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Owen Witte, MD, has been a California resident for nearly 35 years, but there’s nothing laid-back about him. The director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research retains the rapid fire speech of a native New Yorker. Although it was getting toward late afternoon when Dr. Witte met with Oncology News International, he ushered a steady stream of visitors into and out of his office at the University of California, Los Angeles. When he spoke about his work, it was with the same energy that no doubt drew him to science in the first place.

Scientists in New Mexico are experimenting with a nanotechnology device that quantifies the amount of nanoparticle-bound tumor cells in a tissue sample and offers increased sensitivity to minimal residual disease (Cancer Res 69:6839-6847, 2009).

An investigator at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle has earned a $1.74 million grant under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Despite the hubbub, breast imaging researchers saw nothing new in the findings of Dr. Esserman’s group. Daniel Kopans, MD, a professor of radiology at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, called her observation about mammography catching nonlethal cancers but missing aggressive ones “a fundamental concept that is older than I am. Mammography saves lives by finding moderate- and slow-growing cancer that will kill in five or more years without diagnosis and treatment,” according to Dr. Kopans.

Cannabinoids, which are a byproduct of marijuana smoke, have been recognized to have potential antitumor properties, but evidence of a relationship between marijuana use and the induction of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma has been inconsistent.

Head and neck patients who undergo surgery first are more likely to complete radiation therapy, according to Seattle-based researchers. Megan Dann Fesinmeyer, PhD, MPH, and colleagues noted that radiation dose and treatment duration correlated with tumor control and survival, but that breaks in radiotherapy have been associated with inferior tumor control.

Prometheus Laboratories has launched the ProOncDx line of cancer diagnostic tests. ProOncDx TumorSource pinpoints the tissue of origin in metastatic tumors in a number of cancers including breast, brain, kidney, colon, liver, ovary, lung, pancreas, and prostate. The test measures the expression level of 48 microRNA biomarkers

Researchers had identified a small molecule that inhibits the heat shock protein HSP70. They also demonstrated in their animal experiment that the HSP inhibitor could stop tumor formation and significantly extend survival.

An analysis by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center shows that costs vary widely for different treatment regimens and from one delivery method to another. Yet receiving more treatments and spending extra on more sophisticated technology may do little good, at least when it comes to pain relief.

CHICAGO-Accuray introduced the CyberKnife VSI System. The system is designed to also include conventionally fractionated robotic intensity-modulated radiation therapy.

Rasburicase (Elitek) has been granted FDA approval for the initial management of plasma uric acid (PUA) levels in adult patients with leukemia, lymphoma, and solid tumor malignancies.

Native to India, boswellia is used extensively in Ayurveda, the traditional medical system of India, to treat arthritis. Extracts from the gum resin of boswellia have been tested in clinical trials and found effective for asthma and ulcerative colitis. More research is needed to determine if boswellia can benefit those with osteoarthritis. Boswellic acid has been found to display antitumor activity in bladder, cervical, and other cancer cell lines as well as anti-inflammatory activity.

Oncology is gaining ground on several fronts, thanks in large part to increased sophistication in the technology of cancer therapeutics, but also in how those technologies are applied.

Data published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology show that patients with advanced neuroendocrine tumors (NET) of the midgut who were treated with octreotide acetate (Sandostatin LAR Depot) experienced a 66% reduction in risk of disease progression vs placebo.

Sanofi-aventis US announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted marketing approval for rasburicase (Elitek) to be used for the initial management of plasma uric acid (PUA) levels in adult patients with leukemia, lymphoma, and solid tumor malignancies who are receiving anticancer therapy expected to result in tumor lysis syndrome (TLS) and subsequent elevations of plasma uric acid.

Cancer killed a 14-year-old girl who died shortly after being given Cervarix as part of a national immunization program. Early reports speculated that there may have been a link between the shot and her death, but according to a coroner’s assessment, there was no indication that the culprit was the HPV vaccine, which is marketed by GlaxoSmithKline. The girl’s death was caused by malignant disease in the heart and lungs, according to the coroner’s report.

Obesity may contribute to chemotherapy resistance and increasing relapse rates among children with leukemia, an animal study in Cancer Research (online, September 22, 2009) suggests.

The incidence of pneumonia and invasive pulmonary aspergillosis in acute myeloid leukemia patients was reduced when they were given posaconazole (Noxafil) as prophylaxis.

A coalition of international cancer experts is warning that the global cancer burden will double over the next two decades with an increasing concentration of cases in low-income and middle-income countries.

Use of antidepressants, particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and possibly tricyclic antidepressants, is associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer, according to research by the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. But it’s too soon to make specific recommendations on how to harness this potential value of these drugs in cancer prevention.

A new class of cancer alpha-pharmaceuticals is approaching the marketplace, one built around the basis of radiotherapy itself. An isotope of radium, the element discovered more than a century ago by Pierre and Marie Curie, is the cornerstone of this new class of radiopharmaceuticals.

The AACR has appointed George Prendergast, PhD, as the editor-in-chief of Cancer Research. He is the president and CEO of Lankenau Institute for Medical Research in Wynnewood, Penn., and previously served as a senior editor and deputy editor for the journal. Dr. Prendergast will take up the five-year editorship in January 2010

The limited evidence on the comparative effectiveness of proton-beam therapy, especially in comparison to other radiation-based treatment modalities, undermines the value of this up-and-coming technology, according to a comparative effectiveness report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Despite the widespread perception that dietary supplements are safe, few products have been subjected to rigorous research. The potential risks of dietary supplement use are not known. A powdered blend of fruits, vegetables, and grains, Juice Plus is aggressively promoted to cancer patients based on claims of antioxidant effects. Current research evidence indicates that the potential risks of antioxidants outweigh the benefits in the context of cancer treatment. Patients should discuss antioxidant supplementation with their physicians.

Repeat lumpectomy and retreatment radiotherapy following ipsilateral breast tumor recurrence (IBTR) by either external-beam irradiation or brachytherapy in lieu of salvage mastectomy is an area of significant recent clinical interest. Multiple authors have reported their results, with encouraging numbers of patients avoiding mastectomy.[1‑4]

Five may be the magic number to determine whether a patient can undergo therapeutic monitoring with a test for circulating tumor cells or must undergo an FDG-PET/CT exam, according to research out of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Roche announced that enrollment in a phase III clinical trial testing bevacizumab (Avastin) plus chemotherapy for women with early-stage breast cancer was suspended after six patients who were given the drug developed congestive heart failure. Study protocols required that enrollment be stopped if six or more cases of congestive heart failure occurred in the first 200 patients, according to the company.

An analysis by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center shows that costs vary widely for different treatment regimens and from one delivery method to another. Yet receiving more treatments and spending extra on more sophisticated technology may do little good, at least when it comes to pain relief.

Resistance to rituximab (Rituxan) has emerged as a considerable problem as the drug has become widely used to treat B-cell lymphomas, such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. A recent study in Blood suggested that resistance to rituximab is related to downregulation of CD20 expression via epigenetic mechanisms.

The first proton-beam therapy center in Loma Linda, Calif., opened almost 20 years ago, and today six are operating in the U.S. Another center will open by the end of 2009 with several more planned in the next two years, including centers in continental Europe and the UK. A growing body of research affirms the efficacy of proton-beam therapy (see Table).