February 5, 2007, 6:47 PM CT

MIT breast cancer therapy

A breast cancer therapy based on MIT research originally intended for detecting missiles is documented in a new book by Alan J. Fenn, an MIT researcher and inventor of the technique.

The book, "Breast Cancer Treatment by Focused Microwave Thermotherapy" (Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2007), includes a discussion of promising results from the latest clinical trials of the treatment.

Treating cancer with heat is not a new idea, but "scientists were having trouble using it to treat tumors deep within the body," said Fenn. Further, it's difficult to deliver the heat only to cancer cells without overheating normal tissue.

The microwaves in the new technique heat--and kill--cells containing high amounts of water and ions, or electrically charged atoms. Cancer cells typically have a high content of both, while healthy breast tissue contains much less. The outpatient procedure uses a single tiny needle probe to sense and measure parameters during therapy. Side effects appear to be minimal.

The first clinical study of the therapy involved 75 patients with early-stage breast cancer. Of the 34 patients who received the therapy previous to lumpectomy, none had viable cancer cells remaining at the surgical margins. Of the 41 patients who had a lumpectomy but did not receive the MIT therapy, four had cancer cells at the surgical margins.........

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January 24, 2007, 6:16 PM CT

Estrogen Interferes With Breast Cancer surveillance

Estrogen is known to enhance the growth and migration of breast cancer cells. Now scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have observed that estrogen also can shield breast cancer cells from immune cells.

As per a research findings published online this week in Oncogene, the scientists report that estrogen induces the expression of an inhibitor that blocks immune cells' ability to kill tumor cells. This is the first study to identify estrogen's role in shielding breast cancer cells from the action of immune cells.

The scientists analyzed estrogen's role in the cascade of events that occurs when immune cells, called natural killer cells, encounter a tumor cell. Under normal conditions, natural killer cells release granules that contain enzymes, called granzymes, which enter and kill the tumor cell.

The research team observed that when estrogen binds to an estrogen receptor the complex promotes production of a granzyme inhibitor, proteinase inhibitor 9 (PI-9). The inhibitor binds the granzyme, preventing it from initiating the molecular cascade that kills tumor cells.

"It wasn't known that estrogen could do this in breast cancer cells," said principal investigator David J. Shapiro, a professor of biochemistry in the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology. "The amounts of estrogen mandatory to do this are quite small."........

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January 15, 2007, 4:53 AM CT

Marker For Aggressive Form Of Breast Cancer

Scientists have linked a structural protein called nestin to a especially deadly form of breast cancer, identifying a new biomarker that could lead to earlier detection and better therapy.

In the January 15 issue of Cancer Research, scientists from Dartmouth Medical School demonstrate that nestin could represent a selective biological marker for basal epithelial breast tumors, a highly aggressive cancer with similarities to mammary stem cells, the regenerative cells thought to bethe site of breast cancer initiation.

"Patients with this type of breast cancer are at high risk for recurrence," said James DiRenzo, Ph.D., assistant professor at Dartmouth Medical School. "Ideally, a marker like nestin would enable clinicians to monitor these patients through frequent tests of a biomarker and, in doing so, detect the cancer before it has a chance to come back".

Basal epithelial tumors lack important molecular targets such as the estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and Her2. This not only makes positive diagnosis difficult, say researchers, but also eliminates several important lines of treatment, such as tamoxifen or Herceptin, that work well for other breast cancer subtypes.

"Currently, there is no direct means of determining if a breast cancer is a basal epithelial tumor - doctors only know for certain once the other forms of breast cancer are ruled out," DiRenzo said. "This type of breast cancer is generally difficult to manage, but several important studies have shown that it is more likely than other breast cancer subtypes to respond to certain types of treatment, which highlights the need for a definitive diagnostic marker".........

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January 10, 2007, 9:55 PM CT

Online Prayer May Help Breast Cancer Patients

Interesting news on breast cancer reported by Reuters and CNN.

Praying online in a support group may help women with breast cancer cope with the disease more effectively, a new study shows.

Dr. Bret Shaw of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues found that breast cancer patients who used a higher percentage of religion-related words in their communications with an Internet support group had lower levels of negative emotions, better functional well-being, and more confidence in their ability to deal with their illness.

"Breast cancer patients who want to pray can use online support groups as a place to cope with their illness with other people going through similar situations," Shaw told Reuters. "Our data suggest that this might make you feel better."

