All cancer treatments stories

New strategy identified for improving effectiveness of cancer therapies

yvette — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:25:04 -0500

Manipulating levels of nitric oxide, a gas involved in many biological processes, may improve the disorganized network of blood vessels supplying tumors, potentially improving the effectiveness of radiation and chemotherapy.

M. Judah Folkman, biomedical pioneer, dies at 74

404132862 — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:55:01 -0500

One of Harvard Medical School’s (HMS) most forward-looking and innovative physician-scientists, M. Judah Folkman, died suddenly Monday (Jan. 14) after suffering a heart attack at the Denver International Airport in Denver. He was 74.

Microchip-based device can detect rare tumor cells in bloodstream

404132862 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:37:41 -0500

A team of investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) BioMicroElectroMechanical Systems (BioMEMS) Resource Center and the MGH Cancer Center has developed a microchip-based device that can isolate, enumerate and analyze circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from a blood sample.

Prostate cancer treatments often not matched to patient needs

404132862 — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:54:30 -0500

More than a third of men with early prostate cancer who participated in a study analyzing treatment choice received therapies that might not be appropriate, based on pre-existing problems with urinary, bowel or sexual function.

Common prostate cancer therapy may carry risks

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 10:24:43 -0400

Androgen deprivation therapy - one of the most common treatments for prostate cancer - may increase the risk of death from heart disease in patients over age 65, according to a new study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and other institutions.

The study results were based on data from CaPSURE, a national registry of men with prostate cancer. Although the findings need to be confirmed in clinical trials, the study authors state that oncologists should weigh the benefits of androgen deprivation therapy, or ADT, against the risk of heart problems in older prostate cancer patients.

Sengupta wins $4.1 million 'Era of Hope' award for breast cancer advances

50443248 — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 11:32:46 -0400

An assistant professor of medicine at Harvard has won a $4.1 million "Era of Hope" scholar award from the U.S. Defense Department's Breast Cancer Research Program in support of his cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research aimed at fighting breast and other types of cancer.

Shiladitya Sengupta, an assistant professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and an associate bioengineer at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said the award has transformed his plans for his year-old lab, located in the Partners Research Building on Landsdowne Street in Cambridge.

Obesity protects against breast cancer

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:47:02 -0400

Being overweight or obese from adolescence to menopause reduces a woman's chances of getting breast cancer, researchers at Harvard Medical School have found. The earlier in life that the researchers looked, the stronger the association, leading to the conclusion that a woman's weight at age 18 is a strong predictor of breast cancer.

In this body size-breast cancer connection, risks are calculated by a height-to-weight comparison known as body mass index, or BMI. Men and women with a BMI lower than 25 are considered normal, as far as their weight is concerned. A BMI between 25 and 30 raises someone to overweight status. Higher than 30 earns an obese rating. Women with a BMI of 27.5 or higher have 43 percent less chance of getting breast cancer than those who fall between 20 and 22, according to the new study.

To compute your BMI, convert your weight to kilograms (1 pound equals 0.45 kilogram) and your height into meters (1 meter equals 3.3 feet), and then divide your weight by the square of your height (your height multiplied by itself). To give some idea of the actual sizes involved, a 5-foot, 7-inch woman with a BMI of 20 weighs 127 pounds. BMIs of 25, 27.5, and 30 or more raise weights to 159, 175, and 191-plus pounds.

This finding doesn't mean that it's OK for younger women to binge on french fries and chocolate. Other studies suggest that, for women, the risk of death from all causes increases for every pound of weight above the normal range. Obesity doubles to triples that risk.

Also, protection from breast cancer reverses after menopause. Then, overweight women have a much higher risk for breast cancer than thin women. 'Although a high birth weight is fairly consistently linked to an increase in premenopausal breast cancer, things seem to reverse around puberty,' notes Karin B. Michels, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology who led the study. 'We don't know exactly when the reverse occurs, but then it reverses again after menopause.'

Prostate cancer treatment increases risk of diabetes, heart disease

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:28:11 -0400

A treatment mainstay for prostate cancer puts men at increased risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to a large observational study published in the Sept. 20, 2006, Journal of Clinical Oncology.

