It is scientific fact that Japan has a lower incidence of prostate cancer unless the Japanese men move to western societies and eat a different diet.
This short but compelling video explains what factors may increase the risk of developing prostate cancer:
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Hot off the press with the negative news surrounding Gardasil and its paralysis side effects, comes the news that another cancer vaccine, Oncophage (Antigenics), failed to demonstrate sufficient efficacy in renal cell cancer in a phase III trial.
The data was published in The Lancet online.
The accompanying editorial, from James Yang, a respected physician from the NCI, criticised the company for its over enthusiastic and misleading press releases, noting that:
"The credibility of the field of cancer immunotherapy is weakened when some investigators, and particularly vaccine companies, cannot accept the results of randomized trials."
Scientists at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center are about to begin a trial to determine whether a new cancer treatment will be as effective at eradicating cancer in humans as it has proven to be in mice.
The treatment will involve transfusing specific white blood cells, called granulocytes into patients with advanced forms of cancer. A similar treatment using white blood cells from cancer-resistant mice has previously been highly successful, curing 100 percent of lab mice afflicted with advanced malignancies.
The basis of the study was the discovery of a cancer-resistant mouse and their subsequent finding that white blood cells from that mouse and its offspring cured advanced cancers in ordinary laboratory mice. They have since identified similar cancer-killing activity in the white blood cells of some healthy humans.
Human cancer-fighting cells from healthy donors have been tested against human cervical, prostate and breast cancer cells in the laboratory, with good results. The scientists say the anti-tumor response primarily involves granulocytes of the innate immune system, a system known for fighting off infections.
Granulocytes are the most abundant type of white blood cells and can account for as much as 60 percent of total circulating white blood cells in healthy humans. Donors can give granulocytes specifically without losing other components of blood through a process called apheresis that separates granulocytes and returns other blood components back to donors.
In a small study of human volunteers, it was found that cancer-killing activity in the granulocytes was highest in people under age 50. This activity can be lowered by factors such as winter or emotional stress. They said the key to the success for the new therapy is to transfuse sufficient granulocytes from healthy donors while their cancer-killing activities are at their peak level.
For the upcoming study, 500 local potential donors who are 50 years old or younger and in good health are being recruited to have their blood tested. Of those, 100 volunteers with high cancer-killing activity will be asked to donate white blood cells for the study. Cell recipients will include 22 cancer patients who have solid tumours that either didn't respond originally, or no longer respond, to conventional therapies.
The goal of the phase II study is to determine whether patients can tolerate a sufficient amount of transfused granulocytes for the treatment. Participants will be monitored on a regular basis, and after three months scientists will evaluate whether the treatment results in clear clinical benefits for the patients. If this phase of the study is successful, the study will be expanded to determine if the treatment is best suited to certain types of cancer.
The global market for cancer drugs will grow twice as fast as that for all other pharmaceuticals as the developing world spends more on health care. It could reach $80 billion by 2012, according to IMS Health, which tracks prescription drug sales.
IMS noted that expensive new treatments, coupled with an increasing number of patients on chemotherapy in major markets and evidence that more people in emerging markets are gaining access to modern targeted therapies will contribute to sales of cancer drugs growing at a compound rate of 12 to 15 percent.
In 2008, sales of oncology products will exceed $48 billion, contributing nearly 17 percent of global pharmaceutical sales growth this year, led by Genentech's breast cancer drug Herceptin, Novartis' leukemia drug Gleevec and other blockbusters, according to IMS.
The cancer market may see double-digit sales growth, fueled by increased use of targeted therapeutic agents introduced over the past 10 years, along with first-time innovations coming to the market and chronic treatment for growing numbers of patients. China, Brazil, Russia and other emerging countries are also becoming bigger customers for pharmaceuticals as they invest more in treating and diagnosing cancer.
IMS expects growth to be fueled by the introduction of 25 to 30 new chemical entities between 2008 and 2012, as expensive new biotechnology drugs and the increasing use of combination therapies contribute to the exploding cost of treatment.
Data from clinical studies of many of the newest cancer drugs will be presented and discussed at the nation's largest oncology meeting later this month in Chicago. Much of the data will be unveiled on Thursday ahead of the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting.
There are several factors that could moderate growth over the next five years. They include financial constraints of payers, slowing growth of some current blockbuster therapies and patent expirations of four cancer drugs with annual sales exceeding $1 billion, including Eli Lilly's Gemzar and Taxotere from Sanofi-Aventis.
Biopsy results can be ambiguous: sometimes they can be negative simply because there are too few malignant cells in the sample to be detected - not because all trace of disease has gone. Researchers from the University of New Mexico and the company Senior Scientific, both in Albuquerque, have devised a solution that harnesses the power of magnetic attraction.
The idea is to use magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles encased in a biocompatible material. These in turn can be coated with antibodies that bind to chemicals found only in cancerous cells. When injected into the body, thousands of the particles stick to cancer cells, turning them into miniature magnets. The cells can then be drawn towards magnets encased in the tip of a biopsy needle (Source: Physics in Medicine and Biology, vol 52, p 4009).
A mathematical model of the system confirmed that significant numbers of cancer cells, laden with nanoparticles, could be attracted to a needle within two or three minutes. In the lab, the researchers showed that a magnetised needle could attract leukemia cells surrounded by nanoparticles and suspended in blood or other synthetic materials designed to mimic bodily fluids. Nanoparticles have been used before to destroy diseased cells, but this was the first time they actually retrieved cells.
More recently, researchers have been wondering if cancer treatments be enhanced by something as simple as a magnet. A promising way to tackle some diseases is to deliver cells with modified genes to diseased tissue. Getting enough of the modified cells to the affected area can be tricky.
Claire Lewis and colleagues from the University of Sheffield inserted magnetic nanoparticles, as well as cancer-fighting genes, into monocytes, the white blood cells commonly used in gene therapy, and injected them into mice with tumours. A magnet placed above the tumour caused the cancer-fighting monocytes to congregate there (Source: Gene Therapy, DOI: 10.1038/gt.2008.57).
Metastasis is the spread of a tumour to different parts of the body and is a major driver of mortality in patients with advanced cancer.
Increasingly, researchers are discovering biomarkers that may predict early metastasis. For example, the chemokine receptors CCR7 and CXCR4 have been shown to play an important role in cancer metastasis. By studying the differential expression of CCR7 and CXCR4, along with the biomarker HER2-neu, is possible to evaluate whether these biomarkers could predict axillary lymph node metastasis in breast cancer.
As more biomarkers are identified in different cancer types, improved knowledge of this complex process may provide a platform for the development of molecularly targeted therapeutics aimed at either the tumor cell or its interaction with the host microenvironment.
