The latest annual report on cancer trends shows “that a long-term decline in death rates has continued for both sexes,” and there “seems little doubt that the decline in cancer death rates since the early 1990s is real,” a New York Times editorial states.
The Burzynski Research Institute, Inc. (BRI) today announced that its antineoplaston A10 and antineoplaston AS2-1 therapy (ANP) has been granted orphan drug designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (”FDA”) for the treatment of gliomas. It is estimated that in 2008 more than 21,000 men and women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with this type of cancer, with prevalence estimated at approximately 84,000 cases. “We are encouraged by the FDA’s action.
Medicsight PLC, an industry leader in and principal developer of Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) and medical image analysis software today announced clinical results from a new study that demonstrated CAD significantly increased the sensitivity of readers in the detection of colorectal cancers in multi-row detector CT (MDCT) colonography (CTC).
One of the most promising new ideas about the causes of cancer, known as the cancer stem-cell model, must be reassessed because it is based largely on evidence from a laboratory test that is surprisingly flawed when applied to some cancers, University of Michigan researchers have concluded. By upgrading the lab test, the U-M scientists showed that melanoma—the deadliest form of skin cancer—does not follow the conventional cancer stem-cell model, as prior reports had suggested.
Scientists in the US examining how human melanoma , a deadly form of skin cancer, spreads in mice specially bred to be vulnerable to cancer, found that there was a higher proportion of tumor causing cells in cancerous tissue than had previously been assumed, overturning the “stem-cell” theory of cancer which proposes that a only a handful of specialized rogue cells is responsible for causing new tumors.
PharmaEngine, Inc. announced today that it has received approval of an Investigational New Drug (IND) application from the U.S. FDA for PEP02, a liposome formulation of irinotecan in a phase II study in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. Previous phase I data showed excellent pharmacokinetics, tolerability and efficacy of PEP02 in advanced solid tumor patients in a poster presented at 2008 ASCO Annual Meeting.
OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: OGXI) today announced positive survival results from a randomized Phase 2 clinical trial of OGX-011 in combination with docetaxel and prednisone (”the OGX-011 arm”) compared to docetaxel and prednisone alone (”the control arm”) for first-line treatment of metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer. The current 10.
A team led by Stanford researchers has developed a prototype blood scanner that can find cancer markers in the bloodstream in early stages of the disease, potentially allowing for earlier treatment and dramatically improved chances of survival. The system based on MagArray biodetection chips can find cancer-associated proteins in a blood serum sample in less than an hour, and with much greater sensitivity than existing commercial devices.
Findings published in the December 1, 2008, issue of Clinical Cancer Research , a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, show lapatinib benefits women with HER2-positive breast cancer, while women with HER2-negative breast cancer or those who express EGRF alone derive no incremental benefit.
Improvements in behavior and screening have contributed greatly to the 13 percent decline in cancer mortality since 1990, with better cancer treatments playing a supporting role, according to new research from David Cutler of Harvard University. While not the first to report a long-term decline in cancer mortality, Cutler’s is the first study to examine the reasons for this decline.
