Cancer - 2
Cancer - 2


Gene Found That Helps Cancer Resist Tamoxifen

January 19, 2000 - Reuters - Wash.

Dutch researchers said on Tuesday they had found a gene that helps breast cancer tumors resist one of the most effective drugs, a discovery that could boost development of new treatments.

The drug, tamoxifen, is sold by AstraZeneca (AZN.L) under the name Nolvadex. It has been shown to reduce the risk of breast cancer by nearly 50 percent in certain high-risk women.

Writing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Lambert Dorssers of University Hospital Rotterdam and colleagues said the gene -- BCAR1/p130Cas -- may also make cancer progress more quickly in some patients.

The gene does not seem to affect any of the other drugs used to treat breast cancer, Dorssers's team said.

A second study by the same team found that patients who had high levels of BCAR1/p130Cas also did more poorly eight years after diagnosis than other breast cancer patients.

Women who had little or no evidence of the gene in their tumors -- determined by looking at tissue samples given years before -- had a 50 percent chance of being free of breast cancer eight years later.

But women with high levels only had a 32 percent chance of escaping relapse.

So far, the researchers do not know much else about the gene, which they studied in human cancer cells grown in laboratory dishes.

But they said that once scientists learn more about it they may be able to come up with drugs or other treatments to counter its effects.

Dorssers and colleagues think their gene may explain a mechanism known as tamoxifen resistance, cited as the reason half the women taking the drug are not helped by it.

A U.S. woman has a one-in-eight risk of breast cancer compared to a one-in-three risk of heart disease. A British woman has a one-in-12 risk of breast cancer.

The American Cancer Society predicts that 43,000 U.S. women will die of breast cancer this year.


New breast cancer test discovered -

Discovery could help cancer treatment

December 9, 1999 - BBC

Scientists believe they have found a new way of predicting the long-term survival chances of women with breast cancer.

They claim that women whose tumours have high levels of a protein known as BAG-1 have a better chance of living disease-free for longer and living longer overall.

Women with high levels of the protein in their breast tumours had a 10 year survival rate of 81%, compared to a 50% chance of living 10 years for women with low levels, according to research led by Dr Bruce Turner, assistant professor of radiation oncology at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia.

Dr Turner, whose team followed 116 women over a 12 year period, said: "The difference in survival between these patient groups is quite large and we think we have come up with a novel marker that may be an important diagnostic test for physicians."

The team tested tumour tissue and found BAG-1 to be a better cancer predictor than established markers such as oestrogen receptors, he told the 22nd San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

The new knowledge could be used to assess how women with early-stage breast cancer should be treated, particularly in the case of patients with negative lymph nodes, for whom high-dose chemotherapy remains controversial.

Women with high levels of BAG-1, who had better survival chances, might not be treated with chemotherapy.

At risk

"Now we know that women with negative lymph nodes and low levels of BAG-1 are at risk of developing metastatic (secondary) disease and may be good candidates for aggressive cancer treatments," said Dr Turner.

Studies looking at thousands of women were needed, he added.

Dr Lesley Walker, head of scientific information at the Cancer Research Campaign, said that BAG-1 was known to be present at high levels in 80% of cases where breast cancer has developed.

Finding that low levels of the protein are detrimental to women was, therefore, "counter-intuitive", she said. "You wouldn't expect it because other people have shown that there are high levels of BAG-1 in invasive breast cancer," she said. "I hope the breast cancer community will now follow this up. If it is true, it could be useful."


Doctors plan first testicle transplant

September 24, 1999 - BBC Online

Men made infertile by chemotherapy currently rely on IVF

In the wake of the first successful ovary transplant for a woman, US doctors are reportedly preparing to try a fertility-saving procedure on male patients facing cancer treatment.

But they warn that the testicle transplantation procedure is fraught with technical and ethical difficulties.

Dr Peter Schlegel at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Centre, who is behind the plan, told the Independent that he expects to receive the go-ahead from hospital authorities before the end of the year.

At that point, a boy who is about to undergo chemotherapy or radiotherapy likely to destroy his chances of naturally fathering a child will have a testicle removed and frozen.

It will be replaced once treatment has ended and the boy has reached puberty.

And, unlike scientists behind the world's first ovary transplant, Dr Schlegel was more optimistic about the prospects of transplants involving not only the patient's own frozen tissue, but tissue donated by other men.

'Routine in a decade'

Dr Schlegel told the newspaper: "I am sure testicular transplants between men will be done in the next 10 years and there are a number of groups other than ours that are working on it."

