Dendreon breast cancer drug Neuvenge effective in trial

Dendreon Corp., the developer of a treatment to stimulate the immune system against prostate cancer, said a small study suggests the same technique may help women with breast cancer.
A clinical trial of Neuvenge showed that four of 18 patients taking the treatment, or 22 percent, had their tumors shrink or stabilize, according to results published in the Aug. 20 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The Seattle-based company, which has no marketed products, lost almost $1 billion of its market value May 9, when its leading drug candidate, Provenge, was delayed by a request from U.S. regulators for more proof that it works. Dendreon presented early results for Neuvenge, its only other drug in human testing, at a scientific meeting in March 2004. The company hasn't invested since in any large clinical trials needed for approval. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

New breast-cancer drug Exemestane

Government drug-buying agency Pharmac has approved funding for a new drug for breast-cancer sufferers. Pharmac medical director Dr Peter Moodie said exemestane would be fully funded under a deal with pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Exemestane, an aromatase inhibitor drug, can help to block the growth of hormone-dependent tumours by lowering the amount of oestrogen hormone in the body. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

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--

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--

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--

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--

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--

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--

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--

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--

Researchers devise method to search for breast cancer drugs

Scientists have found a computational method that charts chemical space in the search for new breast cancer treatments. The technique has already resulted in the discovery of compounds that have performed better than current standard antioestrogen drug tamoxifen. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--