Thread: Breast cancer research & treatment updates

Research on shark's blood for cancer fighting properties gets help from drug company Roche...

Research on Cancer-Fighting Shark's Blood Gets Boost in Australia
March 09, 2012 : Australian scientists investigating the cancer-fighting qualities of shark blood have been given a significant funding boost from an international pharmaceutical giant.

The team from La Trobe University in Melbourne says trials indicate shark antibodies can be a potent weapon against malaria and breast cancer. International pharmaceutical company Roche is funding Australian research into shark blood for six months. During that time scientists will try to determine if shark-blood antibodies are able to lock onto and neutralize cancer cells.

Shark antibodies are very small, which researchers say makes them particularly good at seeking out and binding to target cells. Thanks in part to funding from the Bill Gates Foundation, trials have already shown they can be an effective treatment against malaria. The research started a decade ago and a team from Melbourne’s La Trobe University has created the world’s first 'test-tube library' of millions of antibodies from shark blood that could fight cancer and other diseases. Trials into breast cancer have also started, work that will be accelerated following the deal with Roche.

“There are several-thousand million different anti-bodies," explained associate professor Mick Foley, explaining the funding deal. "Really we have just got to find in our library one that will bind to their target and give that to them. We will license it to them," he explained. "But we are hoping that, you know, this is just a sort of vote of confidence, if you like, in big pharma (large pharmaceutical companies) that we have something interesting that might be very useful to the broader pharmaceutical industry."

Foley says his team’s work could provide a breakthrough. "We are researching into sort of, for example, cancers," Foley said. "So, we have several antibodies that we are looking at, one of which we know in vitro, again in the laboratory, if you put it into breast cancer cells it will stop those breast cancer cells from growing.” Sharks have immune systems similar to humans, but their antibodies - the molecules that actually fight disease - are different to human anti-bodies and are extremely resilient. The team in Melbourne found that shark antibodies can withstand high temperatures as well as extremely acidic or alkaline conditions.

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New breast cancer drug...

Experimental drug keeps aggressive breast cancer at bay
3 June`12 - An experimental drug treatment may help keep a certain kind of aggressive breast cancer at bay, offering new hope for individual therapies against difficult tumors, said research released Sunday.

The phase III trial comparing trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) to standard therapy for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2 positive) breast cancer was presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago. The international study randomized nearly 1,000 patients to receive either T-DM1 or standard therapy every three weeks. The subjects all had metastatic cancer that had spread to other parts of the body. The trial found that progression-free survival in the T-DM1 group was 9.6 months, compared to 6.4 months in the standard therapy group, which study authors described as "clinically meaningful improvement." "The drug worked. It was significantly better than a very effective approved therapy for HER2 overexpressing metastatic breast cancer," said lead study author Kimberly Blackwell, professor of medicine at Duke University. "Also, as a clinician who takes care of a lot of breast cancer patients, I'm pleased that this drug has very little dose-limiting toxicity. Patients don't lose their hair from this drug. "For patients facing metastatic breast cancer, this is a breakthrough."

The data on overall survival time showed 65 percent of T-DM1 patients were alive after two years, compared to 47.5 percent of the standard therapy patients, a threshold that fell short of the trial's predetermined limits for judging statistical significance. More analysis of survival times is planned for later in the ongoing study. HER2 positive cancer makes up about 15 percent of breast cancers, and is tends to be more difficult to treat. However some targeted therapies have shown promise, such as trastuzumab, also known as Herceptin. "Trastuzumab is now a standard in the adjuvant setting to reduce risk of recurrence and improve survival, and in the metastatic setting to control disease and prolong life," said Antonio Wolff, professor of oncology at The Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. "Unfortunately, there are still many patients with HER2-positive disease whose disease recurs despite adjuvant trastuzumab, and whose cancers stop responding when treated in the metastatic setting," said Wolff, who was not involved with the study.

He described T-DM1 as a "second generation HER2-targeted therapy that goes one step further" by delivering small doses of chemotherapy to the HER2 positive tumors. TDM-1 is "another critical step in our quest towards the individualization of therapies," he told AFP. These therapies, like trastuzumab, have "helped change what was once a bad prognosis into a disease that can now be controlled and in many patients cured." Wolff said future studies are likely to focus on T-DM1 as a treatment given earlier in the course of the disease, and in combination with other drug treatments. Trastuzumab emtansine is being developed globally by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche under a collaboration agreement between ImmunoGen and Genentech, and drug makers are seeking regulatory approval in the US and Europe this year.

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Granny says, "Ladies, get yer blood tested...