Shaw decided to launch the study after observing how common it was for people to use prayer in online support groups. "We noticed a lot of people were exchanging prayers on line, praying for themselves and other group participants," he said.

However, he added that "some women were so kind of turned off by the overly religious tone of the groups that they did not want to participate."

To investigate the health, social and emotional effects of online prayer for women with breast cancer, Shaw and his team loaned a group of women computers linked to the Web. They also provided training on computer and Internet use. The women were surveyed at the study's outset and again after four months of support group participation.........

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December 18, 2006, 8:13 PM CT

Black Women And Breast Cancer Survival

A number of prior studies have shown that African-American women generally perform worse when it comes to breast cancer survival. This is true even after taking into consideration such factors as tumor size and socioeconomic differences, according to a new study.

"I think it's due to biological factors in the actual cancer, and this means that race may be a surrogate for a more adverse molecular profile within the cancer," said Dr. Kathy Albain, the study's senior researcher and a professor of medicine at Loyola University Chicago Medical Center.

This study utilized database from two prior clinical trials done in the early part of 1990s.

The study included 317 pairs of women -- 317 black and 317 white. All these patients had been treated for early-stage breast cancer with chemotherapy and who had been followed after therapy over 10 years.

The survival rate of the white women after 10 years was 86 percent in comparison to 76 percent for the black women.

All the women had the same tumor stage and were treated identically. The potential influence of age, tumor differences, education level and socioeconomic status also was considered.

The study then took into account the fact that black women were more likely to have discontinued therapy early, to have missed appointments or delayed therapy and had lower initial white blood cell counts. But they had the same relative doses of total chemotherapy delivered during therapy.........

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December 18, 2006, 7:47 PM CT

Detecting Breast Cancer Metastases Early

Results from a prospective clinical study show that the GeneSearch- Breast Lymph Node (BLN) Assay, a gene-based diagnostic test has greater sensitivity than traditional intra-operative methods of detecting the spread of breast cancer to the lymph nodes. In the study sponsored by Veridex, LLC, the GeneSearch- BLN Assay demonstrated overall sensitivity at least 10 percentage points higher than traditional intra-operative tests. The data were presented today at the 29th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

"These results indicate the potential advantage of the GeneSearch- BLN Assay as an objective, standardized test that can assess breast cancer metastasis in the lymph nodes rapidly and with greater overall sensitivity than the current standard of care," said study investigator Peter W. Blumencranz, MD, FACS, Medical Director of Comprehensive Breast Health and Cancer Services, Morton Plant Mease Healthcare, and Medical Director of Moffitt Morton Plant Cancer Care, Clearwater, Florida. "This intra-operative test may provide surgeons with critical information that can help them optimize therapy decisions by allowing them to determine the scope of the surgery required."

In the study involving 416 evaluable patients across 11 clinical trial sites, sentinel lymph nodes were tested using the GeneSearch- BLN Assay and current methods for assessing nodal tissue during surgery (frozen section (FS) or touch preparations (TP)). All nodes were sampled for permanent section hematoxylin/eosin (H&E), and most were also sampled for immunohistochemistry (IHC). The GeneSearch- BLN Assay, FS and TP results were each in comparison to permanent section histology results to determine the performance of each method. The test was reviewed in terms of sensitivity and specificity, which measure how well the method correctly identifies nodes with and without clinically relevant metastases. Tests with lower sensitivity have a higher chance of false negatives, and tests with lower specificity have a higher chance of false positives.........

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December 17, 2006, 9:43 PM CT

Breast Cancer Patients May Not Follow Hormonal Therapy

Postmenopausal women with early-stage, hormone-sensitive breast cancer have a lower risk of disease recurrence when their treatment includes a new class of hormone therapy drugs, yet one out five women prescribed the drugs may not take them regularly, according to a study conducted by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals. Their findings will be presented at the 29th annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium on Saturday, Dec. 16 (Abstract 4044).

"These data are very concerning because hormonal therapy for breast cancer is one of the most effective treatments in all of oncology," said Ann Partridge, MD, MPH, the study's lead author and a breast cancer specialist at Dana-Farber. "Women may be compromising their care, and ultimately their survival, if they do not take these medications as recommended".

Partridge and her colleagues analyzed claims data from three large commercial health plan systems to gauge treatment compliance of more than 7,000 women with early stage-breast cancer who, in addition to their regular treatment, began taking anastrozole.

