Cancer

According to reports from clinical trials, Roche’s breast cancer drug Perjeta displays “unprecedented” life-extending effects, helping patients live an average of 15.7 months longer than they would on chemotherapy and an older drug. 15.7 months is a significant amount of time for metastatic breast cancer patients, who are, on average, given two to three years to live after their diagnosis. Perjeta, then, has the capacity to increase that time by 50 to 75 percent.  http://www…

The FDA initially approved XTANDI, an oral, once-daily androgen receptor inhibitor, in August 2012 for use in patients with metastatic CRPC who previously received docetaxel (chemotherapy). The new indication approves XTANDI for use in men with metastatic CRPC who have not received chemotherapy. Metastatic CRPC is defined as a cancer that has spread beyond the prostate gland and has progressed despite treatment to lower testosterone (i.e., with a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) therapy or…

Don’t fight cancer, heal it by attending to body, mind and spirit, says surgical oncologist Dr Vishal Rao. A child developing from an embryo in a mother’s womb is, in reality, a set of rapidly multiplying cells. But they are controlled and regulated. So, we choose to ‘love’ those cells. But when another set of cells multiply rapidly within our body, albeit haphazardly, we call it ‘Cancerous’! These cells are not foreign cells that have made an appearance from outside,…

Geoffrey Boycott describes how counting off his radiotherapy sessions like runs in cricket and Feng Shui helped him survive cancer http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/11080199/Geoffrey-Boycott-reve…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Cologuard, the first stool-based colorectal screening test that detects the presence of red blood cells and DNA mutations that may indicate the presence of certain kinds of abnormal growths that may be cancers such as colon cancer or precursors to cancer. Cologuard offers people 50 and older at average risk for colorectal cancer an easy-to-use screening test they can do in the privacy of their own home. Colorectal cancer was the third most…

Mayo Clinic unveiled today a partnership with IBM to harness the power of its Watson supercomputer to match patients with the right clinical trials. Starting early next year, Watson will initially enroll patients with breast, colorectal and lung cancers based on eligibility. There are 170,000 ongoing clinical trials around the world, however, according to the Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation, only 6% are completed on time. Enrolling patients in the…

This new class of drugs unleashes the body's immune system to fight tumors. This seems to solve a century-old mystery of how cancerous cells manage to evade the body's immune system. The drug which Merck will sell under the name of Keytruda was approved by patients with advanced melanoma who have exhausted other therapies.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/business/merck-wins-approval-of-novel-immune-system-drug-for-cancer.html?emc=eta1

We hope that this means fewer women will relapse and die of their cancer, though the study is not large enough to prove this conclusively. Of the two agents we studied, we are more encouraged by the results from the addition of carboplatin, since it was associated with fewer and less concerning additional side effects than bevacizumab," Sikov explains.  William M. Sikov, a medical oncologist in the Breast Health Center and associate director for clinical research in the Program in Women's…

Clinical depression was much more prevalent among cancer patients than in the general population, where around 2% of people suffer from the mental illness at any point in time. Among cancer patients, clinical depression ranged from 13% in people with lung cancer to 6% in people with genitourinary cancer. The study's lead author Michael Sharpe, from Oxford University, said: "Major depression is really quite common in people with cancer and the perhaps surprising finding is that most of it goes…

Right and timely treatment can keep both mother and baby safe. Dr D.G. Vijay, Breast Cancer Specialist recalls a case of gestational breast cancer. Mrs. AK was overjoyed when her obstetrician told her that she was pregnant. She had been undergoing infertility treatment for a long time with no success. Only a few years ago, her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer and she wished to see her grandchild before anything happened to her. But Mrs AK’s joy was short- lived as she…