Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Nanotechnology Center, along with collaborators at Cornell University and Hybrid Silica Technologies, have received approval for their first Investigational New Drug Application (IND) from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an ultrasmall silica inorganic nanoparticle platform for targeted molecular imaging of cancer, which may be useful for…

The first ever government sponsored cancer awareness campaign to highlight the early signs and symptoms of bowel cancer is launched today, by the United Kingdom’s Health Minister Paul Burstow. The ‘Be Clear on Cancer’ campaign will initially be piloted in two regions and if successful will be rolled out across the country. Improving cancer outcomes is a Government priority and the earlier cancer…

A new national conference on breast cancer hosted and sponsored by Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC, will spotlight important developments in breast cancer care including surgical techniques such as nipple-sparing mastectomies with breast reconstruction that not only remove the cancer but also allow women to have natural, healthy breasts.



The Georgetown University…

Earlier this month French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-aventis acquired an exclusive world-wide license to one of Oxford BioTherapeutics’ internal preclinical antibody programs. Sanofi-aventis intends to use the licensed antibody, which is directed against a novel, proprietary target identified by Oxford BioTherapeutics’, to develop, manufacture and commercialize antibody-drug conjugate (also called immuno-conjugate)…

Today sees the launch of The Year of Radiotherapy, an initiative to raise awareness of radiotherapy as a cost-effective, cutting-edge treatment that can help cure cancer. According to figures published by Cancer Research UK, only 1 in 10 people know that radiotherapy helps cure 40% of cancer patients. A report from the national charity estimates that only 38% of cancer patients in England are getting…

Results from a randomized Phase III trial evaluating iniparip (BSI-201) in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (mTNBC) show that the trial did not meet the pre-specified criteria for significance for co-primary endpoints of overall survival and progression-free survival.



When women are diagnosed with breast cancer, their tumors are routinely tested for the presence of estrogen and progesterone receptors and for the over-expression of…

Cancer. It is expected that by 2020 there will be 16 million new cases of cancer each year. Seventy percent of these cases will be in developing countries. African countries are the least able of all developing countries to cope, having few cancer care services. Most Africans have no access to cancer screening, early diagnosis, treatment or palliative care. Consequently a diagnosis of cancer leads, in most cases, to a painful and distressing death.…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced a possible association between saline and silicone gel-filled breast implants and anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL), a very rare type of cancer. Data reviewed by the FDA suggest that patients with breast implants may have a very small but significant risk of ALCL in the scar capsule adjacent to the implant.



The FDA is requesting that health care professionals report any confirmed cases of ALCL in…

Women who have experienced hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause may have a 50% lower risk of developing the most common forms of breast cancer than postmenopausal women who have never had such symptoms, according to a recent study by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The results of the first study to examine the relationship between menopausal symptoms and breast cancer risk are available online ahead…

Earlier this week Dutch scientific and medical publisher Elsevier, on behalf of the American Society for Radiation Oncology(ASTRO), anounced the publication of the first issue of Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO).



ASTRO is the largest radiation oncology society in the world, with more than 10,000 members who specialize in treating patients with…

In a new policy statement released earlier today, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) calls on physicians, medical schools, insurers, and others to help improve quality of life for people with advanced cancer. In the guidline ASCO recommends steps to ensure that physicians initiate candid discussions about the full range of palliative care…

A Phase II trial with an investigational therapy called DCVax® (Northwest Biotherapeutics), a personalized vaccine that takes a patient’s immune cells and the biomarkers from that patient’s tumor tissue to mobilize the full immune system response to recognize and kill the tumor cells, resumes enrollment.



The purpose of the ongoing 240-patient, double blind, randomized, placebo controlled Phase II clinical…

Molecular staging or genomic profiling holds promise in predicting the long-term outcome of an individual patient based on the gene expression profile of their cancer at diagnosis. Researchers have shown that a gene signature test – called ColoPrint – that analyzes the expression of 18 genes can identify the risk of recurrence in colorectal cancer patients with localized, stage II disease.



Such a gene signature test could have important implications for…

A prospective study, MUNICON II, has shown that detecting early metabolic response to chemotherapy by positron emission tomography (PET) imaging prior to surgery is useful in determining a patient’s prognosis for locally advanced adenocarcinoma of the esophagogastric junction. Researchers also found that those who did not respond to chemotherapy did not benefit from additional radiation. The study results were presented during the eighth annual Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium,…