Amgen Drug slows the spread of cancer but not extend life (International Herald Tribune)

Mr. Matthew r. Smith, senior trial and a consultant to Amgen, said researcher that the results are significant because no prior drug had been proven to prevent the spread of cancer to the bone, causes pain and disability among men who have prostate cancer.

"This study is the first to demonstrate the prevention of bone metastases, the most devastating complication of cancer of the prostate," Dr. Smith, associate professor at the Faculty of medicine at Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital, said in an e-mail. "It deals with a critical unmet need".

Results surprised Wall Street, which has generally been betting that the trial would not show a positive result. The Amgen shares rose more than 7% after hours.

"Who says miracles do Happen in biotechnology" was the title on a ticket issued Monday by Yaron Werber, an analyst at Citigroup.

But Mark Schoenebaum, the ISI Group analyst said in a note that the results were "at the lower end of what might be considered clinically significant." He also said that the absence of a provision of survival is probably "generate a debate".

The trial involved 1,432 so-called men resistant to castration prostate cancer who randomly assigned to receive injections every four weeks of denosumab or placebo. Cancer had not spread to the bone at the beginning of the trial, but was seen as a potential high because P.S.A. men, markers of the severity of the disease, increased.

The goal was to see if denosumab may delay the time until the cancer spread to the bones or the patient died from any other cause. Drug delayed median time to do a month 4.2, a statistically significant difference. Using a different statistic, the risk of bone metastases or death was reduced by 15 per cent.

Major side effects were low in calcium in the blood and the jaw bones associated with many drugs bone destruction.

The results were announced by press release, so that they have not been reviewed by independent experts. Amgen provides more details, saying that it would submit to a medical meeting.

The advantage is entirely from delay bone metastases, not death. Mr. Roger M. Perlmutter, Executive Vice President of research and development at Amgen, said the trial expected to show a benefit of survival since most patients lived during the trial. Also, men who have experienced the bone metastases have been removed from study so that they could be treated with a drug that helps to prevent fractures.

Denosumab blocks a protein involved in the destruction of the bone. That is without doubt the bone less welcoming surroundings for cancer to take root cells.

The drug sold under the name of Xgeva, was approved in November to help prevent fractures and other skeletal problems after prostate and other cancers were already spread to the bone. The drug is also sold to treat osteoporosis as Prolia.

Amgen, the largest company of biotechnology in the world has suffered from the decline in sales of its drug Aranesp anaemia due to security issues. Growth in sales of some of his other drugs slowing down that denosumab is regarded as a key to its future. Use in the prevention of bone metastases may add several hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the annual turnover of denosumab.

Trio of drugs may fight "triple negative" cancer (science daily)

PharmaLive.com (December 10, 2010) - resistance to medicines, a cocktail of triple-drug for breast cancer gene target triple negative and the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome patients are among the points highlights study to be presented by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center at the 33rd Annual CTRC - AACR San Antonio Cancer Symposium, held from 8 to 12 December.

In collaboration with cell cultures and mice models, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have tested a cocktail of three promising drugs for the treatment of what is known as triple negative cancer.

Women with these cancers are missing hormone receptor 3 - estrogen and progesterone and human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2). Currently, the triple negative breast cancers treatments are limited to surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which provide some improvements, but overall prognosis.

In the new study, scientists at the Johns Hopkins University has begun with a drug called Entinostat, blocks the enzyme that happens to make regulatory genes in the DNA molecules and reactivates a gene called Retinoic acid receptor beta (RARß). Then they have added a drug called all Trans Retinoic acid (Alliance), linked to vitamin A, which binds to a protein made by the reactivated RARß gene. Overall, drug Alliance and gene RARß act as an impediment to the growth of cancer cells. Scientists completed the cocktail of drugs by conventional chemotherapy in low doses of doxorubicin or paclitaxel.

According to scientists, each of the three drugs used alone may have an effect on the Elimination of tumor cells but by combining tips the scale in favour of the Elimination of cells more.

