chemotherapy
A new study published by researchers at Georgetown University's Lombardi Cancer Center, in collaboration with researchers at Yale University, has identified two molecular predictors of breast cancer spread, or metastasis. This study may one day lead to tests of breast cancer tissue that will help physicians determine whether a woman's breast cancer is likely to spread, or metastasize.
Adding two experimental drugs to the standard four-drug chemotherapy regimen has significantly improved survival in patients with non-metastatic Ewing?s sarcoma, a highly malignant bone cancer of children and young adults. The large multi-institutional trial showed that the overall survival rate increased from 61 percent to 72 percent for Ewing?s sarcoma patients with localized disease who underwent the experimental six-drug chemotherapy.
New research suggests that combining the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel with very low doses of the HIV-fighting drug AZT may shrink or even eradicate certain types of cancer tumors. Using both drugs in mice helped inhibit the enzyme telomerase, a component critical to the livelihood of some cancer cells. Telomerase helps to build and maintain telomeres ? protective strands of DNA at each end of a chromosome.
Researchers have published new evidence showing that cells from the bone marrow might help repair or maintain cells in other tissues. In a paper in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers describe finding chromosomes from a bone marrow transplant in the brain cells of transplant recipients. When people receive a bone marrow transplant after high-dose chemotherapy, some of the transplanted cells regenerate the blood-making cells that were destroyed. In past experiments in mice, scientists found that cells from the transplant could also relocate to tissues throughout the body rather than being restricted to the bone marrow and blood.
Several additional cancer centers in the United States and Canada are enrolling patients in an innovative clinical trial evaluating the use of a therapeutic cancer vaccine in patients with first-line metastatic colorectal cancer. In addition, a second trial using the vaccine earlier in the course of disease is now under way in centers across Canada, according to Aventis Pasteur Limited of Toronto, Canada, the study sponsor.
The presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes predicts the length of remission after chemotherapy and the overall survival of patients with ovarian cancer, according to researchers from the Abramson Cancer Center and the Center on Women's Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Their findings, which are presented in the January 16th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, constitute the first proof that a spontaneous immune response against the tumor dramatically impacts the clinical course of ovarian cancer. These novel findings generate hope that immune therapies may significantly prolong the response to chemotherapy and improve the survival of patients with advanced ovarian carcinoma.
Nearly one-third of patients with advanced multiple myeloma who had failed current standard therapy of chemotherapy or stem cell transplantation responded to thalidomide for a median duration of nearly one year in a Mayo Clinic study of the effects of thalidomide on myeloma. The findings are reported in the January issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Many studies in the last three years have determined that thalidomide is effective in the treatment of multiple myeloma, following the initial report by researchers at the University of Arkansas. However, information is limited on how long thalidomide therapy works and on survival rates with such therapy.
Researchers report that surgery combined with inserting heated chemotherapy drugs directly into the abdomen can improve survival rates in patients with disseminated cancer of the abdominal cavity.
Patients participating in the research study had a median overall survival of 16 months. Traditionally, patients with this condition, known as peritoneal carcinomatosis, survive only 3-6 months without treatment. Peritoneal cancer is the most common cause of death in patients with intra-abdominal cancers. Surgery alone has proven to be ineffective, as have external beam radiation therapy, brachytherapy and systemic chemotherapy.
Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy often endure painful side effects caused by the powerful drugs as they course through their entire bodies, damaging healthy tissue and tumors alike. Utah researchers are reporting in the December issue "Cancer Research" that they have successfully tested a new method in laboratory animals that would concentrate the impact of cancer drugs on specific cancerous tissues, thus sparing the rest of the body from harm.
A new clinical trial has shown that reducing the interval between successive doses of a commonly used chemotherapy regimen improves survival in women whose breast cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. While previous research has evaluated the use of various forms of "dose dense" chemotherapy, this is the first major controlled study to show a clear survival benefit for women with node-positive breast cancer.
Oncologists are testing a new technique called gene expression profiling that subtypes each breast cancer tumor by its genetic defects so that doctors can tailor their treatment to inhibit that particular tumor. The researchers believe the technique could spare millions of women from needlessly receiving toxic chemotherapy, and they are leading a national clinical trial to study gene profiling. "Currently, we have no predictive model to determine who will respond to hormonal therapies and who won't, so we prescribe chemotherapy as a backup measure to ensure the cancer's demise," said Matthew Ellis, M.D., Ph.D., director of the breast cancer program at Duke. "This one-treatment-fits-all approach leads to a huge amount of over treatment, with up to 50 percent of women unnecessarily receiving chemotherapy."
An international team of researchers has used a gene test to identify certain patients with adult T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who can be successfully treated with chemotherapy alone and should not be subjected to the rigors of bone marrow transplants. The researchers found that these patients survived for at least three years after being treated with intensive chemotherapy. It was previously known that only slightly over half of the patients with this disease could be cured with chemotherapy. Adult ALL patients often undergo transplants in an effort to beat back the stubborn disease. Until now there was no way to identify those who have a more favorable outlook and shouldn't undergo risky bone marrow transplantation.
An association between a common human virus and colon cancer has been established by a group of researchers in the U.S., suggesting a possible role for it in the development of cancer in the human intestinal tract. The so-called JC virus most likely infects humans through the upper respiratory tract and remains in a latent stage in most people throughout their lives, and, in some cases, causes minor sub-clinical problems. But in people whose immune systems are depressed, either through chemotherapy given to organ transplant recipients or an illness such as AIDS, JCV can become active and may contribute to cancer in the brain or cause the fatal demyelinating disease Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy (PML).
Surgeons in Philadelphia say they are finding success by combining light-based cancer therapy with surgery to treat patients with advanced lung cancer that has spread within the chest. While the number of patients treated to date is small, many patients are living three to four times longer than did those patients who did not receive the therapy. In photodynamic therapy (PDT), a nontoxic photosensitizing agent, photofrin, is injected into the bloodstream and absorbed by cells all over the body. These compounds tend to concentrate more in cancer cells than in normal cells. When the compound is exposed to a certain wavelength of light, it absorbs the light energy and produces a form of oxygen that kills the cells. The damage occurs only where the light is shined. In the study, each patient is given chemotherapy until the cancer stops responding, meaning the disease begins to grow again. If the cancer has not spread beyond the chest, the patient then receives photofrin 24 hours prior to surgery to remove the tumor. During surgery, he or she receives an appropriate dose of light therapy. Of the 16 patients evaluated to date, at least one-half have lived more than 23 months, which is between three and four times the usual time.
Today, even the best cancer treatments kill about as many healthy cells as they do cancer cells. But a St. Louis researcher has begun to lay the conceptual and experimental groundwork for a new strategy for chemotherapy -- one that turns existing drugs into medicinal "smart bombs." The approach is essentially a sophisticated drug releasing system, one that can recognize and use cancerous DNA sequences as triggering mechanisms for the drugs that fight them.
