Lapatinib plus Capecitabine for HER2-Positive Advanced Breast Cancer

Lapatinib plus capecitabine is superior to capecitabine alone in women with HER2-positive advanced breast cancer that has progressed after treatment with regimens that included an anthracycline, a taxane, and trastuzumab. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Investigation confirms breast cancer rate spike in ABC Brisbane, Australia studios

The ABC is supposed to report the news, but today in Queensland it's the ABC that is the news because of a mysterious and alarming spate of breast cancer cases at the national broadcaster's Brisbane studios. A five-month investigation into the cluster of cases has found that the incidence of the disease is unusual and significant. In scientific terms: a statistical spike. Ten breast cancer cases have surfaced at the Toowong studios in a decade and the experts say that means women working there are six times more likely to develop breast cancer than women in the general community. What makes it more alarming is that they don't know why. Staff at the offices in inner-west Brisbane are now set to move, after experts recommended that the site be abandoned immediately for safety reasons. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Epirubicin-Based Regimen Treats Inflammatory Breast Cancer

Epirubicin-based induction and maintenance chemotherapy leads to relatively high long-term survival rates in women with unilateral inflammatory breast cancer, French researchers report in the December 1st issue of Cancer. Dr. Corinne Veyret of Centre Henri Becquerel, Rouen and colleagues evaluated the long-term efficacy and side effects of this treatment in 120 patients with nonmetastatic disease. The patients were randomized to high-dose fluorouracil, epirubicin and cyclophosphamide (FEC) with or without lenograstim or placebo. They also underwent surgery, radiation therapy or both. Maintenance therapy was with FEC at lower doses and no hormone therapy was employed. No differences in outcome were seen between the lenograstim and placebo groups and overall; 76 patients (63.3%) developed recurrent disease. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Tamoxifen Has Late Effect in Preventing Breast Cancer

Tamoxifen is associated with a highly significant reduction in the incidence of estrogen receptor-positive invasive breast cancer that predominantly occurs after the 8-year treatment period, according to long-term follow-up results from the Royal Marsden Tamoxifen Breast Cancer Prevention Trial."This late effect indicates a preventative rather than a treatment effect on established occult disease," said Trevor J. Powles, MD, emeritus professor of breast oncology, Institute of Cancer Research, and lead clinician, Parkside Oncology Centre, London, United Kingdom. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Revolutionary Breast Cancer Screening Device

A Utah company has come up with such a revolutionary new device for screening breast cancer that it's getting a rare government grant of almost three million dollars to continue development. Right now, this new screening and diagnostic device has everything going for it. It requires no compression, no squeezing of the breasts, no discomfort to the woman. And, it's radiation free. The National Institutes of Health is so impressed that it's giving a Utah company called Techniscan 2.8 million dollars a rare event, and one of NIH's largest small business grants. Why so much interest? This system allows the patient to comfortably lie face down. The breast is suspended in warm water while the ultrasound scanner rotates in a circle, producing detailed 3-D images. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Breast Cancer Stem Cells Seem to Survive Radiation Therapy

Breast cancer stem cells, a type of cell that scientists have recently discovered is difficult to kill, may be especially resistant to radiation therapy, a new study suggests. In fact, the radiation can even increase the growth of these stubborn stem cells, report researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine. "This population of stem cells is more radiation-resistant than are non-stem cells," said Dr. Frank Pajonk, an assistant adjunct professor of radiation oncology at UCLA and corresponding author on the study. "We are the first to report this." Radiation treatment involves exposure to high-energy rays or particles that destroy cancerous cells. It is often recommended after surgery for breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Veridex Receives FDA Approval for Breast Cancer Test Kit

Research and diagnostic technology company Immunicon on Friday announced that Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Veridex has received FDA approval to market its CellSearch Circulating Tumor Cell Kit, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. CellSearch is aimed at earlier detection of metastatic breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, according to the Inquirer. CellSearch uses blood samples to identify and count tumor cells in the body (Loyd, Philadelphia Inquirer, 12/15). Immunicon has an agreement with Veridex to sell the test .--Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Treatment-Induced Amenorrhea May Prevent Breast Cancer Relapse: Presented at SABCS

