Posts Tagged clinical trials

FDA Approved Leukemia Drugs Shows Promise In Ovarian Cancer Cells

The drug, when paired with a chemotherapy regimen, was even more effective in fighting ovarian cancer in cell lines in which signaling of the Src family kinases, associated with the deadly disease, is activated.

The study appears in the Nov. 10, 2009 edition of the British Medical Journal.

Ovarian cancer, which will strike 21,600 women this year and kill 15,500, causes more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. Few effective therapies for ovarian cancer exist, so it would be advantageous for patients if a new drug could be found that fights the cancer, said Gottfried Konecny, an assistant professor of hematology/oncology, a Jonsson Cancer Center researcher and first author of the study.

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Drug Shrinks Lung Cancer Tumors In Mice

One in five people with lung cancer have small cell lung cancer and only three per cent of these people are expected to survive for five years. With this form of lung cancer, tumours spread quickly so it is rarely possible to remove the tumours surgically. Because of this, small cell lung cancer is treated with chemotherapy, with or without additional radiotherapy. Initially, the treatment often appears to work, reducing the size of the tumours. However, the tumours usually grow back rapidly and then become resistant to further treatment.

The researchers behind today’s study have identified a drug that, in some mice, was able to completely shrink tumours away. In the mouse models, it was also able to stop tumours from growing and it helped other forms of chemotherapy to work more effectively. If the drug proves successful in humans, the researchers hope that it could help patients with this kind of lung cancer to live longer.

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Possible Ovarian Cancer Treatment Target Identified

“Ovarian cancer is typically diagnosed at an advanced stage when it is incurable, and the same treatments have been used for virtually all patients,” says Michael Birrer, MD, PhD, director of medical gynecologic oncology in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center, the study’s corresponding author. “Previous research from my lab indicated that different types and grades of ovarian tumors should be treated differently, and this paper now shows that even papillary serous tumors have differences that impact patient prognosis.” Birrer was with the National Institutes of Health when this study began and joined the MGH Cancer Center.

The fifth most common malignancy among U.S. women, ovarian cancer is expected to cause close to 15,000 deaths during 2009. Accounting for 60 percent of ovarian cancers, papillary serous tumors are typically diagnosed after spreading beyond the ovaries. The tumors typically return after initial treatment with surgery and chemotherapy, but while some patients die a few months after diagnosis, others may survive five years or longer while receiving treatment.

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Anti-Estrogens May Offer Protection Against Lung Cancer Mortality

“We found a reduction in lung cancer mortality among women treated with anti-estrogens for breast cancer. This work builds on previous studies that had suggested estrogens have a role in lung cancer development and progression,” said Elisabetta Rapiti, M.D., M.P.H., medical researcher with the Geneva Cancer Registry, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Rapiti and colleagues evaluated whether anti-estrogen therapy for breast cancer patients reduced their risk of subsequently developing and/or dying from lung cancer.

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DC-SCRIPT Found to Have Prognostic Value in Breast Cancer

In this study, a team led by Gosse J. Adema, Ph.D., of the Department of Tumor Immunology, at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, the Netherlands, and colleagues assessed the role of DC-SCRIPT as a co-regulator of nuclear receptors, including estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR)-B, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma, and retinoic acid receptor alpha. Prognostic value was assessed in three independent cohorts of breast cancer patients.

The researchers found that DC-SCRIPT suppressed ER- and PR-mediated transcription in a ligand-dependent fashion, whereas it enhanced the activity of the other two receptors. Quantification of DC-SCRIPT mRNA expression in the three cohorts of patients revealed that this expression is an independent prognostic factor for breast cancer patients with ER- and/or PR-positive tumors, according to the authors.

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