when oncologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) refused to prescribe Zaltrap (ziv-aflibercept) for metastatic colorectal cancer due to its initial $11, 000-per-month cost.
Cancer was the third most expensive category of specialty drugs last year measured per-member-per year, according to Express Scripts;
However, cancer accounts for 32%of drugs costing more than $100, 000 a year, and is among a handful of key drivers of rising costs here are drugs in cancer that may give five months of life in one indication and 12 days of life in another.
Yet payers are being asked to pay the exact same amount for both, Henry said June 3. hen you get to the point where you have orphan drug pricing for non-orphan drugs,
Cancer treatments marketed by eight companies accounted for six of the Top 25 Best-selling Drugs of 2014 as listed by GEN,
and its Genentech subsidiary from marketing the top three cancer treatments: Rituxan (rituximab, co-marketed with Biogen and ranked#4), Avastin (bevacizumab;#
"explained co-author Dr. Joseph Ready, Ph d.,professor of biochemistry and member of the Simmons Cancer Center at UT Southwestern Medical center.
and is associated with gastric cancer, the team discovered that epigenetic heterogeneity can quickly emerge as a single cell divides,
. Purdue's Walther Professor of Cancer Structural biology and professor of biological sciences and chemistry who leads the research team."
who also is deputy director of the Purdue University Center for Cancer Research e
#New Drug Prevents Cancer cells from Staging Last Stand Unlike many last stands in human history,
the last stands arranged by individual cancer cells often resist being overwhelmed, with dire consequences for cancer patients.
Such a coordinated attack could effectively overrun cancer before it could muster one last defense,
"The finding opens the door to a new way to attack cancer, "said Reuben Shaw, a senior author of the paper, professor in the Molecular and Cell biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist."
"This allowed us to find a drug that targeted ULK1 not just in a test tube but also in tumor cells.
Our work provides the basis for a novel drug that will treat resistant cancer by cutting off a main tumor cell survival process. i
#Depersonalized Medicine Shows Promising Results Against Cancer Researchers at St louis University (SLU) say they have,
Unlike recent advances in personalized medicine that focus on specific genetic mutations associated with different types of cancer,
this research targets a broad principle that applies to almost every kind of cancer: its energy source.
and in human tumor cells in the lab, showed that a specific drug can stop cancer cells without causing damage to healthy cells or leading to other severe side effects.
"Targeting cancer metabolism has become a hot area over the past few years, though the idea is not new,"according to Dr. Burris.
In fact, this is how doctors use positron emission tomography to scan images to spot tumors. PET scans highlight the glucose that cancer cells have accumulated.
In a paper (road Anti-tumor Activity of a Small Molecule that Selectively Targets the Warburg Effect and Lipogenesis published in Cancer cell
Dr. Burris reports that the Warburg effect is the metabolic foundation of oncogenic growth, tumor progression,
and metastasis as well as tumor resistance to treatment.""Cancer cells look for metabolic pathways to find the parts to grow and divide.
"If the Warburg effect and lipogenesis are key metabolic pathways that drive cancer progression, growth, survival, immune evasion, resistance to treatment,
targeting glycolysis and lipogenesis could offer a way to stop a broad range of cancers.
and in human tumor cells grown in animal models. Because the Warburg pathway is a feature of almost every kind of cancer,
researchers are testing it on a number of different cancer models.""It works in a wide range of cancers both in culture and in human tumors developing in animal models,"explained Dr. Burris."
"Some are more sensitive to it than others. In several of these pathways, cells had been reprogramed by cancer to support cancer cell growth.
This returns the metabolism to that of more normal cells.""In human tumors grown in animal models,
it reportedly worked well on lung, prostate, and colorectal cancers and, to a lesser degree, in ovarian and pancreatic cancers."
"It also seems to work on glioblastoma, an extremely difficult to treat form of brain cancer,
though it isn't able to cross the brain-blood barrier very effectively. The challenge for researchers in this scenario will be to find a way to allow the drug to cross this barrier, the body's natural protection for the brain,
which can make it difficult for drug treatments to reach their target. When SR9243 is used in combination with existing chemotherapy drugs,
it increases their effectiveness, in a mechanism apart from SR9243's own cancer fighting ability, added Dr. Burris B
San diego School of medicine and Moores Cancer Center led an international team that discovered that cancer stem cell properties are determined by epigenetic changes.
which was carried out on human tumor samples and mouse models, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team reports that Lysine-Specific Demethylase 1 (LSD1) turns off genes required to maintain cancer stem cell properties in glioblastoma, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer.
rather than specific DNA sequences, determines tumorigenicity in glioblastoma cancer stem cells.""One of the most striking findings in our study is that there are dynamic and reversible transitions between tumorigenic
whether or not glioblastoma cells can proliferate indefinitely as cancer stem cells is their relative abundance of LSD1,
turning off a number of genes required for maintaining cancer stem cell properties, including MYC, SOX2, OLIG2 and POU3F2."