Treatment-induced amenorrhea during chemotherapy for breast cancer is associated with a significant 44% reduction in relapse risk in women under 40 years of age, a prospective, randomized study shows.Michael Gnant, MD, professor of surgery, Medical University of Vienna, Austria, presented the results on behalf of the Austrian Breast & Colorectal Cancer Study Group here on December 15th at the 29th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).The study involved 1,099 premenopausal women with estrogen- or progestin-receptor-positive, Stage I or II breast cancer. Following surgery, the women were randomized to 1 of 2 treatment regimens: 1) ovarian suppression with 3.6 mg of goserelin (Zoladex) every 28 days for 3 years and 20 mg/day of tamoxifen for 5 years; 2) 6 cycles of chemotherapy consisting of cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan) 600 mg/m2 combined with methotrexate 40 mg/m2, and fluorouracil (Adrucil) 600 mg/m2 intravenously on days 1 and 8. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Epigenetic drugs, promising for breast cancer treatment

Worldwide, cancer persists as one of the most important diseases that affect the human being. The knowledge on the molecular bases of cancer generated during the last decades has been successfully translated into small but significant gains in overall cancer survival rates due to better primary prevention measures, improved diagnostic methods and the development of more effective and specific therapies, collectively termed "molecular targeted therapies". In the context of these new forms of treatment, epigenetic or transcriptional cancer therapy is clearly promising. Epigenetics refers to the function of DNA that does not depend on the coding DNA sequence itself but on the accessory molecules and mechanisms affected by DNA. It is known that epigenetic alterations are equally if not more important than classical genetic alterations to disrupt the function of tumour suppressor genes. The two most studied epigenetic aberrations common to all types of cancer are DNA hypermethylation and histone deacetylation, which cooperate to silence the expression of tumour suppressor genes, just as gene mutations and gene deletions do. The big difference between these two alternative ways that tumour cells use to inactivate tumour suppressor genes is that, while the reversal of genetic alterations is technically almost unfeasible in clinical scenarios, the function of these epigenetically inactivated suppressor genes is easily reactivated by pharmacological means. In this inaugural issue of PLoS ONE, Dr. Dueñas-Gonzalez's group from the Instituto de Investi gaciones Biomédicas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Instituto Nacional de Cancerología, Mexico, demonstrate, for the first time, that a combination of a DNA methylation and a histone deacetylase inhibitor, can reactivate the expression of more than a thousand genes in primary tumours of breast cancer patients. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Researchers Find Two Biomarkers With Potential To Predict Breast Cancer Spread

Expression of two different proteins taken from primary tumor biopsies is highly associated with spread of breast cancer to nearby lymph nodes, according to researchers who say this protein profile could help identify at an early stage those patients whose disease is likely to metastasize. In the December 15 issue of Cancer Research, the researchers say over-expression of one unidentified protein and under-expression of another is 88 percent accurate in identifying breast cancer that has spread in a group of 65 patients, compared to an analysis of lymph nodes and outcomes. If the predictive and diagnostic power of these proteins is validated, they could be analyzed in primary tumor biopsies that are routinely collected at the time of diagnosis, saving some women from extensive and possibly unnecessary treatment as well as from undergoing a second surgery to collect lymph nodes for analysis, the researchers say. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

New Study Shows Efficacy Of AROMASIN On Early Breast Cancer

New data from the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) B-33 study, presented today at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, showed that postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer who received Aromasin after five years of tamoxifen were 56% less likely to have a relapse of breast cancer than those who received placebo (P=0.004).“Aromasin provided patients with improved relapse-free survival despite early study closure, unblinding and crossover in the placebo arm,” said Dr. Terry Mamounas, NSABP breast committee chairman and lead investigator for the B-33 study. Median follow-up of 30 months also showed that disease-free survival was improved by 32% (P=0.07). Toxicity experienced with Aromasin in the B-33 trial was acceptable for the adjuvant setting. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