Anastrozole is part of a new class of drugs, called aromatase inhibitors, that reduces the production of the hormone estrogen by blocking aromatase, an enzyme that converts the hormone androgen into estrogen. Studies have shown that lowering estrogen levels in post-menopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer can reduce their risk of disease recurrence.........

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December 16, 2006, 12:09 AM CT

Reduce Fat Intake Say Breast Cancer Experts

For a number of years scientists were arguing if increased fat intake would increase the risk of breast cancer. Now a team of scientists has observed that reducing the amount of dietary fat intake may actually decrease the chance of a breast cancer recurrence in women who have been treated for early-stage breast cancer. This is not just speculation, but based on solid evidence revealed by a phase III randomized, clinical trial in the latest issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Rowan T. Chlebowski, M.D., Ph.D., of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at the Harbor-University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., and his colleagues set out to determine whether a low-fat diet could prolong relapse-free survival in women with early-stage breast cancer.

Between February 1994 and January 2001, 2,437 women who had been treated for early-stage breast cancer were recruited from the Women's Intervention Nutrition Study (WINS). They were randomly assigned to a dietary intervention group (40%), or a control group (60%). The new study reports an analysis of all information collected as of October 31, 2003 with an average of 5 years of follow-up, when funding for the intervention ceased.

The goal of the dietary intervention was to reduce dietary fat to 15% of total calories. Women in the intervention group attended eight biweekly, 1-hour counseling sessions to learn about a low-fat eating plan, and they kept written records of their daily fat gram intake. Dieticians contacted or met with the women every 3 months, and participants could attend optional monthly dietary group sessions. Women in the control group met with a dietician when they started the trial and were contacted by dieticians every 3 months.........

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December 15, 2006, 4:27 AM CT

Biomarkers To Predict Potential For Breast Cancer Spread

Researchers are always trying to find ways to predict the behaviors of cancer cells. One area of interest is to identify proteins and other biomarkers associated with the potential of cancer spread. Over the years many biomarkers were identified and the researchers are continuing to uncover more of these. Recently researchers found that expression of two different proteins taken from primary tumor biopsies is highly associated with spread of breast cancer to nearby lymph nodes. Researcher say this protein profile could help identify at an early stage those patients whose disease is likely to metastasize.

In the December 15 issue of Cancer Research, the researchers say over-expression of one unidentified protein and under-expression of another is 88 percent accurate in identifying breast cancer that has spread in a group of 65 patients, compared to an analysis of lymph nodes and outcomes.

If the predictive and diagnostic power of these proteins is validated, they could be analyzed in primary tumor biopsies that are routinely collected at the time of diagnosis, saving some women from extensive and possibly unnecessary treatment as well as from undergoing a second surgery to collect lymph nodes for analysis, the researchers say.

"We want to be able to predict, at the earliest stages, if a tumor has spread and how dangerous it will be," said the study's lead author, Dave S. B. Hoon, Ph.D., director of Molecular Oncology at the John Wayne Cancer Institute, Saint Johns Health Center, in Santa Monica, California. "These two proteins may allow us to target aggressive tumors with more extensive therapy management to some women, while sparing others from needless treatment".........

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December 12, 2006, 5:10 AM CT

Breast Cancer Screening Trials For Under 50s

A ten year trial in which women between the ages of 40 and 50 were invited for annual breast screening did not show a significant reduction in breast cancer mortality.

The report by scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research is published recently in the Lancet. The trial was funded by Cancer Research UK, the Medical Research Council and the Department of Health. It involved around 160,000 women, of whom a third received annual screening invitations and two-thirds usual medical care.

The trial was the first of its kind to invite only women of 40 or 41 at the start of the trial to ensure all results were based solely on screening before age 50. Currently, when women reach the age of 50 they are invited for screening every three years by the NHS Breast Screening Programme.

The scientists estimated that screening from age 40 could save four lives for every 10,000 women screened. But it was reported that the benefit of screening women in their 40s needs to be balanced against possible negative considerations such as increased radiation exposure - which can contribute to breast cancer risk, and recalling women who do not have cancer for further tests - leading to their anxiety and resulting in higher financial costs for the screening programme.

Of those women invited for the first screening 68 per cent attended. But the figure fell in later rounds, partly due to women moving away from the study areas. This led researchers to conclude that the potential benefits of screening the under 50s could be greater than that observed.........

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