"Men with prostate cancer have high five-year survival rates, but they also have higher rates of non-cancer mortality than healthy men," says study author Nancy Keating, MD, MPH, assistant professor of health care policy and of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "This study shows that a common hormonal treatment for prostate cancer may put men at significant risk for other serious diseases. Patients and physicians need to be aware of the elevated risk as they make treatment decisions."

The principal systemic therapy for prostate cancer involves blocking testosterone production. This is done either by removal of the testes (bilateral orchiectomy), or more commonly, by regular injections of a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonist drug. GnRH agonists are the main therapy for metastatic prostate cancer and may also improve survival for some men with locally advanced cancers.

However, little is known about the efficacy of GnRH agonists in treating men with less-advanced local or regional prostate cancer, many of whom receive this therapy. Earlier studies have found GnRH agonists to be associated with obesity and insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes.

"Our study found that men with local or regional prostate cancer receiving a GnRH agonist had a 44 percent higher risk of developing diabetes and a 16 percent higher risk of developing coronary heart disease than men who were not receiving hormone therapy," says Keating, who is also a physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

"Doctors should think twice about prescribing GnRH agonists in situations for which studies have not demonstrated improved survival until we better understand the risks of treatment," says co-author Matthew Smith, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine at HMS and a medical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. "For men who do require this treatment, physicians may want to talk with their patients about strategies, such as exercise and weight loss, which may help to lower risk of diabetes and heart disease."

This work was supported by the Prostate Cancer Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) of the National Cancer Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Advances in chemotherapy improve outcomes in select breast cancers

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:26:20 -0400

Recent advances in chemotherapy have significantly reduced the risk of disease recurrence and death in breast cancer patients whose tumors are not hormone sensitive, according to a study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and 10 other institutions. The findings were reported in the April 12, 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers found that breast cancer patients whose disease had spread to the lymph nodes and was estrogen-receptor- negative (ER-negative) and who received adjuvant treatments with modern chemotherapy had a much greater improvement in their five-year disease-free survival rate (22.8 percent) than those patients with hormone-sensitive tumors (ER-positive) who were treated with the same chemotherapy and tamoxifen (7 percent). The improvement in overall survival rate with the newer chemotherapy regimens was 16.7 percent for ER-negative patients and 4 percent for ER-positive patients.

"Our observations add to a growing body of evidence that breast cancer is not one homogeneous disease, but rather a disease with many subtypes and requires a variety of new treatment approaches," said Eric Winer, MD, the paper's senior author and director of Dana-Farber's Breast Oncology Center.

Complete breast is grown from single stem cell

50443248 — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:42:47 -0400

A complete, functioning breast has been grown from a single stem cell, by researchers in Australia. It was done in a mouse, but experts believe it won't be long before it happens in humans.
"Until now, no one has been able to take one cell and make it do everything involved in a fully-functioning, milk-producing breast," notes postdoctoral fellow Kaylene Simpson, who set up the experiment before moving to Harvard Medical School. "There were lots of technical obstacles to overcome and it was very difficult to attract funding at first."

HMS creates first known library of breast cancer proteins

50443248 — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:49:49 -0400

In research that could significantly advance the pace of drug discovery in the fight against breast cancer, Harvard Medical School (HMS) investigators announced in Wednesday's (Feb. 8) online Journal of Proteome Research that they have created the first publicly available library of reliably expressible proteins of a human disease, in this case for breast cancer.

Perhaps more significantly, these researchers expressed a subset of the 1,300 protein-expressing complementary DNAs in the library into a model system mimicking cells of a human breast, allowing them to study on a broad scale how these proteins might contribute to the development of breast cancer. Through this comprehensive approach, the researchers identified potentially novel functional activities for both well-known and lesser-known breast cancer-associated proteins.

"The process of carcinogenesis is complex and involves the activation of many different cellular programs," says Joan Brugge, chair of the HMS Department of Cell Biology, and co-principal investigator of this initiative, called Breast Cancer 1000. "A significant limitation for breast cancer research has been the inability to distinguish whether certain proteins that are altered in breast tumor cells are the cause or the effect of conversion of normal breast cells to malignancy. The systematic approach that we've enabled and demonstrated will allow researchers to track cancer-causing proteins in simulated environments, with the goal of learning how to impede them."