In fact, this spare can help the genome steer clear of cancer. Various kinds of damage can happen to DNA,
which is a hallmark of cancer. One common way that our genetic material can be harmed is from a phenomenon called oxidative stress.
predominantly the G. In order to stay cancer-free, our bodies must repair this DNA. This is where the special vulnerability noted earlier comes in.
They scanned the sequences of known human oncogenes associated with cancer, and found that many contain the four G-stretches necessary for quadruplex formation
#New Cell Structure Finding Might Lead to Novel Cancer Therapies University of Warwick scientists in the U k. say they have discovered a cell structure
which could help researchers understand why some cancers develop. For the first time a structure called'the mesh'has been identified
which is found to change in certain cancers, such as those of the breast and bladder, according to Stephen Royle, Ph d.,team leader and associate professor and senior Cancer Research UK Fellow at the division of biomedical cell biology at Warwick Medical school."
"As a cell biologist you dream of finding a new structure in cells but it's so unlikely.
which has been linked to a range of tumors in different body organs. The mitotic spindle is responsible for sharing the chromosomes
TACC3, is overproduced in certain cancers. When this situation was mimicked in the lab, the mesh and microtubules were altered
According to Emma Smith, Ph d.,from Cancer Research UK, his early research provides the first glimpse of a structure that helps share out a cell's chromosomes correctly
and it might be a crucial insight into why this process becomes faulty in cancer
#Cell cycle protein Reverses Metabolic Reprogramming of Cancer cells Understanding how cancers cells reprogram cellular metabolic pathways is critical toward the development of novel therapeutic compounds.
Cutting off a cancer cell ood supplyis a veritable lynchpin for the efficient removal of tumors and now researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center believe they may have found a protein that serves that very function.
and also serve to protect cells from the transformation into tumors.""We know that all cancers grow by learning how to reprogram their metabolism,
"said senior author Mong-Hong Lee, Ph d, . professor of molecular and cellular oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. ut exactly how this occurs has not been understood fully.
Our study showed that 14-3-3s opposes and reverses tumor-promoting metabolic programs.""The findings from this study were published recently in Nature Communications through an article entitled ell cycle regulator 14-3-3s opposes
and reverses cancer metabolic reprogramming. 14-3-3s is part of a family of conserved regulatory molecules that are expressed in all eukaryotic cells.
Moreover, the 14-3-3 proteins have been observed to be involved actively in regulating an array of signaling molecules such as kinases, phosphatases,
and transmembrane receptors. 14-3-3s has been shown previously to regulate cancer genes, such as p53 and suppress tumor growth,
but in this instance the investigators were able to observe the protein acting on metabolic pathways
Dr. Lee and his team showed that 14-3-3s opposed tumor-promoting metabolic programs by increasing the degradation of the transcription factor c-Myc.
Additionally, 14-3-3s demonstrated a suppressive effect on cancer glycolysis, mitochondrial biogenesis, as well as a range of other major metabolic processes of tumors."
"14-3-3s expression levels can help predict overall and recurrence-free survival rates, tumor glucose uptake,
and metabolic gene expression in breast cancer patients,"explained Dr. Lee.""These results highlight that 14-3-3s is an important regulator of tumor metabolism,
and loss of 14-3-3s expression is critical for cancer metabolic reprogramming.""The MD Anderson team is excited about the findings from this new study
and feels that it adds extended insight into the connective pathways between the cell cycle and cancer cell metabolism."
"We anticipate that pharmacologically elevating 14-3-3s's function in tumors could be a promising direction for targeted anticancer metabolism therapy development in the future,"concluded Dr. Lee r
which are linked closely to early embryonic development and to diseases such as cancer. In plants as in animals and humans, intricate molecular networks regulate important biological functions, such as development and stress responses.
but primarily due to clinical trial expenses related to its pipeline of product candidates, including its Hyperacute immunotherapy cancer programs and its IDO pathway inhibitor (indoximod) programs
advancing efforts to create blood for surgery and treat leukaemia and other cancers. His latest work continues in this same vein,
but activate the body's own immune system to stave off harmful tumors. The clinical trial was conducted across 64 research centers around the world
and led by The Institute of Cancer Research in London. It saw 436 patients suffering from inoperable skin cancers treated with a modified form of herpes virus called Talimogene Laherparepvec T-VEC.
