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Breast Cancer

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The National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM) organization, which began its campaign in 1984, is a partnership of more than a dozen national professional medical associations, public service organizations, and government agencies that work together year-round to promote awareness of breast cancer, share up-to-date information about the disease, and provide greater access to screening services.

In this review, we describe the evidence linking obesity to breast cancer recurrence, discuss the potential biological mechanisms through which weight could impact breast cancer prognosis, and review the weight-loss intervention studies that have been performed in breast cancer populations to date.

The opening chapters in the investigation of poly(adenosine diphosphate [ADP]–ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors as cancer therapeutics have been interpreted by some as a quantum leap forward in targeted and personalized medicine and by others as another example of disappointment following a flurry of promising preclinical and early clinical trials based on elegant biology.

Obesity rates in the United States have increased twofold in adults and threefold in children during the past 30 years.[1] Beyond its detrimental effects on cardiovascular health, obesity increases the risk of several cancers, including postmenopausal breast cancer,[2] and it is also associated with a higher risk of recurrence and death in those who develop breast cancer.[3]

In an online-first article in Nature Chemical Biology (DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.695), Sebastian Nijman of the CeMM–Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and his colleagues describe the development of a chemical genetic approach that has identified mechanisms that can lead to resistance to PI3K inhibitors used as cancer treatments.