Healthy Me - At Home and Away: Tumor

Showing posts with label Tumor. Show all posts

Monday, January 2, 2012

Israeli scientists develop cancer 'cluster bomb'

Now this is a very good promise; hope that it works when everything is done.
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Posted: 14 December 2011

JERUSALEM: Israeli medical researchers say they have developed a new technique for blasting cancer tumours from inside out which reduces the risk of the disease returning after treatment.

Tel Aviv University professors Yona Keisari and Itzhak Kelson are about to start clinical trials of a pin-sized radioactive implant that beams short-range alpha radiation from within the tumour.

Unlike conventional radiation therapy, which bombards the body with gamma rays from outside, the alpha particles "diffuse inside the tumour, spreading further and further before disintegrating," a university statement quoted Keisari as saying.

"It's like a cluster bomb -- instead of detonating at one point, the atoms continuously disperse and emit alpha particles at increasing distances."

The university said that the process takes about 10 days and leaves behind only non-radioactive and non-toxic amounts of lead.

"Not only are cancerous cells more reliably destroyed, but in the majority of cases the body develops immunity against the return of the tumour," the statement said.

The wire implant, inserted into the tumour by hypodermic needle, "decays harmlessly in the body," it added.

It went on to say that in pre-clinical trials on mice, one group had tumours removed surgically while another was treated with the radioactive wire.

"When cells from the tumour were reinjected into the subject, 100 percent of those treated surgically redeveloped their tumour, compared to only 50 percent of those treated with the radioactive wire," it said.

"The researchers have had excellent results with many types of cancer models, including lung, pancreatic, colon, breast, and brain tumours."

It added that the procedure would begin clinical trials at Beilinson hospital, near Tel Aviv, "soon."

- AFP/wk

Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Israeli scientists develop cancer 'cluster bomb'

Sunday, February 27, 2011

The drug becomes the killer...

Cancer drug, when combined, boosts death risk
Posted: 02 February 2011

WASHINGTON: The cancer drug Avastin, also known as bevacizumab, is linked to a higher risk of death when combined with chemotherapy, said a study Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The drug has previously been found to raise the risk of blood clots in the legs and lungs by 33 percent, and in December the US Food and Drug Administration said it was neither safe nor effective against breast cancer.

Bevacizumab, marketed as Avastin by the Swiss drug giant Roche, has been approved for use in combination with chemotherapy for treating colorectal cancer, non-small cell lung cancer and renal cell carcinoma.

The growth of new blood vessels helps spread cancer and Avastin is designed to fight the disease by inhibiting the proliferation of new blood vessels.

The JAMA study led by Vishal Ranpura and doctors at Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York examined previously published randomized controlled trials which appeared to give conflicting results about its link to fatal adverse events (FAEs).

After conducting a review and meta-analysis of a total of 10,217 patients with advanced solid tumors studied in 16 different trials, researchers reported the overall incidence of fatal adverse events with bevacizumab was 2.5 percent.

"Compared with chemotherapy alone, the addition of bevacizumab was associated with a 1.5 times increased risk of FAEs," it said.

The height of the risk varied across different treatments, and depended on the type of chemotherapy it was administered alongside, but not the type of tumor or drug dose, the study said.

"Bevacizumab was associated with a 3.5 times increased risk of FAEs in patients receiving taxanes or platinum agents (3.3 percent vs. 1.0 percent), but was not associated with increased risk of FAEs when used in conjunction with other agents," it said.

Hemorrhage, a blood disorder called neutropenia, holes in the gastroinestinal tract, pulmonary embolism and stroke were the most frequent causes of fatal bleeding linked to the drug, the study said.

The study said that since "absolute risk of treatment-related mortality appears low, the use of bevacizumab should be considered in the context of overall survival benefits."

In an accompanying editorial, Daniel Hayes of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center said the "jury is still out" on bevacizumab.

"Although bevacizumab has benefit, it is currently not possible to determine in whom or for how long," Hayes wrote.

"Thus, oncologists are forced to dilute the potential effects of bevacizumab by exposing all treated patients, and society, to enormous costs and occasional life-threatening toxic effects. These unfortunate circumstances are sad for those who pay the bills -- and sadder for patients with solid tumors."