Blood test 'can save breast cancer patients' lives'
6 June`12 - A simple blood test can save lives by helping doctors swiftly diagnose whether a patient with early breast cancer faces high risk of death or relapse after treatment, specialists said Wednesday.

Tumour cells in a blood sample, when taken at an early stage of the disease, are an accurate predictor of a patient's survival chances, the team said in the journal The Lancet Oncology. The findings could help identify early on which patients might benefit from additional treatment like chemotherapy. "The presence of one or more circulating tumour cells (CTCs, in the blood) predicted early recurrence and decreased overall survival," said the researchers from the University of Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Center. The more CTCs they found, the higher the risk of death.

CTC blood tests are not currently used to analyse a patient's prognosis or prescribe treatment, as cancer tumours are generally thought to spread through the lymphatic system rather than the bloodstream. The team conducted tests on 302 patients treated at the centre between February 2005 and December 2010. The subjects were at an early phase of breast cancer -- before it spread to other parts of the body -- and had not received chemotherapy. The team found CTCs in a quarter of the group. Of those with tumour cells in their blood, one in seven relapsed after treatment and one in 10 died during the test period.

By contrast, patients whose blood tests yielded no CTCs had a relapse rate of three percent and a death rate of two percent. "For patients with a higher concentration of CTCs, the correlation with survival and progression rates was even more dramatic, with 31 percent of these patients dying or relapsing," said a press release accompanying the study. Previous research showed similar results in patients with breast cancer that had already metastasised, or spread. The new study claims to show that "advanced disease is not necessary for cancer cells to spread (via the blood) and compromise survival."

Others urged caution, saying the research was in its infancy and urging larger clinical studies. "It's great work and very well conducted. We just don't know how to act on the study yet, ie what to do differently with our patients," Justin Stebbing of the Department of Surgery and Cancer at London's Imperial College told AFP. In particular, it was not clear whether the CTC count must be measured before, during or after surgery to remove the cancerous growth. Nor was it clear what effect chemotherapy would have on the CTC markers.

http://news.yahoo.com/blood-test-sav...091741596.html

Cancer becoming more survival...

Number of US cancer survivors to surge: study
14 June - The number of people in the United States who have survived cancer is set to reach nearly 18 million in the next decade, up from 13.7 million currently, said a US study out Thursday.

The number of survivors is growing because of better treatments and an ageing and expanding population, even as the overall rate of cancer is falling, it said. The research appears in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, and was compiled by the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute. Nearly half of US cancer survivors are 70 or older, and 64 percent were diagnosed five or more years ago, said the report.

The median, or midpoint age for patients at the time of diagnosis was 66. Young cancer survivors were more rare -- only five percent of the US population that had beat cancer was younger than 40. "There are 58,510 survivors of childhood cancer living in the United States, and an additional 12,060 children will be diagnosed in 2012," said the study.

The most common cancers among women in 2012 were breast (41 percent), uterine (eight percent), and colorectal (eight percent). Among men, the most common were are prostate cancer (43 percent), colorectal cancer (nine percent), and melanoma (seven percent). In the United States, there will be an estimated 1.6 million new cases of cancer in 2012 and 577,000 deaths, according to projections by the American Cancer Society.

http://news.yahoo.com/number-us-canc...141906179.html

Granny says, "Get day jobs ladies...

Night work may boost women's breast cancer risk: study
19 June`12 - Night work may increase a woman's chances of developing breast cancer by 30 percent -- a slightly elevated but "statistically significant" risk, French researchers said Tuesday.

This placed night work in the same order of risk as factors like genetic mutation, a late first pregnancy or hormonal treatment, Pascal Guenel, director of French health research body INSERM, told AFP. Put into context, a smoker was eight times as likely to contract lung cancer as a woman working night shifts was to get breast cancer, he explained. About 1,3 million women around the world are diagnosed with breast cancer every year.

In a study published in the International Journal of Cancer, the INSERM-led team said an association between night work with breast cancer "was mainly observed in women working during overnight shifts, those who worked at night for 4.5 or more years and less than three nights per week on average. "The association was stronger in women who worked at night before their first full-term pregnancy than in women who started working at night later in life."

The scientists said more study was needed to determine the reasons. Hypotheses include disruption of "body clock" genes, internal desynchronisation and sleep deprivation altering the immune system. The study was conducted in France among 1,232 women diagnosed with breast cancer between 2005 and 2007.

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Chemotherapy counter-productive...

Chemo 'undermines itself' through rogue response
5 August 2012 - Chemotherapy can undermine itself by causing a rogue response in healthy cells, which could explain why people become resistant, a study suggests.

