Lung cancer kills more people than breast, colon and prostate cancers combined. Surgery is the best chance for a cure, but for some patients that isn't an option. Now there may be a new alternative.

Vera Morrison says Beaumont Radiologist Dr. Mike Savin is a life-saver. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002.

She had traditional radiation therapy and the cancer went into remission. But then, about three years later, it returned.

ScienceDaily (June 30, 2008) — Scientists at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center are about to embark on a human trial to test whether a new cancer treatment will be as effective at eradicating cancer in humans as it has proven to be in mice.

The treatment will involve transfusing specific white blood cells, called granulocytes, from select donors, into patients with advanced forms of cancer.

Patrick Janukavicius

Ever wanted to be a superhero? Well here’s your chance to help save the world. World Community Grid is a not-for-profit organization that uses idle personal computers to solve global challenges.

Posted September 18, 2008

THURSDAY, Sept. 18 (HealthDay News) -- The anti-cancer drug trabectedin shows promise in treating women with recurrent ovarian cancer, according to a study led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine

The international Phase III study included 672 ovarian cancer patients whose disease had progressed after first-line treatment.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2008) — Biologists at the University of Rochester have found that small-bodied rodents with long lifespans have evolved a previously unknown anti-cancer mechanism that appears to be different from any anticancer mechanisms employed by humans or other large mammals.

By Cheryl Clark
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

September 18, 2008

A noninvasive scan can find the most dangerous, precancerous polyps with about the same accuracy as the dreaded colonoscopy – and without the risk of bowel perforation, according to an influential study at UCSD and 14 other research centers.

“We now have another tool to catch these polyps early, and one that's less risky and easier on the patient,” said Dr. Giovanna Casola, a professor of radiology at the University of California San Diego and an author of the report.



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US scientists have found that mutations of a gene called anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) were behind most incidences of hereditary neuroblastoma, a rare and deadly childhood cancer, and they also discovered that the same mutations played an important role in high risk forms of non-inherited incidences of the disease, which are more common.

The study was the work of first author Dr Yael Mossé, a pediatric oncologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and colleagues and is published in the 24th August advance online publication of the journal Nature.

"This discovery enables us to offer the first genetic tests to families affected by the inherited form of this disease," said Mossé.

She explained that because there are drugs already being developed that target the same gene in adult cancers, it shouldn't take as long to test treatments for childhood neuroblastoma using these drugs as it would with new drugs.

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Melbourne, Aug 3 : A leading researcher Down Under has found soil bacteria that can destroy some of the worst cancer-causing substances in the polluted modern urban environment.

Professor Megh Mallavarapu, of research and development group CRC Care and the University of South Australia, said that the bacteria will destroy a group of chemicals known as BTEX which has been linked to cancer, nerve damage and other diseases in humans.

"Fuel leaks are one of the most widespread forms of contamination in Australia and elsewhere,'' The Australian quoted Professor Mallavarapu, as saying.

"Former service station sites, fuel farms, garages, workshops, gasometers, oil spills, dry cleaners and factories which used or processed hydrocarbons or explosives are literally everywhere that has been closely settled for the past century or so," Megh added.


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FRIDAY, Aug. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Methadone, a drug used to break addiction to heroin and other opioid drugs, appears to be a potent killer of leukemia cells, a new study finds.

"Methadone kills sensitive leukemia cells and also breaks treatment resistance, but without any toxic effects on non-leukemic blood cells," study senior author Claudia Friesen, of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University Ulm in Germany, said in a news release issued by the American Association for Cancer Research. "We find this very exciting, because once conventional treatments have failed a patient, which occurs in old and also in young patients, they have no other options."

»health.usnews.com/articles/healt···lls.html

By Steve Johnson -Mercury News

Federal regulators said Thursday that they have given Pathwork Diagnostics of Sunnyvale permission to begin selling a new genetic test to determine what type of cancer cells are in a malignant tumor.

The company's Pathwork Tissue of Origin test compares a cancer patient's genetic material with genetic information kept in a database on 15 tumor types, including breast, colorectal and bladder cancers, according to a statement issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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By Ransdell Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The new chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday therapeutic vaccines used to treat cancer and other diseases could become a major product line for the world's second-largest drugmaker.

Andrew Witty said therapeutic vaccines, which prod the immune system to attack specific proteins linked to diseases, are one of the company's most promising areas of research.

By ERIC BERGER = Houston Chronicle

The buzz surrounding gold nanoshells, a radical new approach to treating cancer, began shortly after their creation in Houston a decade ago.

The work by Rice University scientists prompted U.S.

»news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7490425.stm

Updated Wed. Jul.

Wed Jul 23, 2008 10:41pm

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Treatment with everolimus can significantly improve the progression-free survival of patients with advanced kidney cancer that has not responded to other treatments, according to a report in the online issue of The Lancet.

This finding stems from a study of 410 patients with kidney cancer that had spread, or "metastasized," to other parts of the body, despite treatment with sunitinib, sorafenib or both drugs.

Jul 23, 2008 12:22 PM

A new drug is being hailed as a potential breakthrough in the fight against prostate cancer, which kills 600 New Zealand men a year.

The new drug called Abiraterone was trialled overseas and is being hailed as a potential breakthrough in the fight against prostate cancer.

But experts in New Zealand are warning it's too soon to say if it really will live up to the hype

Doctors in Britain say Abiraterone represents a 'major step forward' in the treatment of highly aggressive prostate cancer which, before now, has been almost an untreatable disease.

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By Stephen Smith The Boston GlobePublished: July 3, 2008

BOSTON: Researchers have developed a test that can identify minute amounts of tumor cells floating in the blood of cancer patients, a discovery that could lead to better treatments with fewer side effects.

The technology, developed at Massachusetts General Hospital, uses a microchip scanner no bigger than a business card to analyze a patient's blood, hunting for stray cells shed by tumors.

Adopting just a couple of elements of the Mediterranean diet could cut the risk of cancer by 12%, say scientists.


A study of 26,000 Greek people found just using more olive oil alone cut the risk by 9%.

EGP News Service

Researchers at UCLA say a drug already used to help transplant recipients accept new tissue may also reverse a brain malfunction caused by a genetic defect, scientists announced June 22.

Rapamycin, a drug already approved and in use for organ transplant recipients, targets enzymes that are produced by the same cells that cause mental retardation in persons afflicted with a disease called tuberous sclerosis complex, UCLA officials said.

Nanotechnology and a fungus that inadvertantly contaminated a lab experiment may be broadly effective against a range of cancers including breast cancer, neuroblastoma, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors known as glioblastomas and uterine tumors.

The full story can be found here: »www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdes···1547.htm