New research suggests that inducing a form of controlled cell death called necroptosis in or around tumor cells can help the immune system rid the body of cancer cells. Necroptosis is an explosive form of cell death during which a cell typically swells and then bursts. In the study, researchers found that injecting cells undergoing necroptosis into tumors in mice kickstarted an immune response against the tumors. In the NCI-funded study, published June 21 in Science Immunology, the researchers also used a virus to deliver genes for the proteins that drive necroptosis into tumor cells. Combining this treatment with a commonly…
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Clinical recommendations on who should be screened for lung cancer are based largely on how long a person smoked and the number of cigarettes they smoked. But current recommendations may need to be reviewed when it comes to African Americans who smoke, a new study suggests. In the study, only about one-third of African American smokers diagnosed with lung cancer over a 12-year period would have met the criteria for annual lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography (CT) laid out by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). In contrast, more than half of white smokers diagnosed with lung cancer met…
Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is the deadliest and most aggressive form of brain cancer for which there is currently no cure. This often-fatal brain cancer accounts for 45% of all malignant brain tumors and 12,000 cancer diag noses per year in the United States, in addition to tens of thousands more around the globe. The average GBM patient has a survival rate of one to two years. Out of determination to improve outcomes for GBM patients, in June 2019, after years of collaboration the Global Coalition for Adaptive Research (GCAR) launched GBM AGILE – a global effort to defeat GBM…
Travera’s new technology can predict how patients will respond to hundreds of different drugs or drug combinations before the patients even take the drugs. Their new measurement tool, the Suspended Microchannel Resonator (SMR), reveals cancer cells’ responses to effective drugs faster than ever before. Travera tests on-label drugs, off-label drugs, and investigational drugs, to maximize drug quality and effectiveness for patients and to save them from unnecessary toxicity. By doing so, Travera can pinpoint the right drugs within <2 days, even though it will take many weeks to work in the patient’s body, and thus, is moving oncology from being…
June 7, 2019, by NCI Staff Smoldering myeloma is a slow-growing type of multiple myeloma, a form of cancer in which abnormal plasma cells (purple) make too much of a single type of antibody. The drug lenalidomide (Revlimid) may delay the development of multiple myeloma in individuals with smoldering myeloma that is at high risk of progressing to cancer, according to preliminary results from a clinical trial. Smoldering myeloma is a precancerous condition that alters certain proteins in blood and/or increases plasma cells in bone marrow, but it does not cause symptoms of disease. About half of those diagnosed with the condition, however, will develop multiple myeloma within 5 years.…
JUNE 4, 2019 NFCR WRITER DAVID PERRY BLOG Ask any parent about their child fighting cancer and words like “nightmare” and “helpless” will almost certainly be part of the conversation. Within pediatric cancer medicine, the entire field faces the brutal reality that chemotherapy, surgery and most other cancer treatments are not designed for children. This can be somewhat understandable, since cancer is predominantly an adult disease. There are more than 100 kinds of cancer, yet the American Cancer Society lists just eight as common among children. Yet pediatricians cannot, on the fly, convert adult therapies to use for child patients. Use too little of…
The latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer finds that, for all cancer sites combined, cancer death rates continued to decline in men, women, and children in the United States from 1999 to 2016. Overall cancer incidence rates, or rates of new cancers, decreased in men from 2008 to 2015, after increasing from 1999 to 2008, and were stable in women from 1999 to 2015. In a special section of the report, researchers looked at cancer rates and trends in adults ages 20 to 49. The annual report is a collaborative effort among the National Cancer…
Soligenix is a late-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing products to treat rare diseases where there is currently an unmet medical need. Soligenix is a biotherapeutic business segment dedicated to the development of products for orphan diseases and areas where there are currently no drug therapies approved, such as Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma, oral mucositis, and pediatric Crohn’s disease. They are now conducting two Phase 3 clinical trials with multiple data reads through 2019 and early 2020. Their first Phase 3 trial, for cutaneous T-cell Lymphoma (or CTCL), used a novel photodynamic therapy for the first-line treatment of this…