June 29th, 2011
By Jason Kane at the PBS Newshour
It’s official: CT scans reduce the risk of death for heavy smokers with lung cancer by 20 percent compared to chest X-rays.
After a nearly decade-long study, results from the National Lung Screening Trial were published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The findings made headlines in November 2010 when the National Cancer Institute announced that it had become clear that the group receiving three-dimensional X-ray tests known as low-dose helical CT scans had a significantly higher chance of surviving than those receiving standard chest X-ray tests.
It’s the first type of screening known to reduce the risk of death from lung cancer, despite a high rate of false positive tests from the scans.
June 22nd, 2011
By Kerry Grens
NEW YORK | Mon Jun 20, 2011 5:21pm EDT
(Reuters Health) – Lung cancer patients at public hospitals, which serve a greater proportion of poor and disadvantaged people, are less likely to receive adequate treatment for pain and other symptoms than patients treated at a cancer center, according to a new study.
Patients at public hospitals were nine times more likely than the cancer center patients to come in with more-severe symptoms to begin with.
“I think it’s been noted…for the last couple of decades” that cancer “is less well managed in what we consider underserved patients,” said Dr. Charles Cleeland from MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who led the study.
Underserved patients tend to be poor, single, unemployed, non-white, and receiving public assistance health insurance. They also tend to have low levels of formal education.
June 14th, 2011
Source: Oncolytics Biotech
Newswise — A type of virus known as the human reovirus possesses a remarkable trait: It can replicate inside and kill cancer cells that feature a common mutation (known as an “activated Ras pathway”), while leaving the body’s normal cells alone. Now a new study reports that reovirus has the potential to treat certain lung cancer patients, when the reovirus is combined with two other substances known as paclitaxel and carboplatin.
Researchers from The Ohio State University, Georgetown University, and Oncolytics Biotech Inc., a Calgary-based biotechnology company, will present a paper on their findings at the 14th World Conference on Lung Cancer, to be held July 3-7 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The annual meeting is organized by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). The Denver-based IASLC is the only global organization dedicated to the study of lung cancer. Founded in 1972, the association’s membership includes more than 3,000 lung cancer specialists in 80 countries. More than 7,000 participants are expected to attend the 14th World Conference
June 10th, 2011
By Time Magazine Staff
DNA from lung tumors is an especially powerful tool for treatment. Here’s how it helps
June 7th, 2011
BY: DAGNY STUART
1/06/2011 - Paula Hart was just 46 when she starting having shortness of breath, along with a nagging cough and intermittent pain in her left shoulder.
After a trip to the emergency room in her hometown of Evansville, Ind., and a series of additional tests, doctors finally diagnosed Hart with non-small cell lung cancer
. The cancer was already advanced — stage IV.
“It was very shocking,” remembered Hart. “I was a recreational smoker. I never smoked full-time and shouldn’t have smoked at all. But I also work with chemicals because I’m a hairdresser.”
No one could tell her what caused lung cancer in such a young woman with a limited smoking history.
June 7th, 2011
by Keith Darce
Lung cancer patients under the age of 65 who received Tragara Pharmaceuticals’ lead experimental drug, Capoxigem, survived three times longer than those taking a placebo, according to results from a Phase 2 trial of the San Diego company’s therapy.
The drug and placebo were given in combination with erlotinib, a chemotherapy drug given to patients with advanced forms of the most common form of non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease.
June 6th, 2011
Join the fight against lung cancer at Jill’s Legacy
June 6th, 2011
By Deborah Sterescu
“…Results from a phase II study of Zybrestat showed that patients with non-small cell lung cancer had better response and survival rates.
The controlled, randomized trial, called Falcon, tested Zybrestat in combination with three other treatments, compared to the control arm of the study.
An updated analysis, conducted roughly 11 months after enrollment of the last patient in June of last year, showed that the Zybrestat arm was well tolerated, with no significant cumulative toxicities. The partial response rate was 56% with Zybrestat, and 36% in the standard therapy arm.”
June 5th, 2011
by Debra Hughes
CHICAGO–The European Tarceva (erlotinib) versus Chemotherapy (EURTAC) study, the first prospective analysis of an EGFR tyrosine-kinase inhibitor vs. chemotherapy (CT) for the first-line treatment of patients with EGFR mutation-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), met its primary endpoint of improved progression-free survival (PFS), demonstrating a 63% reduction in risk of progression or death, investigators reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s 2011 Annual Meeting. Additionally, erlotinib had acceptable toxicity compared with platinum-based chemotherapy.
EGFR tyrosine kinase activating mutations are present in 10–26% of NSCLC tumors and are associated with increased response to gefitinib and erlotinib. However, little is known about how the efficacy and safety profile of erlotinib compares with CT in Caucasian patients with EGFR mutations.
June 3rd, 2011
By Carolyn Y. Johnson
After Bill Schuette was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer four years ago, he tried seven kinds of chemotherapy. But in early 2009, his doctor told him he would not make it to Christmas.
“Bill,’’ Schuette recalled the doctor saying with tears in his eyes, “we don’t have anything else.’’
But this summer, Schuette, 62, is planning a 180-mile bike trip — a high point in an unexpected recovery brought about by an experimental drug he happened to hear about on TV news.
That medication, crizotinib, has become one of the most talked-about treatments in the cancer world because of its promising results, including data being presented this weekend in Chicago at the nation’s largest meeting of cancer specialists. As impressive is how rapidly the drug was developed by Pfizer, and cancer specialists say it shows the merits of a new approach to designing and testing cancer drugs.
