Cancer, Cancer Treatment

THURSDAY, Jan. 8 — After nearly a year of review, U.S. health officials said Thursday that they supported the continued use of the controversial cholesterol-lowering drug Vytorin.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said there was no significant difference in carotid artery thickness between patients taking Vytorin and patients taking the drug Zocor.

But, the agency reported, the levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol decreased by 56 percent in the Vytorin group compared to 39 percent for the Zocor group.

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By Karla Gale

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Freezing embryos before undergoing cancer treatment that may cause infertility is as successful for women with cancer as it is for women without cancer, new study findings indicate.

The investigators, who presented their findings this week at the 64th annual meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine in San Francisco, recommend this means preserving fertility for cancer patients, because the ovaries are severely compromised by chemotherapy and radiation.

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The combination of estrogen plus progestin, which women stopped taking in droves following the news that it may increase their risk of breast cancer, may decrease their risk of colorectal cancer, according to a report published in the January issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

“Compared to women who had never taken these hormones, the use of estrogen plus progestin was associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer,” said Jill R. Johnson, M.P.H., a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Treatment with cetuximab (Erbitux) was less effective for patients with advanced colorectal cancer with a certain gene mutation, a new study found. Scientists already knew that the presence of K-ras mutations explains about 30 to 40 percent of cases in which colorectal cancer patients fail to respond to Erbitux, developed by ImClone and sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck KGaA, and Vectibix, from Amgen. The latest findings added another 12 percent.

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Data from the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study show that higher than normal insulin levels are an independent risk factor for breast cancer.

Study investigators, led by Dr. Marc J. Gunter at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York, examined the association between breast cancer and blood parameters at study entry in 835 women who later developed breast cancer and 816 who did not. All of the women were postmenopausal and none were diabetic at baseline.

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While examining patterns of DNA modification in lung cancer, a team of international researchers has discovered what they say is a surprising new mechanism.

They say that “silencing” of a single gene in lung cancer led to a general impairment in genome-wide changes in cells, contributing to cancer development and progression.

In the January 1, 2009, issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, they also report finding a strong link between modification of the key gene, MTHFR, and tobacco use by lung cancer patients - even if the patient had smoked for a short period of time.

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 22 — A new study suggests that people with advanced colon cancer who have a particular gene mutation won’t benefit from the medication cetuximab (Erbitux).

While the drug can add months to the lives of people without a mutation in a gene called K-ras, those who have the mutation won’t see any benefit from this additional therapy, reports the study, which is published in the Oct. 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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A single tumor-suppressor gene may provide a unique marker for senescence in Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in vitro, while also playing a role in moving MSCs into senescence, researchers at the Human Health Foundation and the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine report.

Their work was published in Stem Cells and Development .

The finding is important, since MSCs are currently being tested in cell and gene therapy for a number of human diseases.

Johnson County long has approached the subject of education as an investment rather than an expense. The result is a county with high-quality schools that not only produce accomplished students but also attract companies and individuals looking to relocate.

On Nov. 4, voters can ratchet up their investment in education by approving Question 2. The measure would enact a one-eighth-cent sales tax to pay for what is called the Johnson County Education Research Triangle, which includes:

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Patients with locally advanced lung cancer who receive chemotherapy and proton therapy, a specialized form a radiation therapy only available in a few centers in the United States, have fewer instances of a serious side effect called bone marrow toxicity than patients who receive chemotherapy and another type of radiation therapy called intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), according to a study presented at the 2008 Chicago Multidisciplinary Symposium in Thoracic Oncology, sponsored by ASTRO, ASCO, IASLC and the University of Chicago.

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