Blood Test Can Now Detect 8 types Of Common Cancers

The Guardian: Blood test could use DNA to spot eight of the most common cancers, study shows

DNA and biomarkers could be used to detect and identify cancers, including five types for which there is currently no screening test.

Scientists have made a major advance towards developing a blood test for cancer that could identify tumours long before a person becomes aware of symptoms.

The new test, which is sensitive to both mutated DNA that floats freely in the blood and cancer-related proteins, gave a positive result approximately 70% of the time across eight of the most common cancers when tested in more than 1,000 patients.

In the future, such a test could be used in routine screening programmes to significantly increase the proportion of patients who get treatment early, at a time before cancer would typically show up on conventional scans.

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CSN Editor: Only being able to spot 8 common cancers .... and giving a positive result 70% of the time .... that is progress, albeit slow.

Is President Obama's Commitment To Find The Cure For Cancer Real Or Rhetoric?

Jen Christensen, CNN: Is the cure for cancer real or rhetoric?

(CNN)President Barack Obama's State of the Union address announced a new national "moon shot" effort to cure cancer.

"For the loved ones we've all lost, for the family we can still save, let's make America the country that cures cancer once and for all," the President said.

But is finding a cure for cancer realistic or merely rhetoric?

"Is it realistic? In a word 'no,' " said Dr. Otis Brawley, the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. "In my world, 'cure' is a four letter word, but we are going to cure some people."

He said it's important to remember there are at least 200 kinds of cancer. Finding one "cure" to fix all of them is probably impossible.

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CSN Editor: Government does play a role .... but government is not the institution that will "discover" the cure and/or better treatments for cancer.

A New Test For Pancreatic Cancer?

Did This 15-Year-Old Just Change The Course Of Medicine? Schoolboy Invents Early Test For Pancreatic Cancer That Killed Steve Jobs -- Daily Mail 

* Jack Andraka's new test detects pancreatic cancer earlier than any other
* Deadly disease currently kills 19 out of 20 within five years
* He claims his invention could raise survival rates to 'close to 100 per cent'

A 15-year-old schoolboy could save millions of lives after he invented a new, low-cost test that can detect the early stages of a deadly form of cancer.

Jack Andraka from Crownsville, Maryland, developed a simple dip-stick test for levels of mesothelin, a biomarker for early stage pancreatic cancer found in blood and urine.

It promises to revolutionise treatment of the disease, which currently kills 19 out of 20 sufferers after five years - largely because its so difficult to detect until its final stages.

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My Comment: I am sure that before being available to the public that more testing will need to be done. Let's keep our fingers crossed that this is a breakthrough..

Cancer: An Interview With The Author Of The Emperor Of All Maladies: A Biography Of Cancer

Does A Fever Combat Cancer Cells?

Feed A Fever, Starve A Cancer? -- Future Pundit

Have modern sterile environments and antibiotics boosted the rate of cancer? Do we need to work ourselves into a fevered pitch once or twice a year?

There is an inverse relationship between febrile infection and the risk of malignancies. Interferon gamma (IFN-γ) plays an important role in fever induction and its expression increases with incubation at fever-range temperatures. Therefore, the genetic polymorphism of IFN-γ may modify the association of febrile infection with breast cancer risk.

Why? An immune system turned up to kill off invading bacteria might also react more vigorously to attack aberrant cells in your body that have mutated only part of the way toward becoming cancerous. Cells that have mutated all the way into becoming cancerous often have mutations that cause them to excrete substances that suppress the immune system. So vaccines against well developed cancers have fared poorly. But if the immune system could be stimulated into attacking pre-cancerous cells at much earlier stages then in some cases cancer could be prevented.

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My Comment: Does fever hold anti-cancer effects .... mainly influencing our immune system to eliminate per-cancerous cells. More research is clearly needed.

New Treatment For Prostate Cancer Gives Hope For Millions

MRI showing prostate cancer in a 75 year old male. Photo: ALAMY

New Treatment For Prostate Cancer Gives 'Perfect Results' For Nine In Ten Men: Research -- The Telegraph

A new treatment for prostate cancer can rid the disease from nine in ten men without debilitating side effects, a study has found, leading to new hope for tens of thousands of men.

It is hoped the new treatment, which involves heating only the tumours with a highly focused ultrasound, will mean men can be treated without an overnight stay in hospital and avoiding the distressing side effects associated with current therapies.

A study has found that focal HIFU, high-intensity focused ultrasound, provides the 'perfect' outcome of no major side effects and free of cancer 12 months after treatment, in nine out of ten cases.