The technical diffculties involved are significant - surgeons will have to reattach dozens of small blood vessels and nerves for the transplant to work.

Testicular transplantation has been performed successfully on animals.

Currently, a patient facing cancer treatment can, if beyond puberty, opt to freeze mature sperm.

This is then used to fertilise an egg using in-vitro fertilisation techniques. The progress towards testicular transplantation invites comparison with the ovary transplant techniques pioneered by Professor Roger Gosden at Leeds University.

Ovulation restored

A US surgeon following his method has managed to restore ovulation to a 30-year-old woman who had had both her ovaries removed.

It is still uncertain whether the eggs she releases can be fertilised and lead to a successful pregnancy.

But the technique has been suggested as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy, or may even, eventually, lead to a way of extending female fertility into the 60s.

However, Professor Gosden said the method was likely only to work using the tissue of younger women, as there would be a higher concentration of eggs in their ovarian tissue.


'Hereditary virus' could unlock breast cancer

August 12, 1999 - BBC Online

Researchers believe they have identified a virus that may help cause breast cancer, paving the way for a vaccine.

The US team says the virus is carried by 20 to 30% of the population, making them more susceptible to developing the killer disease.

Unusually however, the virus cannot be passed between humans, but instead is part of a person's genetic make-up and is passed from parent to child.

There is now the prospect of both accurate screening tests to find women at increased risk of developing breast cancer, and perhaps even a vaccine to counter its effects.

The virus is the product of a search that started back in the 1940s, when scientists discovered a virus that appeared to cause breast cancer in mice.

However, searching for its equivalent in humans was likened to finding a "needle in a haystack", as an estimated 50,000 similar viruses can live in the human body.

Recently however, advances in technology allowed Professor Garry to take another look, and the suspect virus was found in a high proportion of breast cancers and benign tumours.

The study looked at 30 breast cancer samples and found that 85% of them contained the virus, as opposed to only one in five samples of healthy tissue.

Professor Robert Garry told the 11th International Congress of Virology in Australia that the virus was a "significant find". But he conceded that his research focused on only a very small number of women, and that larger studies would have to be completed to verify the results.


Researchers track down cell that causes Hodgkin's disease

July 14, 1999 - Nando News

Researchers said on Wednesday they had characterized the culprit cell that causes Hodgkin's disease, a kind of cancer that kills 1,300 people Americans each year. They used gene mapping technology to examine the Reed-Sternberg cell, which has long been known to cause the disease.

Writing in the journal Blood, they said their findings could lead to better ways to both diagnose and treat the cancer.

"This work answers an important and hotly debated question in cancer research -- the identity of the Reed-Sternberg cell of Hodgkin's Lymphoma," Dr. Jeff Cossman of Georgetown University Medical School, who led the study, said in a statement.

The American Cancer Society predicts there will be 7,200 new cases of Hodgkin's in 1999 in the United States. It is a lymphoma, or cancer of the immune system cells.

According to the study, the Reed-Sternberg cell looks very much like a B-cell, the immune cells that normally produce antibodies to flag invaders -- or cancer cells -- for destruction by other immune cells.

Cossman and an international team of colleagues from the National Cancer Institute and the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy used gene sequencing technology developed by Rockville, Maryland-based Human Genome Sciences Inc. The study also provides a clue to why the Reed-Sternberg cells cause cancer, the company said in a statement.

"Normal cells of the immune system contain a self-destruct system that causes them to die when they begin to grow out of control." But the researchers said genes that usually activate this self-destruct system, notably the Rb gene, are missing in the Reed-Sternberg cell.

The cells also had many copies of a gene strongly associated with melanoma, a dangerous form of skin cancer. The researchers said it might be possible to look for the gene, known as MAGE-4a, in a screening test for Hodgkin's disease and melanoma.

The gene also might make a good target for new drugs.


Researchers say cancer vaccine extends life of melanoma patients

Reuters - May 15, 1999 - Atlanta

A cancer vaccine that uses several components from a skin cancer tumor has helped melanoma patients live longer, researchers said Saturday.

The vaccine, called CancerVax, is still experimental, but the researchers said 77 percent of melanoma patients who got it lived for at least three years -- as opposed to just about a third of patients who get standard therapy.

"Our results indicate that CancerVax may generate an immune response strong enough to halt the progression of disease," doctor Donald Morton, medical director of the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, Calif., said in a statement. The institute developed the vaccine and has been working on it for nearly a decade.