-AFP/jl

Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:Cancer drug, when combined, boosts death risk

Monday, February 7, 2011

Japan to test new cancer therapy

Posted: 19 January 2011

TOKYO: Medical researchers in Japan say they will start the world's first clinical studies of a radiation therapy using accelerator-based neutron beams to kill cancer cells.

The National Cancer Centre in Tokyo and a Japanese medical equipment maker -- Cancer Intelligence Care Systems -- plan to start the studies using "boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT)" in three years, the centre said.

The BNCT is an innovative radiation treatment which kills cancer cells selectively without side-effects, but it requires a massive facility including a nuclear reactor to produce neutron beams.

By using a particle accelerator, which is cheaper, safer and smaller than a reactor, it will become feasible for a hospital to provide the therapy on actual patients, the centre told journalists Tuesday.

The centre hopes to try the special radiation therapy on patients with cancers that have been difficult to treat in conventional procedures, such as brain tumours and melanoma, it said.

-AFP/wk

Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:Japan to test new cancer therapy

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Scorpion (venom) to the rescue

Another one of the unconventional methods, a new discovery, or whatever you may want to call it, but hey, so long as it works, who cares?

Just kidding. But this is one good news. A dreaded creature can be of help, somehow.

Read on...
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Scorpion venom might be brain cancer cure
By Channel NewsAsia's US correspondent Steve Mort

FLORIDA: Doctors in the United States are testing a possible breakthrough treatment for brain cancer.

Scorpion venom has been administered to dozens of patients at four hospitals after researchers found that the agent selectively attaches to tumour cells while sparing normal cells.

Patrick Brenner was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2003 and was given just months to live.

"It got to the point where my eyes went crossed or something and I finally went to the hospital and had an MRI, and they found that there was a sizable tumour," he said.

When traditional treatments, including chemotherapy, failed to stop Brenner's tumour from growing, he enrolled in a clinical trial at Florida Hospital Cancer Institute.

Doctors at the institute administered purified venom protein from the giant yellow Israeli scorpion to Brenner. The venom was tagged with radioactive iodine to deliver localised radiation to the tumour cells.

Now three years later, Brenner's doctor, Nick Avgeropoulos, said his patient has seen a ten-fold improvement in his prognosis.

"We don't have any other reason why he should be doing this well, except to say that it was this agent. Of course, like anything, an anecdotal story or an instance cannot be generalised to everyone, and that's why we do clinical trials. However, it's always encouraging to see that there's a possibility," said Dr Avgeropoulos.

Dr Avgeropoulos pointed out that while the most common cancer treatments kill healthy cells and are hard on the body, the scorpion venom only seeks out tumour cells and then attaches to them.

When combined with radioactive iodine, the venom can be used to attack the malignant cells.

The agent is delivered in weekly injections through a catheter in the patient's head.

"I think it's pretty amazing. I don't know if it's a miracle but it's definitely good medicine. And hopefully some other people can get some good out of this. I'm just happy to be alive. And if this is the rest of my life, I've accepted that," said Brenner.

Brenner is just one of the nearly 200,000 people in the United States diagnosed with a brain tumour each year, according to the American Brain Tumor Association.

His progress and that of other patients given scorpion venom are being followed closely.

The agent is performing well in studies on other types of cancer cells too, and the US Food and Drug Administration also has the treatment on a fast-track for approval. - CNA/ac

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Scorpion venom might be brain cancer cure
(There is a video in the link, in case you prefer watching to reading)
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Chemo's effectivity - until where?

Chemo fails to root out breast cancer stem cells

WASHINGTON - While chemotherapy can remove breast cancer tumours, it fails to root out the stem cells that can revive the cancer, researchers said in a study published Tuesday.

Comparing the challenge to eradicating stubborn weeds from a garden, the researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston, Texas, said chemotherapy often fails because it leaves behind many of the stem cells that help re-ignite tumours.

"It's not enough to kill the dandelion blossom and stalk that appear above ground," said Michael Lewis, assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at the BCM Breast Cancer Center. "You have to kill the root beneath the soil as well."

The discovery underscores the need to develop a treatment that can target stem cells in addition to the tumour, Lewis said.

