force, we could alter the cell’s biochemical activity. When we applied a big opposing force we were in a position to convert very invasive cells into well-behaved cells. This shows that furthermore to chemically sensing the presence of ephrin-A1, the cells also sense the mechanical properties of the local environment in which ephrin-A1 is displayed.”

Spatial Mutation

Observations have indicated that mammalian cells are sensitive to the physical aspects of their environment, including the texture or geometry of the surrounding tissue. Nevertheless, evidence that physical forces impact freely-moving signaling molecules (as opposed to focal adhesion molecules) in the membranes of cells has been lacking since the cell membrane is an environment that has constantly been challenging to characterize and manipulate. Groves and his study group have discovered a way to overcome this obstacle with the development of exclusive synthetic membranes constructed out of lipids and assembled onto a substrate of solid silica that enables them to directly manage cellular signaling activities.

“We call this approach the ‘spatial mutation’ strategy due to the fact molecules in a cell may be spatially re-arranged without altering the cell in any other way,” Groves says. “We very first utilized this strategy in 2005 to study T cell signaling in the immune system.”

In this latest study, Groves and his colleagues worked with mammary epithelial cells from a library of 26 model human breast cancer cell lines that have been well-characterized by co-author Gray and his research groups at Berkeley Lab and UC San Francisco.

Says co-author Nair, “Gray’s investigation has demonstrated that this library substantially reproduces the genomic abnormalities and drug responsiveness of main breast cancer tumor cells from patients, and constitutes one of the most comprehensive system for the study of the various aberrations responsible for human breast cancer.”

To test the sensitivity of the EphA2/ephrin-A1 signaling complicated to mechanical forces, Groves and his group patterned their silica substrates with chromium metal lines that were 10 nanometers in height and 100 nanometers wide. These metal lines acted as diffusion barriers that impeded the lateral mobility of the EphA2/ephrin-A1 complexes in the synthetic membrane. The movement and spatial organization of the complexes had been subsequently tracked via a combination of Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF), reflection interference and epifluorescence imaging techniques.

“Without the barriers, the clusters of EphA2/ephrin-A1 signaling complexes were transported towards the center of the cell-supported membrane junction, but using the barriers in place, there was an accumulation of clusters in the barrier boundaries,” Groves says. “This resulted in a spatial reorganization that altered the cell’s biochemical behavior.”

Quantitative analysis of these adjustments towards the spatial organization of the EphA2/ephrin-A1 signaling complexes across the library of breast cancer cell lines revealed a powerful correlation using the prospective for metastasis. Given that the patterned metal lines inside the silica substrate are analogous towards the stiffness, texture and other elastic and mechanical properties of tissue, as well as to internal structures within the cell membrane, the outcomes of this study point to intriguing new possibilities for breast along with other cancer therapies.

“It’s possible that the force-sensing method itself could offer a target for therapeutic intervention,” says Groves. “We’re also excited about finding targets for which there could be drugs that have already been developed but are now being used to treat diseases other than cancer. Given the sensitivity to mechanical forces displayed by the EphA2/ephrin-A1 signaling complexes, it’s possible these existing drugs could be redirected towards the remedy of cancer.”

This study was carried out under a grant from the Bay Location Physical Sciences-Oncology Center, which is funded by the National Cancer Institute to enable the tools and insights of the physical sciences to be applied to the investigation of cancer’s underlying mechanisms. This center is under the direction of Jan Liphardt, a biophysicist who also holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley.

Source:
Lynn Yarris
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

3.5 (two votes)

Healthcare Prof:

Every year a lot more than 100,000 ladies in the United States undergo a lumpectomy, a conservative procedure to remove cancerous tumors whilst preserving the breast. The surgeon’s aim is to attain a tumor-free, or negative, surgical margin the very first time they operate. Current surgical tools may trigger heat damage to the tissue samples necessary for examination by a pathologist so that you can identify the presence of cancerous cells on the edges of tumors.

Surgeons at Moores UCSD Cancer Center, a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center based at UC San Diego, are conducting a clinical trial to evaluate whether a FDA-approved device that makes use of radiofrequency energy might trigger less collateral harm to excised tissue, therefore making it easier to examine the tumor and make sure it really is entirely removed. The effects of the device will then be studied.