Cells grown in laboratory tests have shown that triple therapy from the drop-down list box stopped the growth of multiple triple negative breast cancer cell lines more effectively as one of the only treatments. The combination therapy also rejuvenated RARß expression and strongly inhibited tumor growth in all three quarters mice grafted with breast tumor cells.

Researchers discuss potential clinical trials of the drop-down list box therapy hoping to start next year, says Nguyen k. Nguyen, a graduate student in cellular and molecular medicine at the Johns Hopkins University program.

Warning: this article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those PharmaLive.com or its staff.

Source of the story:

The story above is reproduced (with drafting adaptations by staff at PharmaLive.com) materials provided by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited for this.

Popular new breast cancer treatment has no data (Reuters)

Vasiliki Kostoula, Greek breast cancer patient is framed by an x-ray of the breast after a radiological examination in a hospital in Athens on 29 October 2008.

Credit: Reuters/Yannis BehrakisBy Frederik Joelving

NEW YORK | 10 December 2010 10 h 37 EST

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - a new treatment for breast cancer radiation becomes increasingly popular despite the absence of sufficient evidence, at least in Medicare well insured patients U.S. researchers say.

According to claims data, use of therapy, which radiates a part only of the chest instead of standard whole breast radiation after a Lumpectomy, climbed over 10 times for patients between 2001 and 2006.

While the gold standard of clinical trials on the most recent treatment are still missing, two other events coincide with steep increases in its use: approval of a device used to provide radiation in 2002 and 2004 Medicare reimbursement.

"It before the issue of the when we have to adopt a new technology", says the Dr. David j. Sher, an expert in radiation therapy, which was not involved in the new study. "This document shows what it really is made in the absence of evidence."

The National Cancer Institute says that more than 200,000 women will get breast in 2010 and about one-fifth will die of the disease.

After a Lumpectomy, up to 40 percent of women see cancer return, but this number can be reduced to 10 percent by external-beam radiation of the entire breast. Common side effects are swelling and redness.

Unlike the whole breast radiation, which usually takes several weeks to complete, the new partial-breast treatment lasts less than a week.

An example of the so-called brachytherapy approach is MammoSite device marketed by Hologic Massachusetts-based and used on more than 50,000 women so far, according to the company.

It consists of a small balloon is inflated into the cavity left after the tumor is removed. ToolTip then delivers high dose radiation more likely to develop new breast cancer stakeholders.

It, although the idea is promising, Sher said, are not large studies have compared the whole breast radiation to this treatment. He said such a study is under way, but in the meantime, the effectiveness and side effects have increased in the air.

New findings, published in the journal of Clinical Oncology, based on data of nearly 7,000 older women who had radiotherapy after having a breast tumor removed. All have private with Medicare insurance.

Ya-Chen Shih t. from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and his colleagues found that from 2001 to 2006, the use of partial breast radiation only after breast surgery has steadily increased from less than one percent to 10 percent, to the detriment of the whole breast radiation cases.

It is apparent that rich women were more likely to get the new treatment, researchers have discovered, and it is not known if results extend to other women.

In a study comparing the cost-effectiveness of treatments various radiation Sher found MammoSite was unlikely to be profitable for the whole breast radiation. "MammoSite is significantly more expensive," he said.

According to Shih, whole breast radiation therapy costs approximately $13,000 and breast brachytherapy on $204,800.

Trio of drugs may fight "triple negative" cancer (science daily)

PharmaLive.com (December 10, 2010) - resistance to medicines, a cocktail of triple-drug for breast cancer gene target triple negative and the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome patients are among the points highlights study to be presented by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center at the 33rd Annual CTRC - AACR San Antonio Cancer Symposium, held from 8 to 12 December.

In collaboration with cell cultures and mice models, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have tested a cocktail of three promising drugs for the treatment of what is known as triple negative cancer.

Women with these cancers are missing hormone receptor 3 - estrogen and progesterone and human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2). Currently, the triple negative breast cancers treatments are limited to surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which provide some improvements, but overall prognosis.

