People must eat to survive. And the cells that make up the body eat too. Or more accurately, cells break down and rebuild food into the individual molecules they need to stay alive and grow. This complex network of processes is called cellular metabolism. Cancer cells can alter their metabolism to survive, so targeting cancer cell metabolism has become of great interest to researchers. Questions being asked include: Is it possible to attack a tumor’s nutritional needs as part of cancer treatment? And could this be done by tweaking a cancer patient’s diet? A new NCI-supported study suggests that the latter may…
Author: Brett Johnson
Researchers have launched a clinical trial to test an immunotherapy drug in patients who have both cancer and an autoimmune disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, or multiple sclerosis. Immunotherapy drugs enhance the ability of the immune system to detect and kill tumor cells. In recent years, these therapies have benefited a growing number of patients, including some patients with advanced cancers. But doctors have not known whether immunotherapy is safe and effective for people who have both cancer and an autoimmune disease, because such patients have been excluded from clinical trials of immunotherapy drugs. “Having an overactive immune system is the main reason…
In April, the drug erdafitinib (Balversa) became the first therapy targeting a genetic alteration to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma, the most common type of bladder cancer. FDA granted an accelerated approval to the drug, which blocks the activity of a family of proteins called fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFR), for patients with specific FGFR gene alterations, based on preliminary data from a clinical trial. New findings from that trial have just been published. The updated results confirm that erdafitinib can benefit patients with advanced bladder cancer whose tumors have a genetic alteration in one of the four FGFR genes,…
A new study suggests that a person’s risk of progressing from a benign condition called monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) to multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, can change over time. On average, about 1% of people with MGUS go on to develop multiple myeloma each year. Doctors typically estimate a person’s risk of progressing soon after MGUS is diagnosed, using a test that measures the amounts of certain markers in the blood. That initial risk assessment guides how much follow-up care the patient receives. But according to the new findings, published July 18 in JAMA Oncology, the levels of those blood markers—and the risk of developing cancer—can…
One property of cancer cells that can help them gain and maintain a foothold in the body is their ability to evade detection and destruction by the human immune system. Some tumor cells, for example, make higher-than-normal amounts of proteins called “don’t eat me” signals, which are found on the cell surface. These “don’t eat me” proteins are a type of immune checkpoint. They are “like invisibility cloaks for the cancer,” preventing white blood cells called macrophages from detecting, engulfing, and devouring the tumor cells, explained Irving Weissman, M.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine. In a new study, Dr. Weissman and his colleagues have…
Drugs known as PARP inhibitors are used to treat some women with advanced ovarian cancer that has returned after earlier treatment. Now, results from three new clinical trials show that the drugs might also benefit women who are newly diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. The studies—which tested the PARP inhibitors niraparib (Zejula), olaparib (Lynparza), and veliparib, respectively—involved women with high-grade serous epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer. Standard initial treatment for women with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer typically includes first-line therapy with a combination of surgery and chemotherapy, sometimes followed by maintenance therapy—an additional treatment intended to help prevent the cancer from coming back.…
New results from a large clinical trial show that the immunotherapy drug durvalumab (Imfinzi) can prolong survival in some people with advanced small cell lung cancer (SCLC). In the study, treatment with durvalumab combined with a standard chemotherapy regimen increased overall survival in patients with newly diagnosed advanced SCLC by approximately 3 months compared with those treated with standard chemotherapy alone. Although the improvement in survival with immunotherapy was modest, it is noteworthy because SCLC has been such a recalcitrant disease, said Anna Farago, M.D., Ph.D., a lung cancer specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, who was not involved in the trial. “We now have two…
Waiting for medical results is like watching a pot that doesn’t want to boil. When diagnosing lung cancer, many people are left waiting for what seems like an eternity. And once the results are in, the waiting doesn’t necessarily end. Those diagnosed with lung cancer often undergo additional tests to determine whether or not they will respond positively to novel immunotherapy treatments. Of course, more tests mean more waiting. Each moment waiting for results is another moment further away from receiving a clean bill of health. Luckily, thanks to a new device, lung cancer patients may be able to get results in mere…