“The challenge in performing a lumpectomy is to entirely remove all tumor so that a repeat surgery just isn’t essential,” stated Sarah Blair, MD, associate clinical professor of surgery in the UC San Diego School of Medicine. “Tools that utilize electrical energy may distort or harm tissue. Moores UCSD Cancer Center is studying low temperature energy sources which may provide much better pathology samples.”

Nationally, close to 50 percent of malignant breast lump excisions result in positive margin status, requiring additional procedures. The traditional method of tissue evaluation relies upon microscopic examination; even so, electrosurgical techniques may possibly harm tissue samples within 1 – two mm of the margin. Positive margin rates at Moores UCSD Cancer Center are identified in fewer than 20 percent of cases.

Blair and colleagues published survey results within the November 2009 edition of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons highlighting a wide variety of practice patterns in the US for handling surgical margins in breast conservation remedy. The paper referred to as for further study of remedies to examine the minimal amount of surgical treatment necessary in conjunction with chemotherapy and radiation to better control cancer rates.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, breast cancer could be the most common form of cancer in girls aside from non-melanoma skin malignancies. Breast cancer is the number 1 cause of cancer death in Hispanic ladies. It really is the second most common trigger of cancer death in white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native girls.

This IRB- approved clinical trial to evaluate surgical excision margins in malignant breast lumpectomies is sponsored by PEAK Surgical, Inc.

Source: University of California San Diego Well being Sciences

5 (1 votes)

Healthcare Prof:

Recent studies show that a lot more women with cancer in one breast are opting for removal of both breasts, even though removal of the wholesome breast does little to boost survival rates, New York Times columnist Tara Parker-Pope writes. In 2006, roughly 6% of females who underwent surgery for breast cancer chose to remove both the cancerous and wholesome breasts, a procedure known as contralateral prophylactic mastectomy, Pope says. According to a University of Minnesota study presented last week at the annual meeting of the Society of Surgical Oncology, 10% of girls in their 40s who underwent breast cancer surgery chose to have both breasts removed. A 2009 study inside the Journal of Clinical Oncology located that among ladies who had surgery for ductal carcinoma in situ — 1 of “the earliest, most curable types of cancer” — the rate of double mastectomy increased from two.1% in 1998 to five.2% in 2005, Parker-Pope writes.

According to Parker-Pope, although removing two healthy breasts can reduce the danger of breast cancer in women having a genetic predisposition towards the disease, “for most girls given a diagnosis of breast cancer, cutting off a healthy breast doesn’t improve the odds of survival.” For example, a new study within the Journal of the National Cancer Institute examining information on 108,000 ladies who underwent mastectomy — which includes 9,000 girls who opted to remove each a wholesome along with a cancerous breast — located that a survival benefit only occurred in a little group of females who had been younger than age 50 and diagnosed with early-stage estrogen-receptor-negative tumors that had been unresponsive to treatment with risk-lowering drugs. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center along with a study researcher, stated, “Part of the reason ladies are frightened is we haven’t given them good info,” adding, “Part of my hope with this study is to tell most breast cancer patients that it’s O.K. not to do this.”

Parker-Pope writes that many “women who have opted for the procedure say it’s not concerning the statistics” but about a desire to never relive the stress of undergoing a mammogram or breast biopsy. Some patients also say they have chosen to remove both breasts so their breasts are symmetrical soon after their operations, she adds (Parker-Pope, “Well,” New York Times, 3/8).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women’s Well being Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women’s Health Policy Report can be a cost-free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

? 2010 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.

Healthcare Prof:

Article Opinions:1 posts
Breast cancer continues to rise in Iraq, and scientists have established the Iraqi National Cancer Investigation Program to greater understand the underlying molecular and environmental causes in an effort to curb the incidence of cancer.

“Breast cancer is the most common type of malignancy recorded inside the cancer registries of nearly all countries within the Eastern Mediterranean Region. In Iraq, the continuous rise within the incidence rate is related to an obvious trend to impact premenopausal girls,” said Nada A.S. Alwan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Breast Cancer Investigation Unit at Baghdad University Medical College and the executive director of the newly established Iraqi National Cancer Study Program.

Alwan presented early data at the second AACR Dead Sea International Conference on Advances in Cancer Investigation: From the Laboratory to the Clinic, held March 7-10, 2010.