In the new study, scientists at the Johns Hopkins University has begun with a drug called Entinostat, blocks the enzyme that happens to make regulatory genes in the DNA molecules and reactivates a gene called Retinoic acid receptor beta (RARß). Then they have added a drug called all Trans Retinoic acid (Alliance), linked to vitamin A, which binds to a protein made by the reactivated RARß gene. Overall, drug Alliance and gene RARß act as an impediment to the growth of cancer cells. Scientists completed the cocktail of drugs by conventional chemotherapy in low doses of doxorubicin or paclitaxel.

According to scientists, each of the three drugs used alone may have an effect on the Elimination of tumor cells but by combining tips the scale in favour of the Elimination of cells more.

Cells grown in laboratory tests have shown that triple therapy from the drop-down list box stopped the growth of multiple triple negative breast cancer cell lines more effectively as one of the only treatments. The combination therapy also rejuvenated RARß expression and strongly inhibited tumor growth in all three quarters mice grafted with breast tumor cells.

Researchers discuss potential clinical trials of the drop-down list box therapy hoping to start next year, says Nguyen k. Nguyen, a graduate student in cellular and molecular medicine at the Johns Hopkins University program.

Warning: this article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those PharmaLive.com or its staff.

Source of the story:

The story above is reproduced (with drafting adaptations by staff at PharmaLive.com) materials provided by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited for this.

Living in some areas increases the chance the older men and women will develop cancer, study finds (science daily)

PharmaLive.com (9 December 2010) - elderly people who live in the districts of racial segregation with crime rates are high have a much higher chance of developing cancer as the elderly, with similar health stories and levels of income, living in neighbourhoods safer and less distinct.

This is one of the main results of a new study to be published in the January 2011 in the American Journal of Public Health issue. The study was conducted by Vicki Freedman, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan Institute for social research and his colleagues at the University of medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

One of a growing number of studies documenting the connection between neighbourhood characteristics and chronic health conditions, it is the first to show that living in widely separated areas with high rates of crime is linked to an increased risk of developing cancers of all kinds - for example white and black.

The chance of developing cancer is 31 percent higher for older men living in these types of neighborhoods and 25 percent higher among older women.

The study also revealed that live in low-income neighbourhoods increases the chance that women would develop heart problems by 20 percent. They found no effect on older men.

Researchers based in part on the study of health data analysis & retirement ISR, a longitudinal nationally representative survey over 20,000 Americans 50 years and older, funding primarily by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health.

For their analysis, researchers analyzed the detailed measurements of the stories of individual health, with several social indicators, economic, and physical conditions of the neighbourhoods in which people lived.

According to the authors, the findings of the study are potentially avenues by which the neighbourhood environment may influence on the development of chronic diseases. For example, a large part of the previous research on cancer and the environment insisted on factors of lifestyle such as tobacco, diet and exercise and exposure to carcinogens, rather than on the social and economic aspects of environment.

Although the link between racial segregation and health is often cited as of the root causes of mortality among blacks and health disparities and the whites, the most common explanation for the link is segregation influence social and economic deprivation and individual socio-economic development. "But we found that the segregation and crime increase the chances of developing cancer even after we have checked for socio-economic resources to individuals and neighbourhood level," said Freedman.

The researchers also examined the levels of exposure to air pollution and other environmental toxins, but concluded that the crime rate and levels of racial segregation independently predict onset of cancer.

"The remarkable similarity in size and strength of this relationship for both men and women is rather surprising given the differences in the types of cancer that develops each sex," she says. "This suggests that a non-specific biological mechanism may be involved, perhaps a stress reaction that interrupts the ability of the body to fight against the development of cancerous cells.

Call Freedman and co-authors to research further the social and biological mechanisms underlying this link, noting that the addition of measures biological study of health & retirement of the international search report the designated region of Inuvialuit Panel Study of Income Dynamics and other national longitudinal surveys allows this type of analysis in the near future.

Warning: this article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those PharmaLive.com or its staff.

Source of the story:

The story above is reproduced (with drafting adaptations by staff at PharmaLive.com) materials provided by The University of Michigan.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited for this.