The treatment loses effectiveness for a significant number of patients with secondary cancers. Writing in Nature Medicine, US experts said chemo causes wound-healing cells around tumours to make a protein that helps the cancer resist treatment. A UK expert said the next step would be to find a way to block this effect. Around 90% of patients with solid cancers, such as breast, prostate, lung and colon, that spread - metastatic disease - develop resistance to chemotherapy. Treatment is usually given at intervals, so that the body is not overwhelmed by its toxicity. But that allows time for tumour cells to recover and develop resistance.

In this study, by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle looked at fibroblast cells, which normally play a critical role in wound healing and the production of collagen, the main component of connective tissue such as tendons. But chemotherapy causes DNA damage that causes the fibroblasts to produce up to 30 times more of a protein called WNT16B than they should. The protein fuels cancer cells to grow and invade surrounding tissue - and to resist chemotherapy.

Success v failure

It was already known that the protein was involved in the development of cancers - but not in treatment resistance. The researchers hope their findings will help find a way to stop this response, and improve the effectiveness of therapy. Peter Nelson, who led the research, said: "Cancer therapies are increasingly evolving to be very specific, targeting key molecular engines that drive the cancer rather than more generic vulnerabilities, such as damaging DNA. "Our findings indicate that the tumour microenvironment also can influence the success or failure of these more precise therapies."

Prof Fran Balkwill, a Cancer Research UK expert on the microenvironment around tumours, said: "This work fits with other research showing that cancer treatments don't just affect cancer cells, but can also target cells in and around tumours. "Sometimes this can be good - for instance, chemotherapy can stimulate surrounding healthy immune cells to attack tumours. "But this work confirms that healthy cells surrounding the tumour can also help the tumour to become resistant to treatment. "The next step is to find ways to target these resistance mechanisms to help make chemotherapy more effective."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19111700

Breast cancer early diet link...

Early Life Diet May Contribute to Breast Cancer
September 21, 2012 - Researchers have found evidence that a young girl's diet could affect her risk of developing breast cancer later in life.

The evidence linking a woman's breast cancer risk to her diet as a youth comes from mouse studies at the University of California Davis. Lead researcher Russ Hovey says investigators worked with female rodents whose estrogen production had been blocked. The female reproductive hormone is responsible for the development of sexual characteristics, including breast growth. Circulating estrogen from the ovaries has also been implicated in breast tumors. But the hormone's influence was eliminated in the subject mice. The mice were then fed a calorie-rich diet containing a fatty acid known as 10, 12 CLA. It led to a pre-diabetic state called metabolic syndrome, marked by rising blood sugar levels, weight gain, elevated cholesterol levels and high blood pressure.

The fatty diet also stimulated breast growth in some mice, even though they lacked estrogen, according to Hovey. “What we’ve shown is that when we fed a diet that was supplemented with this particular type of fat, it then led to metabolic changes. But the thing that surprised us most was in fact that the breasts developed in these mice even though they had no ovaries and even though we used other methods to remove estrogen from their system,” he said. The researchers found that the diet-induced breast growth also resulted in the development of tumors in some of the mice.

Hovey says not all of the mice fed the fatty diet developed tumors - suggesting that there may also be a genetic component contributing to breast cancer. The take-home message, according to Hovey, is that the diets of young girls should be monitored to reduce the kinds of fats that can trigger cancer and other diseases. “Like obesity for example, [or] Type 2 diabetes, [and] that might also be able to substitute or stimulate breast development, independent of estrogen,” explained Hover.

As Type 2 diabetes becomes more common around the world, the study’s findings suggest an epidemic of breast cancer might not be far behind. An article on diet and breast tumor development is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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4 types of breast cancer found...

Researchers Find Four Distinct Types of Breast Cancer
September 27, 2012 - A new genetic analysis of breast cancer has found four distinct types of the deadly disease, which experts say explains why drug therapy for one form of breast cancer may not work to cure another form. The findings are the latest fruits of a massive cancer-gene mapping project offering hope of more effective treatments for breast cancer, with already-available drugs.

Perhaps the most intriguing discovery yet by the U.S. government-funded Cancer Genome Atlas is that some breast cancer tumors are similar, genetically, to cancer cells that invade other parts of the body, so existing therapies might be repurposed to successfully treat cancers of the breast. Scientists studying the DNA in breast cancer tumors from more than 800 patients found that cells in one of the breast cancer types resemble the basal-type cells found in ovarian cancer tumors. It’s possible, the researchers say, that the tumor might respond well to cisplatin-based drugs typically used for the gynecological cancer. Newer ovarian cancer drugs might also be beneficial against the breast tumors.