The Iraqi National Cancer Investigation Program was organized by the Iraqi minister of greater education and scientific analysis in 2009 in collaboration with the common secretariat for the Council of Ministers and also the Iraqi Parliament.

“This project includes within its objectives comprehensive epidemiologic studies on risk elements of the main encountered cancers in Iraq, having a focus on the characteristics and behaviors of cancer in patients inhabiting different geographic areas,” said Alwan.

The present study focused on 721 of 5,044 women who complained of breast lumps later diagnosed as cancer. Approximately one-third of the diagnosed patients had been in between 40 and 49 years old; 71.9 percent came from urban areas and 75 percent were married.

History of lactation was reported in 63.1 percent of the females and 29 percent had taken hormone therapy. A family members history of breast cancer was reported in 16.two percent of cases.

Although 90.6 percent of females detected a lump on self-examination, only 32 percent sought medical advice inside the first month. Due to the fact of this, 47 percent of them presented with advanced stage breast cancer, either stage III or IV cancer. The main histological type was invasive ductal carcinoma of grade 2 in 56.6 percent and grade 3 in 39.9 percent. Estrogen-receptor positive tumors were noted in 65.1 percent of the cases and progesterone-receptor positive tumors had been noted in 45.1 percent of the cases.

“We are at the moment planning to use this information to compare the demographic characteristics, clinicopathological presentations and management outcomes of breast cancer patients inside selected countries within the Middle East,” said Alwan.

Source: American Association for Cancer Research

Healthcare Prof:

Women’s responsiveness to the second-line breast cancer drug fulvestrant may depend on whether the cancer cells are expressing two key proteins, Indiana University Bloomington scientists report in this month’s Cancer Biology & Therapy.

Fulvestrant appeared to exert maximum anti-cancer effects in vitro when cells produced regular or elevated quantities of the cytokeratins CK8 and CK18, structural proteins that support give the nucleus its shape.

For fulvestrant to work nicely, the cells must also be responsive to estrogen, and producing the estrogen receptor ER-alpha. ER-alpha’s importance to fulvestrant’s anti-estrogenic action had been established in previous reports. The present study confirms fulvestrant’s binding relationship to ER-alpha, whilst also showing two other proteins, cytokeratins 8 and 18, can strongly enhance fulvestrant’s anti-estrogenic activity. Testing for the presence of these 3 proteins, and perhaps a lot of other people, could help physicians decide whether fulvestrant ought to be prescribed to their patients.

“We want an efficient panel of markers that inform physicians about what remedy possibilities will likely be most beneficial to patients,” stated Medical Sciences Plan Bloomington cancer biologist Kenneth Nephew, who led the study. “These three gene products ought to be investigated further to determine whether they must be included in that panel.”

Medical Sciences Plan Bloomington is really a division of the IU School of Medicine. Nephew is actually a professor of cellular and integrative physiology, and obstetrics and gynecology.

“Normal” breast cancer cells can grow more rapidly inside the presence of estrogen, a hormone. Estrogen attaches to receptors embedded inside the cancer cell, for example ER-alpha within the cytoplasm and nucleus. The estrogen-ER complex can then act to turn on genes or amplify their expression. Not all cancer cells are responsive to estrogen, nonetheless, or to fulvestrant, which counteracts estrogen’s effects.

Although fulvestrant has been utilized to treat cancer considering that the late 1980s, and is now commonly prescribed as a second-line defense against metastatic cancer cells, how the drug works is still not totally understood. Nephew said one of the aims of the analysis is to clarify fulvestrant’s biochemistry, and understand why cancer cells eventually turn into unresponsive to the drug.

Second-line breast cancer therapies are employed when first-line approaches (tamoxifen, for example) don’t work or cease working.

After conducting analyses of different cell lines and assaying gene and protein activity, Nephew, Xinghua Long (now a faculty member at Jiangnan University), and Meiyun Fan (now an assistant professor in the University of Tennessee-Memphis) believe they are able to present a compelling model for fulvestrant’s action. The scientists believe that when fulvestrant encounters ER-alpha and binds to the receptor, the receptor forms a two-protein complex either with another ER-alpha — or with ER-beta, a related but different estrogen receptor. The alpha-alpha or alpha-beta “dimer” is then removed towards the nuclear matrix, exactly where it binds to CK8 and CK18. It’s the binding of ER-alpha to the nuclear matrix that would seem to signal protein-killing proteases to destroy ER-alpha. As the number of available estrogen receptors plummets, the connection among estrogen and cancer-related gene activity is weakened, and estrogen can no longer contribute to the growth of cancer cells.