"The availability of this collection will enable pilot experimentation and accelerate the development of faster techniques for studying breast cancer in a mammalian setting," says Joshua LaBaer, director of the Harvard Institute of Proteomics (a division of HMS) and also co-principal investigator. "To advance breast cancer research quickly, we are making the BC1000 library publicly available. It can be viewed from the Harvard Institute of Proteomics Web site (http://www.hip.harvard.edu/).

- John Lacey/HMS Communications

Low-dose chemotherapy plus antiangiogenesis drug has activity in advanced breast cancer

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:23:35 -0400

Chemotherapy given in low, frequent doses - a novel strategy called "metronomic" delivery - achieved partial shrinkage of disease in some advanced breast cancer patients when given concurrently with an angiogenesis inhibitor, report researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

In a pilot study of 55 patients, the combination of low-dose chemotherapy and the anti-VEGF antibody, bevacizumab (Avastin; Genentech) delayed the breast cancer's progression by an average of 5 1/2 months, compared to two months with the low-dose chemotherapy alone, said Harold Burstein, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber. He presented the results Dec. 8, 2005 in a General Session at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

"Pairing metronomic therapy with a dedicated angiogenesis inhibitor showed clinical activity, and was quite well tolerated," said Burstein. "We think this is a combination worth pursuing and are exploring this treatment concept further in a Phase II study, which extends these treatments into early stage breast cancer therapy."

The current study is one of the first rigorous tests of a treatment strategy that was proposed several years ago as a means of improving the results of chemotherapy for breast cancer, said Burstein, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Research in brief

50443248 — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:08:50 -0400

Marine bacteria may help in myeloma therapy

An anti-cancer compound derived from bacteria dwelling in ocean-bottom sediments appears in laboratory tests to be a potent killer of drug-resistant multiple myeloma cells, and potentially with less toxicity than current treatments, report Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers in the November issue of Cancer Cell. Multiple myeloma is a currently incurable cancer of the bone marrow that causes a plunge in the production of vital red and white blood cells.

The experimental compound, NPI-0052, has been found to block or inhibit cancer cells' proteasomes from working effectively. The proteasomes work as a cell's "garbage disposal," chewing up and disposing of old, unwanted proteins. With their proteasome jammed, cells die from the backup of damaged proteins.

The compound will be moved into Phase I clinical trials in early 2006, say officials of Nereus Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, the developer of NPI-0052. The compound will be tested as a single agent and subsequently in combination with other treatments.

Read the full story.

Meditation associated with changes in brain, aging

The regular practice of meditation appears to produce structural changes in areas of the brain associated with attention and sensory processing. An imaging study led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers showed that particular areas of the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain, were thicker in participants who were experienced practitioners of a type of meditation commonly practiced in the United States and other Western countries. The article appears in the Nov. 15 issue of NeuroReport, and the research was presented Nov. 14 at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C.

"Our results suggest that meditation can produce experience-based structural alterations in the brain," says Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the study's lead author. "We also found evidence that meditation may slow down the aging-related atrophy of certain areas of the brain."

For the full story, visit http://www.massgeneral.org/news/releases/111105lazar.html.

- Compiled by Alec Solomita

New cancer detector developed that's fast, sensitive, reliable

50443248 — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:33:26 -0400

Cancers and many other diseases often reveal themselves by the presence of proteins absent or inactive in people who do not suffer from such ailments. Researchers are finding new biomarkers, as they are called, at a rapid pace, and they promise faster, more reliable ways to detect a disease earlier and to determine the prospect of recovering from it.

To take advantage of these "hot" new sources of information, researchers at Harvard University have developed a cracker-size electric sensor boasting wires thousands of times thinner than a human hair. In the near future, such sensors might test people for cancer while they wait in their doctor's office, or be implanted under their skin to monitor disease progression or the effectiveness of treatments.

A new way to identify cancers is found

50443248 — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:39:41 -0400

Scientists are surprised and delighted that a recently discovered group of small molecules show an unexpected potential for easily distinguishing healthy cells from tumors and one type of cancer from others. These molecules, known as microRNAs (miRNAs), provide fingerprints that may enable doctors to quickly and inexpensively diagnose any type of cancer.
When miRNAs are present in insufficient numbers, it is believed that cells may divide without proper regulation, a hallmark of cancer. In other words, miRNAs may play a role in keeping cells on a normal growth track.