What's more, T-VEC is designed also to produce a molecule known as GM-CSF that moves the body's immune system to destroy tumors
when used in the less advanced stages of the cancer, suggesting that T-VEC could prove a valuable early treatment option for skin cancers that are unable to be removed by a surgeon.
Patients with stage III and early stage IV melanoma a condition that was shown to carry an average survival of 21.5 months
The scientists say that T-VEC is the first of such viral therapies to be proven beneficial in treating melanoma in a phase III clinical trial.
#Pill on a string pulls early signs of cancer As with every form of the deadly disease,
early detection of oesophageal cancer is critical to recovery. The current approach of detecting the cancer through biopsy can be a little hit and miss,
so the University of Cambridge's Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald and her team have developed what they claim to be a more accurate tool for early-diagnosis. Billed as"a pill on a string,
According to Fitzgerald, the five-year survival rate for oesophageal cancer is only 13 percent, a fact
Between one and five of every 100 people with Barrett's oesophagus go on to develop oesophageal cancer.
Using biopsies to detect the pre-cancer condition is problematic for a couple of reasons. It requires trained scientists to pore over the samples looking for abnormalities,
The team's latest research into Barrett's oesophagus and oesophageal cancer was published in the journal Nature Genetics.
or face so that tumors can be removed from the pituitary gland and skull base. It can also be done through the nasal cavity with an endoscope (a thin tube with a camera attached),
or READ more at Daily mail) Pass on the Good Newsbelow) TAGSBREAKTHROUGHHEALTHINNOVATIONMEDICALSCIENCEWELLNESS Cuban Cancer Vaccine Could Soon be Available in U s. May 20,
and dsync+(TITECH/Georgia Tech) Near real-time plasma disruption detection using ADIOS (Princeton Plasma Research Lab/ORNL) Automated microscopy image analysis for cancer detection,
#Machine that unboils eggs now being used to improve cancer treatment The device can rip things apart with great accuracy,
Using the invention on carboplatin a common cancer treatment drug, used against ovarian and lung cancers has boosted the potency by almost five times.
which accumulate in tumor cells and scatter light making the tumors easy to see with a special camera.
The particles are each about 140 nanometers (0. 000005 inches) across and consist of eight-point gold stars that are surrounded by a layer of dye
because earlier efforts to make such nanoparticles weren't able to produce the consistent shapes needed said Dr. Moritz Kircher a molecular imaging specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New york city.
so that they were very likely to develop cancer and injected them with the nanostars. The particles spread thorough the bloodstreams of the mice and built up in the cancerous cells.
and tumor cells that researchers had suspected existed but hadn't seen. It was thought precancerous cells also develop the larger pores like cancer cells.
The nanostars could be important in treating people with cancers in which the dangerous cells are sometimes hard to see such as liposarcoma a cancer that arises in fat cells.
You go in and open up the abdomen say and see all that fat Kircher said. You see some streaks that look abnormal
but don't know where edges of the tumor are. So doctors either have to take out all of the tissue that might possibly contain cancer
or risk leaving some cancerous cells in the body. These new nanoparticles would show where the dangerous cells are
The nanostars are nonspecific they don't need to be custom-made for each type of cancer. Earlier experiments with nanoparticles often required them to be built to order coated with proteins that would link to specific types of cancer cells.
For example, cancer researchers who want to deliver localized treatments to patients are using OWL's machines to build what Liverman called"microfluidic devices."
or try to figure out why only a fraction of patients"are helped by certain cancer treatments,
offering a view of the cellular morphology that can show signs of the presence of cancer.
and China of patients suspected of having malignant squamous cell tumors, the device was used alongside a regular endoscope.
Currently, samples are taken to the pathology lab to confirm that all of the cancer has been removed. This takes considerable time,
and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) from normal human pituitary gland and pituitary adenoma tissue sections, using a fully automated droplet-based liquid-microjunction surface-sampling-HPLCSI-MSS system for spatially resolved sampling, HPLC separation,
and non-secreting pituitary adenomas correlated with histopathological evaluation a
#Brainport V100 Turns Your Tongue Into an Eye If you can see with your eyes,
#Optical Probe to Help Remove Only Cancerous Tissues in Brain Surgeries Neurosurgeons removing a tumor have to be obsessive about resecting just enough
so that the cancer doesn come back while the patient is not left neurologically disabled. Tumors usually look the same as the healthy tissue just around them,
which means the repeated biopsies and MRI scans can make such surgeries last for many hours.
the fact that tumors tend to be denser was the basis for many designed devices,
but the Hopkins team focused on brain cancer cellslack of myelin sheaths as the marker that influences how light passes through them.