Because several drug treatments can have a severely negative impact on quality of life, Nephew said fulvestrant as well as other cancer drugs ought to only be prescribed when their use is related to a reasonable chance of effective outcomes. Nevertheless, compared to frequently prescribed endocrine treatments for advanced illness like tamoxifen, anastrozole, letrozole and exemestane, fulvestrant is well tolerated. If biopsied cancer cells can be shown beforehand to be resistant or unresponsive to fulvestrant, the doctor could prevent some of the commonly reported side effects seen with the drug.

Nephew said that it wouldn’t be easy for physicians to just order a separate test that analyzes biopsied tissue for the presence of CK8 and CK18.

“It would need a few things a typical hospital doesn’t have on hand,” Nephew said. “But we’re presently investigating how to do that. We also need to be able to show that the expression of the two cytokeratins may be prognostic of fulvestrant’s effectiveness. To that end we are talking with George Sledge in the Indianapolis campus concerning the feasibility of clinical studies. That would be the next step.”

George Sledge Jr. could be the Ballve-Lantero Professor of Hematology/Oncology in the IU School of Medicine’s Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center.

When the study was conducted, report coauthors Xinghua Long and Meiyun Fan were at IU Bloomington as a Ph.D. student along with a postdoctoral fellow, respectively. The investigation was funded with grants from the National Cancer Institute’s Integrative Cancer Biology Plan, the Walther Cancer Foundation, and also the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Source:
David Bricker
Indiana University

Healthcare Prof:

Chronix Biomedical these days announced publication of a study that supports the utility of its serum DNA blood tests for the early and accurate detection of breast cancer. The Chronix tests detect the circulating DNA that’s released into the blood stream by damaged and dying cells. A growing body of publications from Chronix along with other researchers shows that this circulating DNA could be identified and analyzed to present a diagnostic window into ongoing adjustments in the genome associated with specific diseases-changes that can be utilised to identify illness processes at an early stage and to track responses to remedy. This new study shows that the Chronix method was able to detect invasive breast cancer with high diagnostic sensitivity and specificity, even in the earliest stage when tumors are extremely tiny. The findings are published in the current on the internet edition of Molecular Cancer Study.*

“This study supports the possible of an entirely new method to identifying cancer at its earliest stages when therapies might be most efficient,” said William M. Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Pathology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine along with a co-author of the study. “The promising diagnostic sensitivity and specificity achieved in this study further confirm the value of circulating DNA for disease detection and suggest that laboratory tests making use of this method might have the prospective each to screen huge populations for cancer just before symptoms seem and to monitor patients for the recurrence of cancer once treated.”

In the study, researchers applied advanced analytical techniques developed by Chronix to identify genomic DNA associated with breast cancer that was released into the bloodstream of females known to have breast cancer but was not present in healthy girls or in patients with other medical conditions. Using the Chronix method, breast cancer was accurately detected at a diagnostic specificity level of 95% having a calculated sensitivity of 90%. Although not directly comparable, for reference it truly is useful to note that information from a large study of U.S. mammography screening programs reported an overall specificity of 92.3% and sensitivity of 75%, with lower figures for some populations including younger ladies.

“These positive information further validate the premise underlying the Chronix method, showing that DNA circulating within the serum may be employed to detect illness at its earliest stages with high levels of accuracy,” said Howard Urnovitz, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Chronix. “We have now been in a position to translate these research findings into a diagnostic assay that’s initially suitable for use in clinical cancer research applications, and look forward to quickly advancing both the breast cancer plan and our pipeline of tests for other cancers and life threatening conditions.”

Dr. Mitchell is an independent member of the Chronix Board of Directors and has an equity position within the company.

* “Next Generation Sequencing of Serum Circulating Nucleic Acids from Patients with Invasive Ductal Breast Cancer Reveals Differences to Wholesome and Nonmalignant Controls,”
J Beck, H Urnovitz, WM Mitchell, and E Sch???1tz
Mol Cancer Research; 2009;8(three):335-42. Epub 9 Mar 2010.

Source
Chronix Biomedical