Oncology

Breast cancer chemoprevention: meta-analysis shows SERMs are highly effective+

1st May 2013

LONDON—New and comprehensive data showing that millions of cases of breast cancer could be avoided by treating women at high risk of the disease — but who are not yet ill — with the class of drugs known as selective …

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BRCA-deficient cancers respond to combination of two experimental drugs+

24th April 2013

WASHINGTON DC—Doctors taking the unusual step of combining two experimental drugs to treat cancers in patients who have mutated BRCA — the gene conferring susceptibility to breast, ovarian and some other solid tumours — found that patients responded through what …

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Treatment “holidays” to overcome resistance in advanced melanoma?+

24th April 2013

WASHINGTON DC—Laboratory evidence that giving patients intermittent rather than continuous treatment with cancer drugs could help them overcome drug resistance in cancers such as melanoma was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 2013 meeting. Dr Darrin Stuart from …

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Blood test reliably detects cancer mutations in gastrointestinal stromal tumour+

24th April 2013

WASHINGTON DC—A new blood test has detected drug-resistant mutations reliably in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST) helping to guide therapy when first-line drugs had failed. This was in a study using the recently approved agent regorafenib…

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Gene expression and molecular pathways guide head and neck cancer therapies+

24th April 2013

WASHINGTON DC—Gene expression and molecular pathways in head and neck cancer have been identified with reference to The Cancer Genome Atlas in research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research annual conference. The PIK-3CA pathway and P 53 gene …

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Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy rescues kids with relapsing acute lymphoblastic leukaemia+

9th April 2013

WASHINGTON DC—A new type of immunotherapy has brought responses in children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in relapse who had no other options to prevent the progress of this fatal phase of the disease. At the American Association…

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Treating HER 2 positive metastatic breast cancer without chemotherapy?+

9th April 2013

WASHINGTON DC—Patients with metastatic breast cancer who are HER-2 positive could potentially be treated with the anti-HER-2 conjugated drug, trastuzumab-emtansine (T-DM1), alone — without needing to add chemotherapy. This prediction was made at the American…

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Two-step immunotherapy brings promise in advanced ovarian cancer+

8th April 2013

WASHINGTON DC—A new type of immunotherapy has helped patients with advanced ovarian cancer who had no other therapeutic options. In a study reported to the 2013 conference of the American Association for Cancer Research Dr Lana Kandalaft from…

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Blood test for free tumour DNA could guide breast cancer therapy+

3rd April 2013

CAMBRIDGE, UK—A new blood test promises quicker assessment of treatment efficacy in patients with metastatic breast cancer. Dr Dana Tsui and colleagues from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge, report in the New England Journal of Medicine …

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Circulating free tumour DNA test could guide breast cancer therapy+

3rd April 2013

CAMBRIDGE, UK—A new blood test promises quicker assessment of treatment efficacy in patients with metastatic breast cancer. Dr Dana Tsui and colleagues from the Cancer Research UK Institute at Cambridge University report in the New England Journal of Medicine that …

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Dog walking cuts breast cancer recurrence risk+

29th March 2013

Walking a dog most days could cut down your risk of having a recurrence of breast cancer, according to research presented at the St Gallen conference on Primary Therapy of Early Breast Cancer in Switzerland — where delegates also heard …

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Which patients for bisphosphonate control of breast cancer metastasis?+

29th March 2013

ST GALLEN, SWITZERLAND—Bisphosphonates have an important part to play in managing breast cancer according to research reported at the 2013 St Gallen conference on “Primary Therapy of Early Breast Cancer”. Professor Robert Coleman

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