Detection of human brain cancer infiltration ex vivo and in vivo using quantitative optical coherence tomographyource: Johns Hopkins Medicine
This method is used to study the spatiotemporal mechanical response of MDA-MB-231 breast carcinoma cells to the inhibition of Syk protein tyrosine kinase giving insight into the signaling pathways by which Syk negatively regulates motility of highly invasive cancer cells.
2015the Universitat Politcnica de Valncia is coordinating a European project to develop a device for the quick and early diagnosis of cancer March 7th,
New manufacturing unit increases production capacity 25 fold March 18th, 2015predicting prostate cancer: Nanotechnology shows promise for more accurate prostate cancer screening and prognosis March 17th, 2015'Additive manufacturing'could greatly improve diabetes management March 17th, 2015nanotechnology Drug Delivery Market in the US 2012-2016:
Latest Report Available by Radiant Insights, Inc March 16th, 2015discoveries 30 years after C60: Fullerene chemistry with silicon:
#Predicting prostate cancer: Nanotechnology shows promise for more accurate prostate cancer screening and prognosis Abstract:
A Northwestern University-led study in the emerging field of nanocytology could one day help men make better decisions about
whether or not to undergo aggressive prostate cancer treatments. Technology developed by Northwestern University researchers may help solve that quandary by allowing physicians to identify which nascent cancers are likely to escalate into potentially life-threatening malignancies and
which ones will remain"indolent,"or nonaggressive. The prostate specific-antigen antigen (PSA) test was recommended once the screening tool for detecting prostate cancer,
but there is now disagreement over the use of this test because it can't predict which men with elevated PSA levels will actually develop an aggressive form of the disease."
if their cancer is dangerous and if they should seek treatment, "said Vadim Backman, senior author of the study."
"Right now there is no perfect tool to predict a prognosis for prostate cancer. Our research is preliminary,
Backman has been studying cell abnormalities at the nanoscale in many different types of cancers, using an optical technique he pioneered called partial wave spectroscopic (PWS) microscopy.
This is the first study to use PWS to predict a cancer prognosis, the likely course of the disease.
Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in American men, but doctors also say it is often overdiagnosed and overtreated.
By age 80, more than 50 percent of men will develop prostate cancer but not all will have the aggressive,
"The goal is to find specific biomarkers of aggressive cancers, "said Charles Brendler, MD, Co-Director of the John and Carol Walter Center for Urological Health & Program for Personalized Cancer Care at Northshore and author of the study."
"These biomarkers will allow us to individualize our treatment recommendations and improve patient outcomes.""To be able to give a patient a prognosis,
not just identification of risk of tumors, would be said a major advancement Dr. Hemant K. Roy professor of medicine and Chief of gastroenterology at Boston Medical center and an author of the study."
"This approach may allow tailoring of clinical decisions regarding management of patients with prostate cancer,
In this study, researchers analyzed prostate tissue biopsies from two cohorts of prostate cancer patients. The first cohort included eight men with non-progressing cancer
and 10 with progressing cancer. The PWS operator was blinded to the clinical status of the patients.
The second cohort was comprised of 10 progressors and 10 non-progressors in which the PWS investigators were blinded to the entire group.
This assessment may represent a powerful biomarker to predict cancer progression for men with early-stage prostate cancer."
Backman also hopes to use similar techniques to predict cancer progression in ovarian, breast and esophageal cancers.##
2015innovative light therapy reaches deep tumors March 9th, 2015a new tool for detecting and destroying norovirus March 9th,
2015the Universitat Politcnica de Valncia is coordinating a European project to develop a device for the quick and early diagnosis of cancer March 7th,
2015sensors The Universitat Politcnica de Valncia is coordinating a European project to develop a device for the quick and early diagnosis of cancer March 7th,
2015military The Universitat Politcnica de Valncia is coordinating a European project to develop a device for the quick and early diagnosis of cancer March 7th,
March 10th, 2015photonics/Optics/Lasers Innovative light therapy reaches deep tumors March 9th, 2015quantum sensor's advantages survive entanglement breakdown:
2015the Universitat Politcnica de Valncia is coordinating a European project to develop a device for the quick and early diagnosis of cancer March 7th,
This could be especially beneficial to immunosuppressed individuals such as cancer patients. Administering a vaccine to protect against infection would overwhelm the patient's immune system.
