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Scientists have identified a new way of fighting cancer that limits the growth and spread of a variety of tumors in laboratory animals. When you get a cut, the area quickly becomes inflamed - swollen, red, and tender as the body's immune system sends white blood cells to fight infection and heal the wound. The immune system reacts to many cancers in much the same way, says University of California, San Diego researcher Judith Varner. "The white blood cells rush to the tumor and attempt to heal the 'wound' in a manner that actually never stops," she explains. "And because it doesn't stop, because the cancer doesn't go away, the white blood cells actually help the cancer to grow."
That happens when the immune system cells are 'hijacked' by the tumor in a way that fosters the growth and spread of tumors. Varner and her colleagues identified a specific enzyme called PI-3 kinase gamma that allows the immune cells to get into the tumor, where it can be compromised. They figured out how to block PI-3 kinase gamma, using either drugs or genetic methods, in laboratory mice. "When we treated animals with early tumors, we found that we could stop the stage of tumor at the early stage, and we prevented the invasive stage from developing. And that's only by targeting the inflammation, even without a drug that affects the tumor cell itself," Varner says.
In addition to the mice with breast cancer, the researchers also used this approach on a variety of other cancers in laboratory animals and found it was consistently effective across a range of different kinds of tumors. "So we were able to inhibit half of all the tumor growth in pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, lung cancer. And there's every reason to believe that any other solid tumor cancer would be also responsive."
Varner says suppressing PI-3 kinase gamma might in theory also be effective to reduce the risk of cancer in the first place, in cases where chronic inflammation contributes to tumor formation. She says human testing of PI-3 kinase gamma inhibitors to battle cancer could begin as soon as a year or so from now. Judith Varner of the University of California, San Diego and her colleagues report on this new approach to tumors in the journal Cancer Cell.
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Pop-science today depends on lavish research grants. The way to get the grants is to make a grand hypothesis. You throw in a few facts and some factoids and general statistics, mix them with a few long shot (crack pot?) theories and add a little political agenda and some guilt and serve it to the dumbest politician or most wild eyed blog site and wait for the grant money to come rolling in.
An aspirin a day may keep melanoma at bay, a new study suggests. After scrutinizing the medical records of 1,000 people, an international team of researchers have determined that the risk of melanoma was cut by almost half when people took a daily dose of aspirin for at least five years. Our data at least support the hypothesis that long-term steady aspirin use has an effect, said study co-author Dr. Robert Stern, a professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School and chief of dermatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston.
Previously, the only melanoma prevention advice cancer experts could give was for people to stay out of the sun and get their skin checked for early warning signs of the disease. If melanoma isnt detected early, it can be deadly. Stern and his colleagues compared data from 400 melanoma patients to that from 600 healthy volunteers. The healthy volunteers were matched in age and gender to the cancer patients, some of whom ended up with more than one matched group. The 1,000 study participants were interviewed and asked about lifestyle habits and known risk factors for melanoma, such as light skin color and history of sunburns. They were also questioned about medication use.
While melanoma is not as common as other types of skin cancer, it is the most dangerous and most likely to spread to other parts of the body. It killed nearly 9,000 people in the U.S. last year, according to the National Cancer Institute. The researchers focused on usage of anti-cholesterol statins and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications, or NSAIDs, because some earlier population studies had suggested that these medications might have an impact on melanoma development.
Although the study found no beneficial effect associated with statin use, it did find a substantial reduction in risk associated with the use of aspirin, which is an anti-inflammatory. There was also a hint that other NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen (marketed as Advil and Motrin) and naproxen (Aleve), might reduce melanoma risk if taken regularly over a long period of time. But the data on these drugs wasnt as strong. Stern suspects that may be because far fewer people take these NSAIDs on a daily basis. Many middle-aged people take a daily baby aspirin to protect their hearts, he said. The use of other NSAID painkillers tends to be more sporadic.
