Breast Cancer

BETHESDA, Md--Daniel B. Kopans, MD, of the Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, has received the 1996 Rose Kushner Award for Writing Achievement in the Field of Breast Cancer for best scientific article.

BETHESDA, Md--The Breast Cancer Prevention Trial (BCPT), launched in 1992, will need fewer women than originally estimated for completion. Although planned for 16,000 women, the trial now has more than 12,000 enrolled, and needs only another 1,000 for completion, which is expected next year.

This well-written article can benefit only from reinforcement of a few of its major points, some supplemental discussion about the important role of biologic models in understanding and managing breast cancer development, and a note about the critical need for research and perspectives from the social sciences concerning this subject. I say "only" because this article beautifully and clearly explores some of the language of epidemiology critical to the subject, language which is becoming increasingly important in routine medical practice. Practitioners and, increasingly, the public (medical "consumers") are concerned with risks and numbers.

An expert panel of nine international cancer researchers and practicing oncolo-gists met in Boston to discuss the past, present, and future uses of antiestrogens in the treatment of breast cancer. This article represents the first in a series of reports based on the symposium presentations that will be featured in subsequent issues of Oncology News International.The symposium was sponsored by Zeneca Pharmaceuticals.

NEW YORK--Amy S. Langer, of the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO), has taken a leave of absence from her position as executive director, due to extensive injuries suffered in a serious car accident in upstate New York.

HOUSTON--Just in time for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has unveiled a mobile mam-mography program that will bring screening mammography to corporate and community locations throughout the Houston area.

NEW YORK--Public discussion has played a large part in the recent declines in breast cancer mortality, say the sponsors of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM), and they urge the media to keep breast cancer on the public agenda.

NEW YORK--The Guttman Institute, a pioneering breast cancer screening center in Manhattan that provided low-cost screenings to women for almost 30 years, has become a cancer diagnostic center serving both men and women.

BETHESDA, Md--The latest major study of the relationship between diet and breast cancer risk has introduced an intriguing but somewhat complex element into this enduring controversy.

ROCKVILLE, Md--The FDA has cleared Chiron Therapeutics' Aredia (pamidronate disodium for injection) for the treatment of patients with osteolytic bone metastases of breast cancer, in conjunction with standard antineoplastic therapy.

PHILADELPHIA--A Massachusetts study suggests that legislation requiring insurers and HMOs to cover high-dose chemotherapy/autologous bone marrow or stem cell transplantation for metastatic breast cancer does not lead to significant increases in the number of procedures performed.

Rapid advances in biomedical research and technology are producing a continuous stream of new, and often expensive, medical devices, drugs, and therapies. Health insurers' decisions about whether and when to provide coverage for these new

With improved instrumentation and scanning techniques, breast ultrasound screening is earning a prominent role in the detection of breast cancer in women with dense breasts when no lump is felt and no abnormalities are detected on the

BETHESDA, Md--The Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project, ordered by Congress in 1993, is now underway under the auspices of the NCI and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The study will attempt to determine whether pollutants (pesticides and other chemical irritants) are linked to the area's excessive breast cancer rates.

PHILADELPHIA--At Long Beach Community Medical Center, the addition, in 1993, of a new radiation therapy facility and a new cancer center spurred the development of clinical pathways (or practice guidelines) for radiation therapy and breast cancer.

WASHINGTON--A General Accounting Office (GAO) report has found that more insurers are now covering autologous bone marrow transplants (ABMT) for patients with breast cancer even though the treatment is expensive and the benefits are not proven.

COLLEGEVILLE, Penn--Rhône-Poulenc Rorer Inc.'s Taxotere (docetaxel) is now available for treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer that has progressed during anthracycline-based therapy or relapsed during anthracycline-based adjuvant therapy.

GAITHERSBURG, Md--The FDA's Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) voted unanimously to recommend approval of Ciba-Geigy Corp.'s Aredia (pamidronate disodium for injection) for the treatment of osteolytic bone metastases in breast cancer patients undergoing either chemotherapy or hormonal therapy.

DALLAS--In the last 5 years, radiologists have become the specialists most often sued over breast cancer diagnoses, said Cathy R. Bowerman, JD, MPH, of the Southfield, Michigan, firm of Siemion, Huckabay, Bodary, Padilla, Morganti, & Bowerman.

DALLAS--RODEO breast MRI proved significantly more accurate than mammography in determining the extent of lobular carcinoma and in characterizing the morphology of the disease, Steven E. Harms, MD, said at the American College of Radiology breast cancer symposium.

It is ironic that the issue of aggressive local therapy for breast cancer has re-emerged as a controversial issue in the early 1990s, almost 100 years after Halsted proposed this theory in the early 1890s [1]. Since that time, both survival and quality of life seemed to have improved for patients with breast cancer, due to more sophisticated and effective treatments. Nonetheless, as Drs. Pierce and Lichter point out in their article, the precise balance between the benefits and risks of aggressive local therapy still remains to be defined.

WASHINGTON--The breast cancer death rate in American women has declined steadily in the 1990s, suggesting that improved breast cancer management from early detection to treatment is having a beneficial effect, the National Cancer Institute reports.

Results of a phase III multicenter European study reported in a recent issue of the European Journal of Cancer demonstrate that anastrozole (Arimidex), a new aromatase inhibitor, in doses of 1 and 10 mg orally once daily, is an effective treatment for

WASHINGTON--University of Pennsylvania researchers have obtained the first "conclusive" evidence linking mutations in the recently cloned BRCA2 breast cancer gene to ovarian cancer, a discovery they say indicates that inheritance plays a significantly greater role in the disease than previously thought.

WASHINGTON--A study of European women suffering from breast cancer has raised the intriguing possibility that the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) may provide a way to predict an increased risk of the malignancy.

ASCO--Immediate high-dose consolidation chemotherapy supported by transplant significantly improved disease-free survival in metastatic breast cancer patients who were in complete remission after induction therapy.

BALTIMORE--Intensive, laboratory-based follow-up programs for patients treated for early stage breast cancer do not enhance survival or reduce morbidity, said John H. Fetting, MD, at a symposium sponsored by Johns Hopkins Oncology Center, where he is co-director of the Breast Service.

An expert panel of seven cancer researchers and a representative of the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO) came together at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium for a roundtable discussion of the use of tamoxifen (Nolvadex), sponsored by PRR, Inc., publisher of Oncology News International, Primary Care & Cancer, and the journal ONCOLOGY.

WASHINGTON--Interim results from an on-going Italian chemopreven-tion trial of a synthetic retinoid show a "borderline significant" protective effect against contralateral breast cancer and, to a lesser degree, against ovarian cancer, but only in premenopausal women.

COLLEGEVILLE, Penn--Rhône-Poulenc Rorer Inc. has received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration to market Taxotere (docetaxel) for Injection Concentrate.