Today February 4th is World Cancer Day

[JustAnotherNut]

World Cancer Day 2016: How Far We’ve Come In The Fight Against Cancer

It is a problem of epidemic proportion. It doesn't care about race, religion, politics, gender or age. It can effect anyone.

I myself was diagnosed with stage 2, Triple Negative Breast Cancer 2 years ago, underwent chemo & surgery to remove what was left of the golf ball sized lump initially found. Thankfully it hadn't spread to lymph nodes or elsewhere and responded well to treatment and I am now officially 14 months cancer free.
Oncologist & Surgeon weren't too happy with me and have both told me my risk of reoccurrence is high because I had refused radiation & opted for lumpectomy instead of mastectomy. Whatever....it's my body, my cancer, my health and my choice.
Personally the hardest part thru the whole course of events, was having to tell my husband and 3 kids. And the greatest, is knowing I'm a survivor.

 

[aaronleland]

Good. I wish you another 14 months, and another 14 after that. Best of luck, and I hope you live a long and healthy life.

 

[JustAnotherNut]

Good. I wish you another 14 months, and another 14 after that. Best of luck, and I hope you live a long and healthy life.

Thank you. I have always planned on living till I was 100 & I'm barely half way there. I still got plenty of butt to kick

 

[DarkFury]

Post throat cancer 12 years.
Post Lymph cancer 12 years.

 

[JustAnotherNut]

Post throat cancer 12 years.
Post Lymph cancer 12 years.

And I see you too are still kicking plenty of butts You always were a tough one to slap down

 

[waltky]

DNA tweak 'boosts' cancer-killing cells...

Gene editing 'boosts' cancer-killing cells
Thu, 14 Apr 2016 - Cancer scientists have genetically modified the immune system to help them attack tumours in mice.

Cancer scientists have genetically modified the immune system to help it attack tumours in mice. The immune system is the body's own defence against infection and cancer, but tumours develop ways of stopping the onslaught. The University College London team manipulated the DNA of immune cells to allow them to keep up the fight. Experts said the idea needed to be tested in human trials, but it was still exciting. Harnessing the power of the immune system to fight cancer is one of the most exciting fields in medicine. A lot of the research is targeted at the "chemical handshake" that tumours use to disable immune cells. A class of drugs called checkpoint inhibitors, such as pembrolizumab and nivolumab, interrupt the handshake and are already available for patients.

This has lead to spectacular results for some patients, but it can lead to side-effects as the drugs affect the whole immune system. The approach now being tried effectively cuts off one of the hands - known technically as PD-1 - to prevent the handshake, but is targeted only at those immune cells attacking the cancer. In experiments on mice, scientists extracted killer T cells - which gobble up cancerous tissue - from inside the tumour. The assumption is the immune cells clustering inside the tumour are trained to attack it. Cutting edge gene editing technology was then used to change the DNA - the code of life - inside the killer T cells so that PD-1 was removed and cancers would be unable to stop them. It is known colloquially as "cutting the brakes". In experiments on melanoma and fibrosarcoma, mouse survival increased from less than 20% after 60 days without treatment to more than 70% with treatment.

Dr Sergio Quezada, one of the researchers, said: "This is an exciting discovery and means we may have a way to get around cancer's defences while only targeting the immune cells that recognise the cancer. "While drugs that block PD-1 do show promise, this method only knocks out PD-1 on the T cells that can find the tumour - which could mean fewer side effects for patients." Dr Alan Worsley, from Cancer Research UK which funded the study, said: "I think it's actually pretty exciting - it's elegant, simple, straightforward and it makes sense. "We're going to see how this works in trials, but potentially it gets around the side effects." He said in immunotherapy drug trials "so many people had to come off because of the side effects, here it's not your whole immune system going crazy it's just those in the tumour."

Gene editing 'boosts' cancer-killing cells - BBC News

 

[waltky]

New immuno-therapy drug for head and neck cancers...

Head and neck cancer drug 'game changer'
Tue, 19 Apr 2016 - A new type of cancer drug that wakes up the patient's own immune system to fight tumours could be a game changer for tackling head and neck cancers, say experts.

Trial results coming out of a US cancer conference suggest the treatment works better than standard chemotherapy. Nivolumab significantly improved the survival odds of patients with these hard-to-treat tumours. It is already available on the NHS for people with advanced skin cancer. But experts say more research is needed before offering it routinely to patients with other cancers.