More An aspirin a day may fight skin cancer - Health - Cancer - msnbc.com
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a first-of-its-kind device, called MelaFind, that makes detailed, digital images of skin growths and uses a computer to analyze them for signs of cancer, offering a sort of second opinion to doctors. The device is approved only for dermatologists and only for use on growths that don't have obvious signs of cancer but still have one or two worrisome traits. The hope is to find more melanomas sooner. Nearly all patients diagnosed with early-stage melanoma can be treated and cured, but 85 percent of patients with late-stage melanoma die from it within five years.
More than 70,000 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with melanoma this year, and 16 percent are diagnosed only after the disease has spread to other parts of the body, according to estimates from the National Institutes of Health. To diagnose the disease, doctors decide which moles to remove and biopsy using an entirely visual set of guidelines involving size, shape and color. Most dermatologists easily spot late-stage lesions that have obvious signs of cancer, including irregular edges, uneven color and a width greater than 6 millimeters. But many others are tough calls.
"Every day patients come in with 20 moles on their back and the dilemma is, which ones are suspicious and need to be biopsied?" said Dr. David Pariser, former president of the American Academy of Dermatology. "The diagnosis of melanoma is the most serious one a dermatologist makes, and we have sleepless nights worrying about it," said Pariser, who consulted for the device's maker, Mela Sciences Inc. of Irvington, N.Y., on its presentation to FDA. The device's handheld attachment, about the size of a blow dryer, emits light that penetrates below the surface of the skin, taking multicolored images that reflect the depth and shape of skin growths. A computer compares these to a database of 10,000 archived images and recommends whether a biopsy should be done.
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Gene mutations.Frankly, that last line is just bullshit. It might average to 15, but if one has not developed a tumor yet for the mutations to occur in then they can't occur from the first puff now can they?
They compared the dna of a tumor with that of the individual and implied that the tumor had mutations. If the person had experienced the same number of mutations then the difference between the two would have been 0.
Pop-science today depends on lavish research grants. The way to get the grants is to make a grand hypothesis. You throw in a few facts and some factoids and general statistics, mix them with a few long shot (crack pot?) theories and add a little political agenda and some guilt and serve it to the dumbest politician or most wild eyed blog site and wait for the grant money to come rolling in.
An aspirin a day may keep melanoma at bay...
Daily aspirin may protect against melanoma
Long-term use cut risk of deadly skin cancer by almost half, study finds
An aspirin a day may keep melanoma at bay, a new study suggests. After scrutinizing the medical records of 1,000 people, an international team of researchers have determined that the risk of melanoma was cut by almost half when people took a daily dose of aspirin for at least five years. Our data at least support the hypothesis that long-term steady aspirin use has an effect, said study co-author Dr. Robert Stern, a professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School and chief of dermatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston.
Previously, the only melanoma prevention advice cancer experts could give was for people to stay out of the sun and get their skin checked for early warning signs of the disease. If melanoma isnt detected early, it can be deadly. Stern and his colleagues compared data from 400 melanoma patients to that from 600 healthy volunteers. The healthy volunteers were matched in age and gender to the cancer patients, some of whom ended up with more than one matched group. The 1,000 study participants were interviewed and asked about lifestyle habits and known risk factors for melanoma, such as light skin color and history of sunburns. They were also questioned about medication use.
While melanoma is not as common as other types of skin cancer, it is the most dangerous and most likely to spread to other parts of the body. It killed nearly 9,000 people in the U.S. last year, according to the National Cancer Institute. The researchers focused on usage of anti-cholesterol statins and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications, or NSAIDs, because some earlier population studies had suggested that these medications might have an impact on melanoma development.
Although the study found no beneficial effect associated with statin use, it did find a substantial reduction in risk associated with the use of aspirin, which is an anti-inflammatory. There was also a hint that other NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen (marketed as Advil and Motrin) and naproxen (Aleve), might reduce melanoma risk if taken regularly over a long period of time. But the data on these drugs wasnt as strong. Stern suspects that may be because far fewer people take these NSAIDs on a daily basis. Many middle-aged people take a daily baby aspirin to protect their hearts, he said. The use of other NSAID painkillers tends to be more sporadic.
More An aspirin a day may fight skin cancer - Health - Cancer - msnbc.com