"The potential therapeutic benefit of CancerVax coupled with its lack of significant side-effects makes the vaccine well worth additional investigation," added doctor Eddy Hsueh, who also worked on the study.

Writing in the journal Cancer, published by the American Cancer Society, Morton's team said it treated 54 patients with melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer.

Nine patients, or 17 percent of them saw a partial or complete disappearance of melanoma lesions that had spread from the initial skin tumor. Four had been cancer-free for between 22 months and nine years, the researchers said.

Although 45 patients did not respond right away, 23 patients were helped by "salvage therapies," including surgery or more doses of CancerVax. Their median time without disease was 14 months, the researchers said. Of all 54 patients, 29 were still alive and 17 were free of disease, the researchers said.

CancerVax is made up of more than 20 antigens -- the flags on a cancer cell that are recognized by the immune system.

The researchers said the vaccine may work best when used along with standard drugs, surgery or radiotherapy.

Melanoma, which is on the increase in many countries from the United States to Australia, is the most serious form of skin cancer.

People with light skin who have moles and freckles, a family history of the disease, and a personal history of severe sunburns during childhood are most at risk.

The American Cancer Society estimates that 44,200 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma and 7,300 will die from the disease in 1999.

The best way to avoid it is to stay out of the sun, use sunscreens and wear protective clothing. Cancer experts now say there is no such thing as a safe tan.


A lonely fight against male breast cancer

AP - Washington - May 8, 1999

James Lowery of Mayer, Ariz., was showering the first time he felt a tiny lump in his chest. It didn't hurt, and it was "pinhole-sized," barely noticeable under his left nipple. So he didn't give it much thought.

A year later, the lump was still there, only now the skin over it was a little rough. Eventually it oozed, like a scab over a healing sore. Still, "I didn't have any pain," Lowery insisted. "So I didn't know I had a problem. ... I thought it would go away."

It was a year and a half before Lowery saw a doctor. He was stunned by the diagnosis: breast cancer.

"I said, 'Men don't get breast cancer,"' Lowery said.

But men can indeed get breast cancer - 1,300 American men will get it this year, and it will kill 400. For reasons that are unclear, the incidence is rising, up from about 800 cases annually a decade ago.

That's less than 1 percent of the nation's total breast cancer cases. The disease will strike 175,000 women this year, and kill 43,000. Women have fought back with activism: Survivors wear pink ribbons and march to raise research money and urge other women to get regular mammograms to detect tumors early.

Partly because male breast cancer is rare, men like Lowery simply never heard about it. Men don't discuss it.

"Men are kind of surprised they have it, and they certainly don't like to go public with it," said Dr. William Donegan of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. "I think in men it may be a much more private thing."

That lack of awareness means few men see a doctor before their breast cancer has advanced, so "survival has not been as high as in women," said Donegan, the American Cancer Society's expert on male breast cancer.

And it meant that Lowery's family spent hours hunting for the scarce information available on male breast cancer; even his surgeon had had only one male patient previously. As for support groups for men, Lowery couldn't find any.

"I did feel lonely a long, long time," said Lowery, 74. Lowery, who told his story to raise awareness and support for male patients, added, "My daughter and my wife have been my support group."

The good news is that doctors do understand male breast cancer fairly well. They know that men are at increased risk if many women in their families have had breast cancer. Radiation exposure is another risk factor.

In men, tumors usually develop under the nipple, which then can become inverted, Donegan said.

Men get the same treatment as women.

For Lowery, that saga began when he mentioned a growth on his shoulder to his daughter. She thought it looked like skin cancer and insisted he see a doctor right away, even though he was visiting her home in Oregon. Lowery turned out to have melanoma, but during that visit the doctor also spotted the lump in his left breast and delivered the additional bad news.

Right away, they scheduled a mastectomy. Surgeons also removed 15 lymph nodes from under his left arm that, fortunately, were cancer-free.

Then began three months of chemotherapy to target any cancer that might be roaming through his body. Like female patients, Lowery suffered nausea from the treatment and lost all his body hair, but last week he was declared in remission.

Much breast cancer growth is spurred by estrogen, even in men. So just like women whose tumors are "estrogen receptor positive," he's about to take the drug tamoxifen for the next five years in hopes of preventing a recurrence.

And just like 30 percent of women with breast cancer, Lowery said he was diagnosed with too many copies of a gene called HER2, which can make breast cancer more aggressive. A new drug helps women who are HER2-positive, but Donegan said he's not aware of it being tried yet in men.