#Microchip captures clusters of circulating tumor cells--NIH study Circulating tumor cells (CTCS) are cells that break away from a tumor and move through a cancer patient's bloodstream.
and researchers believe this is one mode by which cancer spreads. Even less common than single CTCS are small groups of CTCS, or clusters.
"Very little is known about CTC clusters and their role in the progression and metastasis of cancer.
M d."This is the kind of breakthrough technology that could have a very large impact on cancer research."
such as preventing cancer metastasis or precisely tailoring therapeutics to an individual's cancer cell biology. Toner and his collaborator Dr. Daniel Haber, M d.,Ph d.,also at MGH, recently used Cluster-Chip to capture
and melanoma cancers. The researchers found CTC clusters--ranging from two to 19 cells--in 30-40 percent of the patients."
and occasionally clusters using antibodies that stick to special proteins found on the surface of some tumor cells.
This latter property makes the Cluster-Chip well-suited for capturing CTC clusters from a range of cancer types,
including those that lose surface proteins during metastasis and those that never express them, such as melanoma.
The researchers went on to test the Cluster-Chip in a small trial of 60 patients with metastatic cancer.
In this study, the chip captured CTC clusters in 11 of 27 (40.7 percent) breast cancer patients, 6 of 20 (30 percent) melanoma patients
and an association between the presence of clusters and reduced survival in prostate cancer patients.
the researchers measured a marker of tumor cell proliferation--an indicator of increased invasiveness and poor outcomes--in one breast cancer patient with high numbers of both single CTCS and clusters.
The researchers also noted the rare presence of non-tumor cells within clusters in less than 5 percent of patients."
"Given the increasing number of cancer therapies that engage the immune system, the ability to monitor tumor-immune cell interactions via the blood could be of great value."
"Toner anticipates that the Cluster-Chip will play an important role in stimulating new research on CTC cluster biology:"
and to develop even better technologies to understand their biology in cancer metastasis
#Computing at the speed of light: Utah engineers take big step toward much faster computers The Utah engineers have developed an ultracompact beamsplitter--the smallest on record--for dividing light waves into two separate channels of information.
New device offers clues Why do some cancer cells break away from a tumor and travel to distant parts of the body?
2015 Cancer becomes deadly when it spreads, or metastasizes. Not all cells have the same ability to travel through the body,
The differences in individual cancer cells are a key aspect of how cancer evolves becomes resistant to current therapies or recurs."
"A primary tumor is not what kills patients. Metastases are what kill patients. Understanding which cells are likely to metastasize can help us direct more targeted therapies to patients,
"says co-senior study author Sofia D. Merajver, M d.,Ph d.,scientific director of the breast oncology program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The researchers believe this type of device might some day help doctors understand an individual patient's cancer.
Which cells in this patient's tumor are really causing havoc? Is there a large population of aggressive cells?
"In this work, extensive studies were performed on cell lines representing various types of cancer. The new device was designed to trace how cells move, sorting individual cells by their movement.
and appearance under the microscope of metastatic cells and expressed significantly higher levels of markers associated with metastatic cancer."
"Understanding specific differences that lead some cancer cells to leave the primary tumor and seed metastases is of great benefit to develop
Patients seeking more information about their options for cancer treatment can call the U-M Cancer Answerline at 800-865-1125 5
2015effective Nano-Micelles Designed in Iran to Treat Cancer May 20th, 2015announcements SUNY Poly CNSE and NIOSH Launch Federal Nano Health and Safety Consortium:
2015effective Nano-Micelles Designed in Iran to Treat Cancer May 20th, 2015environment Nano-policing pollution May 13th, 2015chemists strike nano-gold:
2015nanomedicine Effective Nano-Micelles Designed in Iran to Treat Cancer May 20th, 2015nature inspires first artificial molecular pump:
Simple design mimics pumping mechanism of life-sustaining proteins found in living cells May 19th, 2015studying dynamics of ion channels May 18th, 2015organic nanoparticles, more lethal to tumors:
Carbon-based nanoparticles could be used to sensitize cancerous tumors to proton radiotherapy and induce more focused destruction of cancer cells, a new study shows May 18th,
2015effective Nano-Micelles Designed in Iran to Treat Cancer May 20th, 2015materials/Metamaterials Taking control of light emission:
, more lethal to tumors: Carbon-based nanoparticles could be used to sensitize cancerous tumors to proton radiotherapy
and induce more focused destruction of cancer cells, a new study shows May 18th, 2015wearables may get boost from boron-infused graphene:
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