"What we found is that one reason chemotherapy frequently does not work is that you kill the bulk of the tumour but leave many of the stem cells behind," he said.

"It appears that these cells, by their nature, are resistant to the effects of anti-cancer drugs," said Lewis, whose findings appear online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

A cocktail of anti-cancer medicines together with the drug lapatinib appears to kill both the tumour and the stem cells, he said.

The promising drug, still being evaluated, would be used to treat breast cancer that has metastasised and contains the protein marker called HER2.

The Baylor researchers took biopsies from the tumours of patients with and without the HER2 marker before and after different treatments.

In the group of people whose tumours did not carry the HER2 marker, the 31 patients received conventional chemotherapy. While the number of tumours significantly decreased, the proportion of cancer stem cells was greater than before the treatment, the study said.

The other group -- 21 patients with HER2 -- were given lapatinib and two common breast cancer drugs. That group saw a dramatic drop in tumour cells, and the percentage of cancer stem cells remained unchanged or even dropped slightly, the researchers said.

"The tumour shrank dramatically," said Jenny Chang, associate professor of medicine and medical director of the BCM Breast Care Cancer Center.

"But in contrast to treatment with conventional chemotherapy, the relative proportion of stem cells did not go up. This means the stem cells were killed off with the same frequency as the bulk of the tumour. This is the first time this has been demonstrated." - AFP/sh

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Chemo fails to root out breast cancer stem cells
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Friday, June 4, 2010

Protein that cuts malignancy of breast cancer discovered

CHICAGO - Researchers have discovered a protein which can reduce the malignancy of breast cancer tumors and also predict whether the cancer will metastasize, according to a study published Monday.

"This protein seems to be suppressing tumor growth," said study author Kent Hunter of the National Cancer Institute outside of Washington.

In studies on mice and in gene expression profiles of human cancer cells, Hunter and his team found that they could dramatically slow the growth of breast cancer tumors and prevent the cancer from spreading.

They did this by inserting extra copies of the gene that expresses the protein into the tumor, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Breast Cancer Survival Manual, Fourth Edition: A Step-by-Step Guide for the Woman With Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer

While those tumors were not eliminated, they grew to one tenth of the size of those which had not been stimulated to overproduce the protein.

They also had molecular profiles of significantly less malignant tumors and did not spread.

"What we're interested in is looking at how this would be induced by other means... to find a drug that would turn this gene on in tumors," Hunter said. "That would reduce the malignancy of the tumor and prolong survival."

In the meantime, the presence, or lack thereof, of this protein could be used to predict which patients are at risk of metastasis, he said.

"We could hopefully spare those patients who will not benefit the rigors associated with adjuvant therapy," he explained.

Just Get Me Through This!: The Practical Guide to Breast Cancer

While there are at least two gene expression profiles currently in clinical trials to test the risk of metastasis, researchers have not yet teased out the root cause of those gene expressions.

"We know what the root cause of this gene expression change: that is this protein," Hunter told AFP.

"That gives us a handle on how we can investigate what is causing all these particular gene expression signatures and allows us potentially to do molecular targeting down the line that might somehow affect the cancer."

Any type of clinical application is still far away, he cautioned. - AFP/ar

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Protein that cuts malignancy of breast cancer discovered
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Friday, April 23, 2010

On the spot: MGN-3

Image via Wikipedia

This is an article that could be categorized as one that is 'controversial' - its claims are what we would want most for a cancer cure:

cheap
effective
abundant
easily accessible

While we all want that, believing everything that we see and hear may actually lead us to conditions worse than before, and our life would have been bitter afterward.

In the light of providing information, this article, and Ezine original, is brought to you, so you are aware of one such drug that claims miraculous cancer cure - and natural at that - no surgery, but all from organic sources, which makes it all the more popular (or un-popular).

Read on, but before taking the next step, DO CONSULT AND DISCUSS WITH YOUR DOCTOR.

Be healthy!

One thing that is very important to successfully fight against cancer, is a strong immune system. People know that a strong immune system is essential to fight against viruses and bacteria, the same can be said about cancer, at least according to Dr. Ghoneum. Who is a research immunologist and an expert in the field of cancer immune therapy, which is a form of therapy, that uses biological response modifiers to activate Natural Kill (NK) cells in the body to fight against cancer cells.