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My Comment: faster please.

The First Prostate Cancer Vaccine Could Be A Step Away From Human Trials

The treatment, developed by Bavarian-Nordic Immunotherapeutics, is aimed at men with advanced prostate cancer which cannot be cured by castration and for whom treatment options are very limited. Photo: ALAMY

Prostate Cancer Vaccine Uses DNA To Fight Disease -- The Telegraph

The first prostate cancer vaccine could be a step away after ministers gave their approval for a human trial of a new genetically modified therapy.

The treatment, which uses viruses carrying human DNA to direct the body's natural defences against cancer cells, is the first prostate cancer vaccine ever to reach late stage “phase three” trials in Europe.

No vaccines have yet been approved in Britain to treat any type of cancer, and scientists believe it could not only double the survival rate of prostate cancer sufferers but give way to a new range of similar treatments for other tumour types.

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My Comment: faster please.

The Business Of Cancer

The Business Of Cancer -- Al Jazeera

As advancements in DNA sequencing technology lead to personalised treatments, we examine the cost of the war on cancer.

It has been more than 40 years since Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act of 1971, beginning the 'war on cancer'. There have been notable successes since, particularly with childhood cancers. Childhood leukemia, once a death sentence, now has survival rates approaching 90 per cent. The American Cancer Society estimates that 767,000 cancer deaths were prevented over the last 20 years.

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My Comment: In short .... it's big business.

A Cancer Vaccine?

A vaccine that can train cancer patients' own bodies to seek out and destroy tumour cells has been developed by scientists Photo: ALAMY

'Universal' Cancer Vaccine Developed -- The Telegraph

A vaccine that can train cancer patients' own bodies to seek out and destroy tumour cells has been developed by scientists.

The therapy, which targets a molecule found in 90 per cent of all cancers, could provide a universal injection that allows patients' immune systems to fight off common cancers including breast and prostate cancer.

Preliminary results from early clinical trials have shown the vaccine can trigger an immune response in patients and reduce levels of disease.

The scientists behind the vaccine now hope to conduct larger trials in patients to prove it can be effective against a range of different cancers.

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My Comment: Faster please.

A New Approach To Fight Cancer

Out of control: biologists still cannot explain why cancerous cells will proliferate and spread to other organs if unchecked

The Final Frontier In The War On Cancer -- The Telegraph

Frustrated by glacial progress, the US has turned to physicists to fight the disease, reveals Paul Davies.

When President Nixon declared war on cancer 40 years ago, he also sanctioned one of the biggest research programmes in history. The budget of America’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) is now $5 billion a year, more than Nasa spends on space exploration. Cancer accounts for a large slice of research funds in most other developed countries, too: Cancer Research UK, for example, has a budget of £500 million a year.

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Lung Cancer Rates Double In Women Over 60 Since The 1970s

Lung cancer in a woman Photo: Alamy

Lung Cancer Rates Double In Women Over 60 Since 1970s -- The Telegraph

Lung cancer rates for retired women have more than doubled since the mid-1970s because of an increase in the number of female smokers, new figures have shown.

Rates for British women aged 60 and over rose from 88 per 100,000 in 1975 to 190 per 100,000 in the latest figures from 2008.

Almost 5,700 women over 60 were diagnosed with lung cancer in 1975. This jumped to more than 15,100 in 2008.

The rise, revealed by Cancer Research UK, can almost all be attributed to increase in smoking among women in the latter half of the last century.

Men on the other hand have seen a dramatic decrease in rates as millions have stopped smoking over the same period.

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My Comment: More proof that smoking increases the chances of getting cancer.

Identifying Skin Cancers With Laser Light

Photo: Holy Mole-y The Verisante Aura uses Raman spectroscopy to analyze moles and other skin growths for the presence of malignant cells nearly instantaneously, taking some of the guesswork out of melanoma diagnosis. Verisante Technology

New Handheld Melanoma Scanner Instantly Identifies Skin Cancers With Laser Light -- Popular Science

Yeah, you’ve been thinking about getting that thing checked out, but it’s just a mole right? Such is the problem with melanoma; it’s tough to know which spots on the skin are benign and which could be the hallmark of early-stage skin cancer. Most dermatologists still decide which moles require a biopsy by good old fashioned eye-balling, but a new device developed by researchers at British Colombia Cancer Agency (BCCA) could remove that guesswork, using a handheld laser to quickly identify problem spots that require closer examination.

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My Comment: I had a skin cancer scare 3 years ago .... this hits me home in more levels than I can imagine.

