radiation therapy
Men with aggressive, metastatic prostate cancer who receive immediate early hormone therapy live on average three to four years longer than others who delay similar treatment, according to researchers at the University of Rochester. Hormone therapy, designed to reduce the production of testosterone known to cause prostate cancer progression, is effective immediately following surgery or radiation therapy, according to Edward M. Messing, M.D., of the University of Rochester Medical Center. He led a randomized, prospective study that focused on the effectiveness of immediate or delayed hormone therapy.
Early results from a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine study may determine if drugs called Cox-2 inhibitors, a newer type of non-aspirin pain medicine now widely prescribed for arthritis symptoms, may benefit men with recurrent prostate cancer. The new findings demonstrate that Cox-2 inhibitors may have anti-tumor effects on prostate cancer and may slow disease progression in men whose PSA blood tests indicate the cancer's recurrence, the researchers said. Findings were presented June 6 at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting.
Scientists have identified the ''master switch'' that cancer cells use to dispatch protective messages to nearby blood vessels, fortifying the vessels against deadly onslaughts of radiation. The messages enable blood vessels to survive and ultimately nourish any remaining cancer cells that escape toxic radiation therapy.
Data from a five-year study suggests that limited-field radiation therapy (radiation directed at the tumor site) may be as effective as whole-breast radiation therapy in preventing breast cancer recurrence in women treated with breast-conserving surgery. The study appears in the August 20 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Whole-breast radiation therapy is part of standard treatment for women with early-stage breast cancer who have undergone breast-conserving surgery. However, it has never been clear how much tissue surrounding the tumor bed needs to be irradiated, and whole-breast radiation therapy has been associated with both acute and chronic toxicity.
A drug designed to mimic the effects of Vitamin D hormone may be able to boost the effectiveness of radiation treatment for prostate cancer, report researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in the current on-line edition of the British Journal of Cancer. "About 30 percent of men with locally advanced prostate cancer fail radiation therapy because the cancerous cells become resistant to treatment," said Constantinos Koumenis, Ph.D., lead researcher. "Any agent that increases the cancer cells' sensitivity to radiation, without significantly affecting normal cells, would be of great benefit."
Researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center are reporting how a 15-year-old drug could have a promising new role in the treatment of rectal cancer. The drug is oxaliplatin, and when administered in combination with fluorouracil (5-FU) plus leucovorin--standard therapy for patients with advanced/metastatic colorectal cancer--it makes the radiation therapy more effective. Oxaliplatin is one in a family of platinum-based drugs, which contain small molecules that interact with DNA and disrupt the replication process. Some cancers, however, have developed resistance to other platinum-based drugs.
A form of vitamin D has been found to greatly enhance radiation treatment for tumors associated with breast cancer, according to a new collaborative Dartmouth Medical School study. The findings support the potential benefits of combining a vitamin D analog with radiation to wipe out radiation-resistant cancer cells.
Radiofrequency ablation can ease pain, slow tumor growth, and even destroy tumors in patients with advanced lung cancer, a new study shows. ?We treated 12 patients with thoracic tumors using radiofreqency ablation, which is the use of extreme heat to treat tumors,? says Eric vanSonnenberg, MD, chief of radiology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and visiting professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and lead author of the study. The patients either had maximal applications of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy or were unfit for these therapies anymore, Dr. vanSonnenberg says.
Physicians treating deadly liver tumors are finding success by injecting patients with radioactive microspheres that get trapped in the web of small blood vessels feeding a tumor and zap the cancerous cells. "The liver doesn't tolerate external beam radiation in sufficient doses to affect tumor without damaging the remaining good liver," said one physician researcher working on the treatment. "These spheres emit radiation for a short distance, less than a centimeter. If you can cluster radiation right around the tumor, the radiation exposure at the tumor site compared to normal liver is favorable."