Lowery now offers advice: "Men ought to do like women and check themselves."

And if they feel "a lump in the breast or any change in the nipple or anything that doesn't look right," see a doctor immediately, Donegan concluded.


Traditional Medicine Reveals Its Cancer-Fighting Secret

Agence France Presse - April 29, 1999 - London

A Chinese traditional remedy derived from plants, which has shown itself to be effective in treating certain forms of leukemia, has revealed its secrets to French molecular biologists, according to a report in the May issue of the monthly Nature Cell Biology.

The scientists found that indirubin, which is a component of the ancient Chinese remedy, blocks the multiplication or the division of the cancerous cells.

Chinese herbal remedies, in use for centuries, are generally a mixture of several plants and it is often difficult to isolate the active ingredients and determine how they work.

In their study of the remedy Danggui Longhui Wan, which is a mixture of 11 plants, the team of Laurent Meijer of the CNRS cellular cycle laboratory in Roscoff, Brittany, used the resources of molecular biology.

Indirubin, which is the red relative of indigo blue, the first dye used by man, had been regarded for some time as the active ingredient of the Danggui Longhui Wan potion, which is used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia.

The French team, working in collaborating with British and German scientists, found that indirubin interacted with a class of proteins called cyclin dependent kinases (CDK). These enzymes play a role in the process which commands cell division, the report said.

"When indirubin binds to these kinases, it blocks their activity and hence halts cell division," the report said.

"Meijer's group have also determined the molecular structure of a complex molecule comprised of CDKs bound to indirubin. This structure sheds light on how exactly indirubin is able to specifically impede the function of these enzymes but not others like them.

"It is hoped that these insights into the way indirubin - and indeed Danggui Longhui Wan - works may feed into the search for better anti-cancer drugs," the report said.

Future development of "powerful and selective inhibitors" of CDK enzymes "offers hope for future application in the treatment of various diseases," the scientists said in a complementary report published in the Franco-Quebec review Medicine-Sciences.


Researchers say breast cancer drug Herceptin is working

Reuters - Philadelphia - April 13, 1999

The newly approved breast cancer drug Herceptin reduces deaths by more than 20 percent after just two years, researchers said Monday.

The drug, which homes in on cancer cells with a specific genetic mutation, decreased the death rate by 22.4 percent, Dr. Dennis Slamon of the University of California at Los Angeles told a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.

"In terms of survival with patients with metastatic breast cancer (cancer that has spread), this is the largest reduction with any therapy we've seen to date," Slamon told a news conference at the meeting.

Herceptin, made by South San Francisco-based biotechnology company Genentech Inc., works by blocking the HER-2/neu (human epidermal growth factor receptor-2) gene, which seems to promote the growth of cancer cells.

It is mutated in 25 to 30 percent of all breast cancers.

The drug is a monoclonal antibody, a genetically engineered version of the body's own system for flagging invaders or cancerous cells. Herceptin, also called trastuzumab, blocks HER-2's action and thus stops production of the protein, slowing down the cancer's growth.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Herceptin last September after the drug's dramatic effects were shown. It cut the progression of the disease and, even though patients were followed for just a year, seemed to cut the death rate.

The one-year survival rate for patients who got Herceptin plus standard cancer chemotherapy was 78 percent versus 67 percent for women who got chemotherapy alone, a difference of 11 percent.

Now, after two years of following the patients, the researchers say the numbers are even more striking. "The data demonstrates an even greater impact on survival," Slamon said.

Women who got Herceptin had a 50 percent improvement in response rate -- defined as shrinking the tumor by 50 percent or more -- compared to women in the so-called control group, who got the best standard cancer drugs but not Herceptin.

And there were no significant side-effects. With cancer chemotherapy or radiation treatment, all growing cells can be affected, which is why patients lose hair and have digestive upsets as the insides of organs are damaged.

But Herceptin is designed to avoid this, and Slamon said it seemed to be doing so. "Cells that do not have the alteration are not affected by Herceptin," he said.

Dr. Drew Pardol of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said the results show that drugs that harness the body's immune defenses, like Herceptin, will be the wave of the future.

Slamon said the 22.4 percent increase in survival might have been even higher. "That difference was despite a bias against the drug," he said. After one year, women in the control group whose cancer got worse were given the chance to go on Herceptin. Sixty-five percent of them did. Of that group, many responded to Herceptin almost immediately.



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