An Extremely Effective Natural Colon Cancer Treatment!

The most common treatment for colon cancer is surgery and the adjacent lymph nodes, the tumor, a small margin of the surrounding healthy bowel, are removed in the surgery. The long-term prognosis depend on whether the cancer has spread to other organs. Patients who's cancer is limited to the superficial layer of the bowel wall, have a 80% survival rate. But there are many colon cancer natural treatment options, that can increase the changes of survival significantly. In this article I am going to introduce one!

Natural colon cancer treatment

For a long time the problem was that these biological response modifiers (BRM), were to toxic and could not be used. But eventually Dr. Ghoneum discovered and researched a natural, non-toxic BRM, called the MGN-3. The reason why MGN-3 is so important, is because it increases the activity of NK cells and these cells are on the front line in the battle against cancer.

Dr. Ghoneum has observed that when MGN-3 is administered, then the NK cells become rapacious in their search-and-destroy activities. The Natural Kill cells attach themselves to the membrane of the cancer cells, when they encounter a cancer cell. Then they inject cytoplasmic granules to the target and withing just a couple of minutes the cancer cell is dead.

The best time to take MGN-3 is during debulking or right after that. For example after surgery the cancer cells are extremely low, so therefore the NK cells can be more effective. Every NK cell can destroy around 27 cancer cells. MGN-3 also reduce the side-effects of cancer. It is very hard to eliminate 100% of the cancer cells of the body, without killing the patient. Therefore MGN-3 is a very important natural colon cancer treatment, because it helps to eliminate the few cancer cells, that have got away.

Very often the chemotherapy drugs also weaken the immune system and when the cancer returns, then it is much more vicious. MGN-3 is not something that should replace the common treatments, like surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, because when the cancer greatly outnumber the Natural Kill cells, then they can not win, even if their activity has been increased by MGN-3. This is just one example of the many natural colon cancer treatment options.

Get your copy of Cancer-Free -- Your Guide to Gentle, Non-toxic Healing." It is an fantastic e-book full of various alternative cancer treatments and remedies. The information found in this e-book is extremely valuable for everyone, who is touched by cancer. http://www.home-remedies-and-alternative-treatments.info/beat_cancer.html.

Article Directory: EzineArticles

Taken from Ezine Articles. See the source article here:
An Extremely Effective Natural Colon Cancer Treatment!

What do others say about MGN-3?

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Omega 3 and bowel cancer

Image via Wikipedia

Omega 3 supplement targets bowel cancer risk: study

AFP - Thursday, March 18

PARIS (AFP) - A purified form of omega 3, the so-called "good fat" found naturally in certain fish and nut oils, reduced dangerous polyps among people prone to bowel cancer, a study published on Thursday says.

Fifty patients were enrolled in the investigation, all with a genetic mutation that prompts the development of polyps -- precancerous growths in the bowel that often develop into tumours requiring removal of large sections of intestine.

Twenty-eight were randomly assigned to a group that received a two-gramme daily dose of a new, highly purified form of omega 3, while the other 27 were given a dummy lookalike, or placebo.

After six months, the number of polyps had risen by almost 10 percent among the placebo group but fell by 12 percent for those taking the omega 3 capsules, amounting to a difference of more than 22 percent.

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A purified form of omega 3, the so-called "good fat" found naturally in certain fish, such as salmon (pictured), and nut oils, reduced dangerous polyps among people prone to bowel cancer, according to a new study.

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In addition, polyp size increased by 17 percent among the placebo takers, whereas it decreased by 12.5 percent in the capsule group, a difference of just under 30 percent.

These results are similar to a drug called celecoxib, marketed as Celebrex, which is used to inhibit polyps among genetically vulnerable patients.

However, celecoxib has been linked to cardiovascular side effects among older patients. In contrast, the omega 3 -- full name eicosapentaeonic acid, or EPA -- supplement was "very well tolerated," say the doctors.

The paper is published online by Gut, a journal of the British Medical Association (BMA).

From Yahoo.sg News; see the source article here.

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