They said umbilical cord transplants are a viable option for adults with leukemia who urgently need a bone marrow transplant to replace cells destroyed by chemotherapy or radiation treatments, but cannot find a donor.

“What we found is when you look at the outcome of leukemia-free survival, which is the likelihood of a patient being alive without disease, it’s the same whether you are transplanting using an adult graft which is from an adult donor or a cord blood unit,” said Dr. Mary Eapen of the Medical College of Wisconsin, whose study appears in the journal Lancet Oncology.

Cord blood worked even if it was not a great match, Eapen said in a telephone interview.

Only about half of all white adult patients can find a suitable donor, and the odds are much lower if the patient is African American or Asian, Eapen said.

“In general … if you don’t have an acceptable tissue match with a donor, your chances of having a complication are higher and it can result in death,” she said.

But that is less so with stem cells from umbilical cord blood. “The body is more tolerant to the cells in the placental blood, even though they are not a perfect match.”

Eapen and colleagues analyzed data from 216 transplant centers worldwide. They compared the results of 165 patients 16 or older with acute leukemia who had been received umbilical cord blood to 888 adults given unrelated stem cell transplants, and 472 who had been given unrelated donor bone marrow.

After two years, all the patient groups were equally likely to survive and be free of leukemia regardless of graft source.

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Prof. Sayed-Ahmed’s team discovered that long-term carnitine supplements may even prevent the development of liver cancer. In their study using lab rats as animal model, they observed that a depletion in L carnitine levels led to the development of pre-malignant lesions in the liver and also progressed the vital organ’s degeneration. Providing carnitine supplements were found to completely reverse the degradation and the pre-cancerous lesions in the river also disappeared.

More at carnitine supplements and liver cancer.

Also check out: vitamins alpha lipoic acid.

Moreover, the team provided the first demonstration that this new type of therapy, infused into the bloodstream, can make its way to human tumors in a dose-dependent fashion—i.e., a higher number of nanoparticles sent into the body leads to a higher number of nanoparticles in the tumor cells.

These results, published in the March 21 advance online edition of the journal Nature, demonstrate the feasibility of using both nanoparticles and RNAi-based therapeutics in patients, and open the door for future “game-changing” therapeutics that attack cancer and other diseases at the genetic level, says Mark Davis, the Warren and Katharine Schlinger Professor of Chemical Engineering at Caltech, and the research team’s leader.

We’re all maybe looking, finally, at a real cancer cure, without side-effects.

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Estrogens can fuel the growth of many tumors, even in the prostate–and estrogen can do this at amazingly tiny concentrations. Identifying how estrogens’ prevalence varies by milk type, and in what chemical form the hormones occur, required a new assay, which the NCI scientists describe in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Chromatography B.

Using that technique, they showed that the mélange of estrogens varies widely between milks. Whole milk contained the smallest quantity of estrogens, and amounts ascended from 2% to skim and buttermilk. In all of these milks, the majority of estrogens had undergone a minor chemical modification, rendering them less directly bioavailable and less hormonally active.

However, these modified, or conjugated, estrogens are not inert, and they can be converted back to their more potent parent compounds.

What’s more, the NCI scientists note, studies by others have shown that relative to free, bioavailable estrogens, conjugated ones take longer to get from the gut into the blood.

Veenstra’s team concludes that compared with free estrogens, milk’s conjugated ones “are likely to have longer half-lives.”

Overall, skim milk had the smallest quantity of free estrogens. However, the conjugated type that dominated skim milk’s profile, 2-hydroxyestrone, is known to be one of the most reactive and potentially risky of the metabolites, notes Xia Xu, a toxicologist on the NCI team. That metabolite’s concentration in fat-free milk was second only to buttermilk’s.

Dermatologist F. William Danby, who teaches at Dartmouth Medical School, also worries about other sex hormones in milk—the “male” androgens.

While estrogens may fuel tumor growth in reproductive tissues, certain androgens—ones that Danby refers to as 5alpha-reduced androgens—“have the capacity for increasing the number of estrogen receptors.” In the January/February Dermato-Endocrinology, Danby notes that milk contains at least one receptor-proliferating androgen: 5alpha-pregnanedione.

Extra receptors, he explains, permit more estrogen—including any from milk—to unlock the cellular machinery that can turn tumor growth on. In other hormone systems, when excess hormone shows up, the body often cuts back on its production. Because the body has had relatively little evolutionary time to adapt to dietary sources of the 5alpha-reduced androgens, Danby says, no such feedback system has evolved.

“And this is probably the most important thing,” he says. Milk-derived hormones “are being poured into a system that didn’t anticipate them”—at least in adulthood.

