Battling Cancer

Does dense breast tissues increase your risk for breast cancer? Research studies done by Mayo Clinic researchers can now give some answers about the link between breast density and breast cancer risk. The first research showed that dense breast tissues contain more cells that may promote breast cancer while the second research showed that dense breast tissues contain more aromatase enzyme than non-dense ones. This aromatase enzyme is reported to help convert androgen hormones into estrogen which is involved in breast cancer development.

Mayo clinic researchers took 8 core-needle biopsies from the breast of 60 women volunteers, age 40 to 85. All volunteers have no history of breast cancer. These research studies were unique since previous studies have focused only on dense tissues taken from women with breast diseases.

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Some news of hope for the new year.

Medical researchers are continuously working on the quest for a drug that can cure breast cancer. The last significant breakthrough was three decades ago when tamoxifen was found to reduce the risk of recurrence of breast cancer. At the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas this year, several drugs that show promise for curing this deadly disease have been presented.

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News from the global front

Cancer to be world’s top killer by 2010, WHO says
The latest report from the World Health Organization brings bad tidings. Global death rate due to cancer is on the rise. This year, the number of cancer cases is expected to reach 12 million and 7 million of these will result in death. By 2010, it will be the world’s leading cause of death. By 2030, the number of cases may be almost triple.

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There is no better source of healing substances than mother nature herself. And it seems that our seas have “oceans” of compounds waiting to be discovered. Since the 1960s, scientists have been exploring the ocean for marine products that may be beneficial to human health. However, natural products are considered time-consuming and too expensive to develop so that pharmaceutical companies lost interest before researchers can discover the useful compounds. Hence, only 14 natural products which originated from the marine environment are currently undergoing clinical trials.

One of the most promising compounds so far is marine extract called largazole, which has been shown to have potent anticancer properties. Largazole was extracted from cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) that grow on the coral reefs off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. This compound was discovered by University of Florida College of Pharmacy researchers headed by Dr. Hendrik Leusch. They found that largazole acts on a group of enzymes called histone deacetylase or HDAC. Over-active HDACs are found to be associated with cancers like prostate and colon tumors. When HDACs are inhibited, the genes that suppress tumors are activated. In addition to its HDAC inhibitory properties, largazole exhibits potent antiproliferative activity and these two seems to be correlated.

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Your cancer news for this weekend is here. happy reading!

News from the technology side

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A professor at the University of Central Florida has created two compounds that might destroy breast cancer tumors - thereby creating  a fitting tribute to his mother who was a victim of the monster. These compounds show promise in curing breast cancer and give hope to breast cancer patients worldwide. Breast cancer is the second most common type of cancer after lung cancer causing 502,000 deaths in 2005 worldwide.

Associate Professor Turkson, the creator of these two compounds is a native of Ghana, West Africa. He completed his studies in Biochemistry with Chemistry at the University of Ghana and earned his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Alberta in Canada.  He dedicated his research in finding cure for cancer after his mother died of uterine cancer when he was on his first year in college. It seems that he is now reaping the fruits of his labor. The two compounds S31-201 and S31-M2001 that he created were tested on mice and are found to disrupt the formation and spread of cancer tumors. It seems that these two compounds are attacking STAT3, the cancer-causing protein.

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They say that cures sometimes come from the most unexpected places. In this case, the cancer cure actually works in a very unexpected and unusual way. Meet PEA-15, a protein that make ovarian cancer cells eat themselves

Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center discovered a protein that can inhibit the growth of ovarian cancer. This protein, called phospho-enriched protein in astrocytes or PEA-15 can actually force cancer cells to cannibalize themselves. The study was based on data from 395 women with ovarian cancer. Results showed that those women with high PEA-15 levels in their tumors had a median survival time of 50.2 months. Those women with low levels of the protein in their tumors, however, had a median survival time of 33.5 months. According to senior author Dr. Naoto Ueno, associate professor of breast medical oncology, the presence of PEA-15 can help determine the woman’s prospects for surviving ovarian cancer.

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News from the lab side

Grow your own prostate
American researchers were able to create a whole prostate organ from stem cells. This has been demonstrated in the lab using mouse stem cells. “The ability to recreate this organ should help researchers better understand how prostate cancer starts and possibly even help them to grow replacement prostate tissue in the laboratory.” The prostate is not the first to be generated this way. Scientists have already successfully created blood, skin, as well as the mammary gland from single mouse stem cells. More →

It is good news for oncology, bad news for other therapeutic areas - cancer is currently the most studied disease. This is based on the number of studies registered at ClinicalTrials.gov during the last two years, according to heartwire.

The review entitled “Trends in disease focus of drug development” and published in the August issue of Nature, examined

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During his 1970 inaugural address, American President Richard Nixon declared a War on Cancer. Promising to allocate at least $100 million in funding to investigate the causes for what was then the second-leading cause of death in the United States, Nixon followed through in 1971 by signing the National Cancer Act. Key objectives of this act included infusing basic sciences research funding, ramping up clinical trials and making the National Cancer Institute a free-standing body under the National Institutes of Health.

Nearly forty years later, physicians and scientists are making great strides in better understanding the etiology, management and treatment in all forms of cancer. Recently, the American Society for Clinical Oncology released a report entitled, Clinical Cancer Advances 2007: Major Research Advances in Cancer Treatment, Prevention, and Screening. This annual review, which is available as a .pdf, podcast, and slideshow at the People Living With Cancer website, includes the following highlights: 

Primary Liver Cancer Patients Get the Option for Systemic Treatment: Until recently, surgical techniques were the first line of treatment in liver cancer patients because response to chemotherapy was so poor. In 2007, results of a large study showed that advanced liver cancer using sorafenib (Nevaxar), a targeted chemotherapeutic, lived 44 percent longer than patients who did not. More →