New Gamma Camera Technique For The Detection Of Small Breast Tumors

A diagnostic device that resembles a mammography unit can detect breast tumors as tiny as one-fifth of an inch in diameter, which may make it a valuable complementary imaging technique to mammography, say researchers at Mayo Clinic, who helped develop the technology along with industry collaborators Gamma Medica and GE Healthcare.This new technique, Molecular Breast Imaging, uses a new dual-head gamma camera system and is sensitive enough to detect tumors less than 10 millimeters (about two-fifths of an inch) in diameter in 88 percent of cases where it is used. Early findings from an ongoing comparison of the device with mammography show that it can detect small cancers that were not found with mammography, say the investigators. Mayo Clinic physicist Michael O’Connor, Ph.D., will present these results Saturday, Dec. 16, at the 2006 meeting of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.“Our ultimate goal is to detect small cancers that may be inconspicuous or invisible on a mammogram for high-risk women with dense breasts,” says Dr. O’Connor. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Genomic Health Announces Multiple New Findings On Oncotype DX(TM) Based On Evaluation Of More Than 20,000 Tumor Samples

Genomic Health, Inc. (Nasdaq: GHDX) today announced the results of several studies looking at the roles and relationships of genes measured by the company's Oncotype DX breast cancer assay, including an analysis of more than 10,000 node-negative tumors indicating that all 21 genes impact the assessment of an individual woman's tumor. This research was presented at the 29th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.Oncotype DX measures the expression of 16 cancer-related genes plus 5 reference genes of an individual tumor to generate a "Recurrence Score" to quantify risk of recurrence and likelihood of response to chemotherapy. To assess the degree to which components of this multi-gene assay influence the Recurrence Score, researchers measured expression of the 16 individual cancer genes relative to reference genes in 10,618 tumor specimens on a scale of 0 to 15, where a one-unit increment is associated with a twofold change in expression. Results suggest that every cancer gene used in the Oncotype DX 21-gene panel impacts the Recurrence Score due to the potentially large variation in quantitative expression for each gene in different patients. The study found this result even though expression of certain genes and gene families; including ER, HER2 and a group of five genes linked to proliferation, have the largest coefficients used in calculating the Recurrence Score. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Young breast cancer patients test super-hormone treatment

Young women are getting a shot of a male hormone testosterone often used to treat prostate cancer as part of a super-hormone treatment that new research suggests may improve their survival odds for breast cancer. This chemical equivalent of ovary removal has one big advantage over surgery: it's not permanent, so it may preserve a woman's ability to have children. In premenopausal women, the drugs suppress the pituitary gland, which produces hormones that control the ovaries and cause a woman to have a period every month. Side effects of this induced early menopause are similar to those of natural menopause _ hot flashes, night sweats, etc., according to new research presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, which ended Sunday. The drugs are most often used in two situations:

• As an alternative to chemotherapy for women who have had surgery for small, hormone-fueled tumors and are considered at relatively low risk for recurrence.
• As a way to keep the ovaries suppressed in women whose periods return after temporarily stopping during chemotherapy.

--Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

HER2 Vaccine May Reduce Breast Cancer Recurrence

According to results recently presented at the 2006 annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), an experimental HER2 vaccine may reduce the risk of cancer recurrence in some women with high-risk early breast cancer. Although cure rates remain high for patients with early breast cancer, particularly women with node-negative breast cancer, some of these women will experience a cancer recurrence and may ultimately succumb to their disease. Therefore, a reduction in the risk of recurrence among high-risk women is warranted. HER2 is a protein that is overexpressed in twenty to thirty percent of breast cancers. Using a part of the HER2 protein (the E75 peptide), researchers have developed an experimental anticancer vaccine. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

As Postmenopausal Hormone Replacement Therapy Drops, Breast Cancer Recurrence Rates Drop

One year after millions of post-menopausal women in the United States stopped using Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) in 2002, the number of new breast cancer cases dropped by 7% nationwide. Researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center believe the two are linked - that the incidence of breast cancer went down largely because so many older women stopped using HRT. The investigators are reporting their findings at the 29th annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

New breast cancer scanner approved

A promising new breast scanning technology with none of the radiation dangers associated with mammograms has been approved for sale by Health Canada. Known as SoftScan, the device uses infrared lasers to detect and monitor malignancies, even in dense breast tissue that mammography can fail to penetrate. The new machine will not replace mammograms, which will continue to be the standard tool for pinpointing breast cancers for the foreseeable future, said Dr. Nathalie Duchesne, a professor of radiology at Quebec City's Laval University. "There are no side effects to this technology," said Duchesne, who has worked in clinical trials with SoftScan for nearly a decade and is a paid consultant for Advanced Research Technologies Inc., which makes the machines. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