One of the most provocative aspects of the milk story is its impact on insulinlike growth factor 1. Many studies have linked elevated concentrations of IGF-1 with cancer risk. Not only is milk a rich source of the substance, but people who drink milk also end up with more IGF-1 in their blood.

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US scientists, who reviewed 52 previous studies, calculated the most active people are 24% less likely to develop colon cancer than the least active.

Colon cancer is the most common form of bowel cancer, a disease which affects more than 36,500 people a year in the UK, causing 16,000 deaths.

The study appears in the British Journal of Cancer.

The study took into account many different types of physical activity including occupational activity like manual labour, as well as more traditional leisure-time activity such as running or going to the gym.

Lead researcher Dr Kathleen Wolin, from the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis said: “These results give us a very reliable calculation of the positive effect that exercise can have on reducing colon cancer risk.

“It’s very positive to see that exercise has such a clear benefit in reducing cancer risk and we hope it will encourage people to enjoy a healthy active lifestyle as well as treating it as a way to minimise their colon cancer risk.”

Dr Wolin said she hoped it would eventually be possible to give individuals a detailed breakdown of how they could reduce their chances of cutting their risk of bowel cancer tailored to their own specific circumstances.

Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, said: “One hundred people a day are diagnosed with bowel cancer in the UK alone, so it’s imperative that we do all we can to prevent the disease.

“We know that around half of all cancers could be prevented by changes to lifestyle.

“Maintaining a healthy bodyweight is one of the best ways to lower the risk of bowel and other cancers – potentially helping to avoid an estimated 13,000 cases each year.”

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The compound, indole-3-carbinol, is already undergoing clinical trials in humans because it was found to stop the growth of breast and prostate cancer cells in mice.

The new findings are the first to explain how indole-3-carbinol (I3C) stops cell growth, and thus provides the basis for designing improved versions of the chemical that would be more effective as a drug and could work against a broader range of breast as well as prostate tumors.

“I think one of the real uses of this compound and its derivatives is combining it with other kinds of therapies, such as tamoxifen for breast cancer and anti-androgens for prostate cancer,” said coauthor Gary Firestone, UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology. “Humans have co-evolved with cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and Brussels sprouts, so this natural source has a lot fewer side effects.”

“This is a major breakthrough in trying to understand what the specific targets of these natural products are,” said coauthor Leonard Bjeldanes, UC Berkeley professor of toxicology. “The field is awash with different results in various cells, but no real identification of a specific molecular target for these substances. The beauty of identifying the target like this is that it suggests further studies that could augment the activity of this type of molecule and really specify uses for specific cancers.”

Firestone, Bjeldanes and their colleagues showed that I3C inhibits the enzyme elastase, which at high levels in breast cancer cells heralds a poor prognosis: decreased response to chemotherapy, reduced response to endocrine treatment and reduced survival rates.

Elastase is an enzyme that shortens a cellular chemical, cyclin E, that is involved in controlling the cell cycle. The shortened version of cyclin E accelerates the cell cycle, making cancer cells proliferate faster. Firestone showed that I3C prevents the elastase shortening of cyclin E, thereby arresting development of breast cancer cells.

For more than 15 years, Firestone, Bjeldanes and their colleagues have studied the anti-cancer benefits of vegetables in the cabbage family that are lumped together in the genus Brassica and, because of their cross-shaped flowers, are often referred to as cruciferous vegetables.

Though the anti-cancer benefits have been recognized since the 1970s, the mechanism is only now being discovered, in part through the work of Firestone, Bjeldanes and their UC Berkeley colleagues.

“We have connected the dots on one extremely important pathway” by which indole-3-carbinol works, Firestone said.

In previous work, they found that indole-3-carbinol interferes with more than cell proliferation. It also disrupts the migration and alters adhesion properties of cancer cells, as well as counteracts the survival ability of cancer cells, all of which are implicated in cancer cell growth. To have such broad downstream effects, I3C must act at the beginning of a major cellular pathway, Firestone said. The newly reported research pins this activity to elastase and its effect on cyclin E.

Bjeldanes noted that I3C is available as a supplement and is a preferred preventative treatment for recurrent respiratory papillomatosis, a condition involving non-malignant tumors of the larynx. Improved versions of the chemical could thus help treat cancers other than those of the breast and prostate.

Graduate student Ida Aronchik and recent Ph.D. recipient Hanh H. Nguyen, along with colleagues in the Firestone and Bjeldanes labs, have already chemically modified I3C and boosted its activity in cell culture by at least a factor of 100. The lab teams currently are probing the elastase structure and how I3C interacts with it to identify the best parts of the I3C molecule to modify.