New Chip Captures Hard-to-Find Tumor Cells

Image: Capturing cancer cells: A new microfluidics chip designed to isolate tumor cells from blood captures clusters of cancer cells, shown here, which may play a role in cancer’s spread. Credit: PNAS

From Technology Review:

The devices may one day help patients skip invasive and painful biopsies.

Technologies that analyze cancer cells that circulate through a patient's bloodstream could provide a less invasive way of monitoring cancer and selecting the best treatments. So Mehmet Toner and collaborators at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed a microfluidics chip that effectively captures these rare cells, which make up just one in a billion cells in blood, in high enough numbers to analyze them for molecular markers. The device also isolated clusters of tumor cells for the first time, which may help shed light on cancer's ability to spread, or metastasize, from its initial birthplace.

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Quantum Jumps Could Help Image Cancer Cells

An animation showing the fluorescence process when the quantum dot is in the so-called "on" state. Credit: Ovidiu Toader, Vancouver BA, Canada

From Live Science:

New research by Boldizsár Jankó, a professor of theoretical physics at The University of Notre Dame, and his colleagues offers an important breakthrough in understanding an enduring mystery in physics.

More than a century ago, at the dawn of modern quantum mechanics, the Noble Prize-winning physicist Neils Bohr predicted “quantum jumps.” Since the early 1990s, researchers have been able to view such jumps as interruptions of the continuous emissions from single molecules, a phenomenon informally called “blinking”. However, while some blinking can be directly ascribed to Bohr’s original quantum jumps, many observations do not follow predictions.

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Throat Cancer Rates Soar In Men

From The Telegraph:

Throat cancer cases have soared by 50 per cent in men in the last 25 years due to obesity and bad diet, researchers have found.

Back in the eighties around 2,600 men were diagnosed with oesophageal cancer every year but now the figure is more than 5,100.

The most dramatic rise was among men in their 50s, as rates increased by 67 per cent over the same period.

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Modified Viruses 'Can Destroy Cancer Cells'

Cancer Research UK funded the study into gene therapy. Photograph: Graham Turner

From The Guardian:

Development could lead to treatments tailored to different diseases, say research groups.

Viruses can be modified to seek out and destroy cancer cells, scientists said today. Laboratory tests at Leeds University have shown how proteins can be added to a virus to enable it to recognise unique markers on the surface of tumours.

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Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer?

From Discovery News:

There are safety-warning labels on cigarettes and alcohol. Now some groups are advocating that similar cautions be printed on cell phones.

Recently, a bill in the Maine state senate proposed a label warning users, especially children and pregnant women, of the risks of brain cancer from electromagnetic radiation emanating from the device.

But the Maine legislature voted down the bill in March, stating that the scientific evidence does not indicate a public health risk.

Yet, the debate rages on. Can cell phones really cause cancer?

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Does Stress Feed Cancer?

PUSHING IT: Stress is linked indirectly to the immune system's anti-tumor defenses, but it can also affect anoikis--a type of cell death that cancer cells bypass. iStockphoto

From Scientific American:

A new study shows stress hormones make it easier for malignant tumors to grow and spread.

A little stress can do us good—it pushes us to compete and innovate. But chronic stress can increase the risk of diseases such as depression, heart disease and even cancer. Studies have shown that stress might promote cancer indirectly by weakening the immune system's anti-tumor defense or by encouraging new tumor-feeding blood vessels to form. But a new study published April 12 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that stress hormones, such as adrenaline, can directly support tumor growth and spread.

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Blocking Gene Forces Cancer Cells To Age

Image: The finding may offer a new strategy for fighting cancer (Source: iStockphoto)

From ABC News (Australia):

Instead of killing off cancer cells with toxic drugs, scientists have discovered a molecular pathway that forces them to grow old and die.

Cancer cells spread and grow because they can divide indefinitely.

But a study in mice, published today in Nature, shows that blocking a cancer-causing gene called Skp2 forces cancer cells to go through an aging process known as senescence - the same process involved in ridding the body of cells damaged by sunlight.

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How Cells Protect Themselves From Cancer

Cascade which activates cell protection programs. (Credit: Graphic by Clemens Schmitt)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 18, 2010) — Cells have two different protection programs to safeguard them from getting out of control under stress and from dividing without stopping and developing cancer. Until now, researchers assumed that these protective systems were prompted separately from each other. Now for the first time, using an animal model for lymphoma, cancer researchers of the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) Berlin-Buch and the Charité -- University Hospital Berlin in Germany have shown that these two protection programs work together through an interaction with normal immune cells to prevent tumors.

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