'Steep decrease' in breast cancer rate

Research presented this morning at a conference in San Antonio indicates there has been a "startling" drop in breast cancer rates in the USA, the Associated Press reports.
The 7% decrease in 2003 from the year before appears to be due to the declining number of women taking hormone pills. There is an abstract here of the findings, which were delivered at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium -- an event that the local Express-News describes today as the "largest annual conference in the world devoted to the disease that strikes 200,000 American women each year." --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Research Indicates Breast Cancer Cells May Be Fought With Vitamin E Precursor

Medical data indicates that approximately 30 percent of breast cancers have high levels of a HER2, a human epidermal growth factor receptor. Research conducted by Griffith University's School of Medicine has found that these breast cancer cells may be fought with a precursor of vitamin E. The HER2 feature found in this types of cancer is resistant to many treatments such as chemotherapy. The experimental research study was done on mice. Results show that pro-vitamin E or alpha-tocopheryl succinate (alpha-TOS) can reduce the number of these tumors. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Zometa (zoledronic acid) Prevents Bone Loss in Premenopausal Breast Cancer Patients

In a study of premenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer treated with a combination of hormonal therapies, use of the bisphosphonate drug Zometa® (zoledronic acid) prevented bone loss. These results were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

U.S. breast-cancer guidelines updated

The U.S. national guidelines for treating breast cancer have been updated to reflect new technology, a cancer group said Wednesday. One change is that Eli Lilly's Evista (raloxifene) is now recommended for use in reducing the risk of invasive breast cancer in postmenopausal women with lobular carcinoma in situ, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network said in a statement Wednesday. The update is based on positive results from the NSABP Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene (STAR) trial, the group said. The NCCN further advised that, when a breast MRI is indicated, the test should be performed and interpreted by an expert breast-imaging team working in concert with the multidisciplinary treatment team. The revised guidelines also contain advice on incorporating Genentech's Herceptin (trastuzumab) as an adjuvant treatment for HER2-positive breast cancer and recommend that current treatments now used in the adjuvant setting also be considered for the neoadjuvant setting. The NCCN is a non-profit alliance comprised of 20 of the world's leading cancer centers. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Breast cancer may be sexually transmitted

A new study has revealed that breast cancer could be sexually transmitted. Emeritus Professor James Lawson of the University of New South Wales and colleagues have found the same form of the human papillomavirus (HPV) associated with cervical cancer in almost half the breast tumor samples they tested. It`s the first study of its kind in Australia, although international studies have also found cervical cancer-related HPV in breast cancer cells. He says while the evidence is far from conclusive, "it`s possible and totally worthy of investigation" to suspect that HPV could also cause breast cancer. Lawson says it`s possible that HPV is spread by sexual activity or during showers or baths, when the virus could be transferred from the genital area to the breasts via the nipple ducts. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Boffins develop antibody that inhibits breast cancer spread in mice

Boffins at the University of Buffalo have come a step further in the fight against breast cancer, by developing a monoclonal antibody that has been able to significantly extend the survival of mice with human breast-cancer tumours, and inhibit the cancer's spread to the their lungs by more than 50 percent. Named JAA-F11, the antibody targets a particular disaccharide, an antigen known as TF-Ag, which aids the adhesion and spread of certain cancer cells. The researchers noted that while the antibody did not kill the cancer cells, it blocked stages of cancer-cell growth that allow the cells to stick to organ tissue. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Bisphenol-A May Trigger Human Breast Cancer

A new study finds the strongest evidence yet for the hypothesis that widespread environmental exposure to bisphenol A during fetal life causes breast cancer in adult women. [The researchers] exposed pregnant rats to bisphenol A at doses ranging from 2.5 to 1,000 µg per kg of body weight per day. By the time the pups exposed at the lowest dose reached the equivalent of puberty (50 days old), about 25% of their mammary ducts had precancerous lesions, a proportion three to four times higher than among the nonexposed controls. Mammary ducts from all other exposure groups showed elevated levels of lesions. Cancerous lesions were found in the mammary glands of one-third of the rats exposed to 250 µg/kg/day.
Bisphenol A, a known estrogenic compound, is ubiquitous in the environment. Many people receive exposures of about 2.5 µg/kg/day, and mammary gland development in rats and humans is very similar. Therefore, Soto says, "bisphenol A could be one factor causing the increase in breast cancer incidence over the past 50 years." --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Possible Link Between Prostate Cancer and Female Sibling Breast Cancer

