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In October 2007, the FDA approved Ixempra (ixabepilone) for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. Specifically, the drug was approved for the treatment of patients whose metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer has become resistant to standard drugs such as anthracyclines, taxanes, and capecitabine (Xeloda). Ixempra is classified as a "microtubule inhibitor." It is thus similar to the taxanes but is said by the manufacturer, Bristol-Myers, to be somewhat less toxic. "Previously, patients with aggressive metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer no longer responding to currently available chemotherapies had limited treatment options," said Linda Vahdat, M.D., of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill...

A team of researchers led by National Cancer Institute (NCI) epidemiologist Dr. Michal Freedman has published an article suggesting that vitamin D is highly successful in reducing deaths from cancers of the colon and rectum. The researchers studied 16,818 people who had joined a nationwide U.S. government health survey between 1988 and 1994. The volunteers were then followed through the year 2000, by which time 536 had died of cancer. The study found that people with relatively high blood levels of vitamin D when they entered the study had a 72 percent reduction in their risk of dying of colorectal...

RADIATION CAUSES BONE LOSS The scientific world has been shaken by a report from Clemson University that a single therapeutic dose of radiation can cause appreciable bone loss. Senior author Ted Bateman, PhD, a professor of bioengineering, and his South Carolina colleagues showed that when mice were given a dose of just two Gy (two gray, a radiation dosage formerly designated as 200 rads), between 29 and 39 percent of their interior bone mass was destroyed.It did not particularly matter which kind of radiation the mice were exposed to. Gamma rays, protons, high-speed carbon and iron nuclei all had a...

In late July, the European Commission (EC) approved the drug Nexavar (sorafenib, formerly known as BAY 43-9006) for the treatment of advanced kidney cancer. Nexavar is classified as an oral multikinase inhibitor targeting tumors and their blood supply. It is similar in many ways to Pfizer's new drug Sutent. In December 2005, Nexavar was given "fast track" approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the same indication as Sutent. (A "fast track" review is aimed at speeding up the approval process for drugs designed to treat patients with serious or life-threatening diseases, where there is an unmet...

There has been so much negative publicity surrounding the use of antioxidants by patients undergoing treatment for cancer that one could be forgiven for getting the impression that it is the use of antioxidants, rather than the toxicity of chemotherapy, that most seriously threatens the patient’s immune system. But now comes a report from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) with some surprisingly positive things to say about a vitamin E derivative. (The report appeared October 1, 2006 in the journal Cancer Research.)  University of Arizona scientists administered alpha-TEA, a chemically altered form of vitamin E, to cancer-susceptible mice...

CAROTENOIDS MAY PROTECT AGAINST PROSTATE CANCER   Asians are well known to have a low incidence of prostate cancer. Australian and Chinese researchers conducted what is called a "case-control study" in southeast China, the first of its kind in an Asian population. They discovered that dietary lycopene and other carotenoids may protect against prostate cancer.   The researchers compared 130 patients with adenocarcinoma of the prostate to 274 controls - men who were in the hospital for conditions other than prostate cancer. They found that the more carotenoid-rich foods the men ate, the less their risk of developing prostate cancer....

THE MOSS REPORTS   Tens of thousands of needle biopsies are performed each year in the US alone, and the procedure is universally assumed to be safe and reliable.  Yet there is evidence to suggest that needle biopsy may not be as harmless or uncomplicated a procedure as once thought.  In fact, it may in some cases inadvertently cause cancer cells to break away from a tumor, thus enabling spread beyond the immediate tumor area.   Monitoring the world of cancer diagnosis and treatment has been my life's work.  The fruit of my thirty-year involvement in this field is The...