I3C is only one of many plant-derived chemicals, called phytochemicals, that Firestone is investigating in his laboratory as potential anti-cancer agents. Among them is the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. Last month, the Journal of Biological Chemistry accepted a paper by Firestone and his colleagues showing that artemisinin blocks prostate cancer cell growth by interfering with the same intracellular pathway as does I3C. This pathway involves the transcription factor SP1, which latches onto other genes to boost their activity.

“SP1 could be a generalized target of phytochemicals,” Firestone said. “Phytochemicals work because they interact with and inhibit enzymes that control a host of cellular processes, including migration and adhesion.”

The research is supported by the National Cancer Institute. Other coauthors of the paper are Gloria A. Brar, currently a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and former UC Berkeley undergraduate David H. H. Nguyen, now a graduate student at New York University.

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A new report from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) details 12 “major” advances and 19 “notable advances” across the gamut of cancer prevention, screening, treatment and survival in the past year.

“These specific advances . . . reflect a maturation, if you will, of the whole approach of personalized medicine to oncology care,” said ASCO President Dr. Richard L. Schilsky, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center. “And some of the reports deal with targeted therapies being used in a broader array of diseases. We’re beginning to see the utility of targeted therapies expand across many, many diseases, and we’re increasingly able to identify those patients who are most likely to benefit from those targeted therapies.”

The report was expected to be published online Dec. 22 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

One of the most impressive reports of the year serves as a backdrop to these advances, pointed out Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La. That was a study showing the first reported decline in the number of U.S. men and women developing and dying from cancer.

Nevertheless, some 1.4 million people received the devastating diagnosis of cancer in 2008, and half a million people died from the disease.

Following are the 12 major advances of 2008 identified by ASCO, divided into six general areas and not ranked in order of importance.

In the area of hard-to-treat cancers:

Cetuximab (Erbitux), a monoclonal antibody, when added to chemotherapy, increased overall survival by as much as 21 percent in patients with non-small cell lung cancer which expressed the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). Patients receiving Erbitux in a recent trial lived an average of 11.3 months vs. 10.1 months in those receiving a placebo. Lung cancer is the number-one cancer killer among men and women; only 5 percent of those diagnosed with this type of lung cancer survive five years. The new chemotherapy drug Gemcitabine (Gemzar) doubled disease-free survival from 6.9 months to 13.4 months in pancreatic cancer patients, and increased overall survival from 20.2 months to 22.8 months in patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer who had undergone surgery. Again, only 5 percent of people receiving this diagnosis live five years.

In the area of new drug approvals:

Bendamustine (Treanda) “eliminated” chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in one-third of patients compared with 2 percent who went with current standard therapy, and extended survival without a recurrence to 21.7 months from 9.3 months. The drug was approved in March of 2008 and is now indicated as first-line treatment for the disease. Bevacizumab (Avastin), another monoclonal antibody, was approved (in conjunction with the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel (Taxol) for women with previously untreated HER2-negative, metastatic breast cancer. A trial the year before had found the combination doubled disease-free survival compared with women receiving chemo alone. A second trial, this one from 2008, confirmed the findings.

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Korean scientists have developed a substance they call “TSAHC,” which is to be used for a new medicine that could suppress the protein TM4SF5 known to be a major cause of liver cancer.

Lee Jung-weon, a professor at the College of Medicine of Seoul National University, and Park Ki-hun, a professor of applied life sciences at Gyeongsang National University made the announcement on Monday. Their paper is listed in the online version of world-renowned journal Hepatology, after the research team finished registering patents on TSAHC in Korea and the United States.

“TSAHC has fewer side effects than existing anti-cancer medicine that kills cancer cells, because it selectively suppresses tumor growth and growth of cells in veins that supply nutrition to cancer cells.

“We can expect to generate a great amount of value from the technology that enables mass production of a cancer drug at low cost,” said the team.

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The results were unexpected by the doctors, who had never suspected to find a link between performing fellatio and breast cancer. The study, which spanned 10 years, involved 15,000 women “suspected” of having performed regular fellatio and swallowed the ejaculatory fluid. Researchers discovered that those actually having performed fellatio regularly had a lower occurrence of breast cancer than those who had not.

However, there is no increased risk of breast cancer for those who had not regularly performed fellatio.

“I think it removes the last shade of doubt that fellatio is actually a healthy act,” said Dr. A.J. Kramer of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. “I am surprised by these findings, but am also excited that the researchers may have discovered a relatively easy way to lower the occurrence of breast cancer in women.”

Study from 2003