LungBlog

In a new television spot that premieres today, Baron & Budd joins with Deborah Morosini, M.D. to bring attention to the facts about asbestos and cancer. Mesothelioma and asbestos-related lung cancer kill thousands of Americans each year, but use of asbestos is still not banned in this country.

Decision Resources, one of the world’s leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that Roche/Chugai’s Avastin is prescribed by the majority of surveyed oncologists for glioblastoma multiforme, non-small-cell lung cancer and breast cancer. Additionally, the drug is prescribed by all surveyed oncologists for colorectal cancer. However, the high cost of Avastin remains a barrier to treatment for nearly one-fifth of eligible cancer patients, according to surveyed oncologists.

Wearing a green “survivor” shirt, Bev Cole of Independence rested Sunday in a camp chair surrounded by family and friends after a half-mile walk.

The distance might not seem that far, but Cole, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in April, said she felt exhilarated and happy.

Ovaries, the almond-shaped organs that sit on each side of the uterus in a woman’s pelvis, contain eggs and produce hormones that control the menstrual cycle. Mounting research shows they must do more than that, too, because after the surgical removal of ovaries, women are at heightened risk for serious diseases. But cutting out a woman’s most important so-called female organs must only be done for life-saving, urgent medical emergencies, right?

The doctors told Susan Smedley Gerber that her lung cancer wasn’t caused by smoking but in many ways it didn’t matter. She found herself facing the same stigma and same reactions that thousands of lung cancer patients fight in addition to their cancer.

This is not a good week to be closely associated with Anna Nicole Smith. First, her doctors and onetime lawyer-lover feel the full weight of the legal system. Now comes word that the late model’s father,Donald Hogan, has died after a battle with lung cancer.

Hogan’s other daughter and Smith’s half-sister, Amy Chapman Hogan, told E! News that “he had a lump in his chest that kept giving him a lot of pain. But for some reason the X-rays didn’t find it. By the time the doctors diagnosed he was in the last stages of lung cancer.

Thursday, pharma major Pfizer Inc. said that it will initiate a global, Phase 3 clinical trial of PF-02341066, its investigational oral c-Met and ALK inhibitor, being developed to treat patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer, or NSCLC, who also carry the anaplastic lymphoma kinases, or ALK, fusion gene and who have progressed on one prior treatment with a platinum-based chemotherapy.

Huachansu, a Chinese medicine that comes from the dried venom secreted by the skin glands of toads, has tolerable toxicity levels, even at doses eight times those normally administered, and may slow disease progression in some cancer patients, say researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Prematurely postmenopausal women who smoke may be putting themselves at greater risk for developing lung cancer, according to a study published in The International Journal of Cancer (2009 May 11 [Epub ahead of print]).

Researchers studied 422 women with lung cancer and 577 control subjects and assessed sociodemographic characteristics, residential history, occupational exposures, medical and smoking history, and menstruation and pregnancy histories.

Friends called 15 year old Tre Reed “Whisper” even though no one would describe the Northwest sophomore as quiet.  Instead they say he was popular and upbeat.

“My boy was a fighter, the best kid; I wouldn’t trade him for the world,” said Nicole McCoy,Tre’s mother.

It was just three months ago on June 11th that Tre was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.