New hope

Immunotherapy is seen as one of the most exciting developments in cancer treatments in years. While it cannot cure every cancer, mounting evidence suggests it can buy some very ill patients valuable time. The phase-three trial of nivolumab, presented at the American Association of Cancer Research, suggests the drug can extend survival time by months, even when the cancer is advanced and aggressive. In the trial, 240 patients with head and neck cancer were given nivolumab, while another 121 were given standard chemotherapy. After a year, 36% of patients treated with nivolumab injections were still alive compared with 17% of those on chemo.

Elderly man with neck tumour​

UK trial leader Prof Kevin Harrington, from the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said the results were "a potential game changer" for head and neck cancer, "introducing a new drug treatment into our armoury that at last is better than standard chemotherapy". "Once it has relapsed or spread, head and neck cancer is extremely difficult to treat, with surgery and radiotherapy often impossible," he said. "So it's very good news for patients that these interim results indicate we now have a new treatment that works, and can significantly extend life."

About 10,000 patients a year in the UK are diagnosed with a head or neck cancer - cancer of the mouth, lips, voice box, throat, nose, sinuses and salivary glands. Dr Emma King, of Cancer Research UK, said: "These results could have a significant impact for head and neck cancer patients who no longer respond to treatment. "They also reinforce the important shift that we are seeing towards using immunotherapies for cancer treatment. "Before Nivolumab can be used routinely to treat head and neck cancer in the UK, it will need to approved by NICE [the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence]."

Head and neck cancer drug 'game changer' - BBC News

 

[waltky]

Vast majority don't fully understand terminal cancer prognosis...

Only 5% of Terminally Ill Cancer Patients Fully Understand Prognosis
May 24, 2016 - Only a tiny fraction of those diagnosed with terminal cancer are fully aware of their prognosis, according to a new study.

Writing in this week's Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine say advanced cancer patients “remain unaware of basic information about their illness or its treatment.” The small study involved 178 terminally ill patients with cancer, having only months left to live. The patients were interviewed and asked about their health status, including what stage their cancer was and how long they expected to live. Only nine, or 5 percent, acknowledged having “end stage … incurable” cancer, the researchers found.

"We were astonished to learn that only 5 percent of this sample had sufficient knowledge about their illness to make informed decisions about their care," said study co-author Holly Prigerson of Weill Cornell Medicine. "These were people with highly lethal metastatic cancers that had progressed after at least one prior line of chemotherapy; their life expectancy was approximately four months from our interview," she said. "Many did not know that they were at the end stage of their illness, nor that their cancer was incurable. They were basically making treatment decisions in the dark."

A nurse places chemotherapy medication on an intravenous stand at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.​

The reasons for the disconnect may be that patients just don’t want to know and the difficulty oncologists have telling patients just how sick they are. "Our point is a lot of them don’t want to know, but they need to know basic information about the disease and illness and treatment options," Prigerson told ABC News.

Regarding doctors telling their patients, she said it was difficult for doctors to make clear they’re offering treatment and not a cure and that they have months, not years, to live. "The results of this study show that when advanced cancer patients reported having recently discussed their life expectancy with their oncologist, their illness understanding improved significantly," said Prigerson. "That information may also help patients prioritize how they wish to spend the last few months of their lives, some by fulfilling bucket lists [lists of things one wants to do while still alive]. Treatment choices patients make might follow from these priorities." She told ABC that previous studies show that terminally ill patients who fully understand their condition fare just as well as those not given the full truth about their disease.

Only 5% of Terminally Ill Cancer Patients Fully Understand Prognosis

 

[waltky]

Economic Crisis May Have Caused half-million cancer deaths...

Study: Economic Crisis May Have Caused 500,000 Cancer Deaths
May 25, 2016 - A new study says the global economic crisis of 2008 may have caused 500,000 cancer deaths.

The study in the medical journal Lancet says a loss of jobs and cuts in health care shut out people seeking help for such easily diagnosed and treatable cancers as prostate cancer for men, breast cancer for women and colon cancer for both genders.

The authors of the study reached their conclusions by calculating the rise in cancer deaths for every 1 percent rise in the unemployment rate combined with the drop in health care spending.

Chemotherapy medicine is readied for a liver cancer patient at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md​

Lead author Mahiben Maruthappu says one conclusion from the study is that cuts in universal health care spending cost lives. "If health systems experience funding constraints, this must be matched by efficiency improvements to ensure patients are offered the same level of care regardless of economic environment or unemployment status," he said.

The study concludes that the association between the rise in cancer deaths and unemployment disappears when universal health care is available.

Study: Economic Crisis May Have Caused 500,000 Cancer Deaths