Black men with prostate cancer were four times more likely than other black men to have a sister diagnosed with breast cancer, a University of Michigan study shows. When about 200 men were questioned about family medical history in a Flint men's health study, the men with prostate cancer also were much more likely to have a brother diagnosed with prostate cancer. That confirmed a link found in previous studies.
--Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Taxotere Produces Superior Breast Cancer Outcomes

According to the results of a Phase III clinical trial published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, chemotherapy with Taxotere® (docetaxel) plus cyclophosphamide results in better cancer-free survival than chemotherapy with doxorubicin plus cyclophosphamide in women with Stage I to Stage III breast cancer. Early breast cancer refers to cancer that has not spread to distant sites in the body. However, in early breast cancer, there may be cancer spread to lymph nodes under the arm (axillary), referred to as node-positive breast cancer. Standard treatment for node-positive breast cancer typically includes the surgical removal of the cancer, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Potential new therapeutic target for breast cancer

A new publication in the journal Clinical Cancer Research reports on the genetic characterization of classic lobular carcinomas (CLCs), a type of tumour that accounts for 10-15% of all breast cancers. These tumours show a disappointing response to current forms of treatment (chemotherapy and endocrine therapy, since most of the tumours express estrogen receptors), so a team of researchers led by the Institute of Cancer Research set out to perform an analysis of their molecular genetic features, with a view to seeking potential alternative targets for therapy. Thirteen typical tumour samples were profiled for gene expression using a variety of techniques, leading to the identification of a genomic region that is amplified in the CLCs. From within this region, the gene FGFR1 was found to be over-expressed; this gene encodes the fibroblast growth factor receptor one, which is a cellular signalling molecule. A breast cancer cell line was identified that showed the same molecular genetic and expression profiles as the CLCs (despite its reported original derivation from a different type of tumour, a ductal carcinoma); inhibition of FGFR1 expression using either small interfering RNA (siRNA) or achemical inhibitor caused reduced survival of this cell line, but not of control cell lines.The researchers therefore concluded that FGFR1 signalling contributes tothe survival of classic lobular carcinomas cells, and possibly also to ductal carcinoma cells, and that it may therefore represent a useful therapeutic target for FGFR1-positive breast cancers. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Researcher, Pro-Life Advocates React to Abortion Drug-Breast Cancer Study

A leading biochemist who has published internationally-respected studies on breast cancer and a top pro-life organization both reacted to a study released Thursday showing the RU 486 abortion drug helped suppress the breast cancer gene in mice. They agreed the drug will not likely benefit humans. The University of California study showed that the RU 486 abortion drug works to suppress the progesterone hormone that triggers the breast cancer gene to produce cancerous tumors. But Dr. Joel Brind, a Yale-educated endocrinologist who teaches biology at Baruch College in New York, told LifeNews.com he doesn't think the drug will offer any benefit to women. "There is reason to believe that RU 486 as an anti-progestin might suppress growth of breast cancer in an experimental system in rodents, but RU 486 also neutralizes the essential hormone cortisol which mice do not make," Brind said. "Therefore, there is good reason to believe that such a drug would not be an effective anti-cancer drug in people," he told LifeNews.com. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Study: Abortion pill blocks breast cancer gene

American scientists caution that their research is still in the exploratory stages, but recent results have shown the abortion drug RU-486 prevented tumors in mice bred with a breast cancer gene. Although no one is suggesting women use the abortion pill to prevent breast cancer, the experiment did show that RU-486 blocks a hormone called progesterone, which activates the breast cancer gene BRCA1. "All of us have to be cautious," said cell biologist Eva Lee of the University of California, Irvine, who led the research published in Friday's edition of the journal Science. "But I do think if there is a better anti-progesterone available, hopefully there will be other options in the future for these women." Women today have few options to prevent breast cancer, and if researchers could produce a safer hormone blocker it would offer a viable alternative for women with the BRCA1 gene.Cancer specialists not involved with the experiment praised the work, even as they warned women not to get their hopes up. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--