Jeff Boyd is senior vice president for Molecular Medicine at Temple University's Foxchase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all treatment for breast cancer, says Boyd. “What we are learning is that we’ve got to get beyond treat[ing] every breast cancer the same. Do a lumpectomy, treat with these three drugs, irradiate locally and cross your fingers," he explained. "We now know, as we are beginning to learn for many cancer types, that there are multiple molecular cancer genetics that essentially render them separate diseases.”

Two other cancer types identified in the genomic study, called luminal A and B, are triggered into mutating by a gene called HER2. A drug called Herceptin can block that gene, stem its growth and improve the prognosis for women with these types of cancer. Herceptin has been approved for use to treat all breast cancers, yet not every tumor responds to the drug, and now researchers have a better understanding why. Mathew Ellis is a cancer researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who has collaborated on the Cancer Genome Atlas. Ellis hopes targeted therapies for the different types of breast cancer will soon become available to help his patients.

“Now we have to fast-forward to a day -- hopefully in the next year or two -- where at least in clinical studies the information is flowing forward to the patients and doctors. And critically that data flow includes access to the drugs,” Ellis stated. The project funded by the U.S. National Cancer Institute began in 2006 with the goal of trying to identify the biomolecular underpinnings of more than 200 human cancers. The research involving breast cancer initially identified the genetic signatures of tumors that led researchers to conclude there was probably more than one breast-cancer type. The latest findings, published in the journal Nature, offer that proof.

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Granny says, "Take yer hormones ladies...

HRT reduces risk of heart attack, study suggests
9 October 2012 - Long-term use of HRT has been debated over the last decade

Women who take hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may cut their risk of heart problems, a study suggests, but experts are still cautious about long-term safety risks. Published in the journal BMJ, the study also found HRT is not associated with an increased risk of cancer or stroke - but past studies have shown a link. The Department of Health advises women to only use it on a short-term basis. The researchers traced 1,000 women over 10 years - half of them were on HRT.

Talking about their findings, the paper's authors said: "HRT had significantly reduced risk of mortality, heart failure, or heart attack, without any apparent increase of cancer, deep vein thrombosis or stroke." However, they stressed that "due to the potential time lag, longer time may be necessary to take more definite conclusions". Safety concerns about the long-term use of the therapy has been debated by academics over the past decade.

Cancer findings

The women in the study were aged between 45-58 years old and recently menopausal - those on treatment started it soon after menopausal symptoms began. HRT replaces female hormones that are no longer produced during the menopause and can help with hot flushes, insomnia, headaches and irritability. After 10 years, 33 women in the group that had not taken HRT had died or suffered from heart failure or a heart attack, compared with just 16 women who were taking the treatment. Thirty-six women in the HRT group were treated for cancer compared to 39 who had not taken HRT - of which 17 cases were breast cancer compared to 10 in the HRT group. They also found that after stopping the therapy, the women continued to see health benefits for six years.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine said: "This is a very significant piece of research and should reassure the millions of women who turn to hormone therapy for relief of their menopausal symptoms. "Although the study was not large, the long-term follow-up of 16 years is reassuring as there was no increase in adverse events including cancer. "This should not be considered the last word on the effects of hormone therapy. More research is needed." A series of previous studies has linked HRT with a higher risk of breast cancer and heart attack. A large study which initiated the discussion and looked at a million women, suggested taking it for several years doubled a women's risk of developing breast cancer. Weighing up the evidence from numerous past studies, some experts warn this new BMJ study does not mean that HRT can now be considered safe.

GP advice

Granny gonna get her one o' dem new breast cancer detecting bras...

New 'smart' bra could detect breast cancer
October 18, 2012 - It looks like a regular sports bra – but it’s meant to help women detect early signs of breast cancer, FOX 5 reported.

Lifeline Biotechnologies has developed the First Warning System, or a smart bra, after years of research. According to FOX 5, the concept is called “thermography,” which relies on precisely detecting heat or abnormal heat signatures from tumors versus normal tissue.”

Dr. Siavash Jabbari of Sharp Barnhart Cancer Center in Chula Vista, Calif., said the device is an “encouraging sign in the fight against cancer,” and it will give hope to the one in eight American women who develop the disease in their lifetime.

The bra is still in a trial stage, but it’s showing good results. The company hopes the device will be available in the U.S. within the next two years. “There are plenty of investigators currently working on bio-censors that can be implanted under the skin, then feed diagnostic information about the patient,” Jabbari said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/1...#ixzz29iMNQ7aM