FDA approves new drug for advanced pancreatic cancer

CANCER DIGEST – Oct. 26, 2015 –  Patients with advanced pancreatic cancer now have a new FDA approved drug, Onivyde, that increased overall survival rates by two months in an international clinical study conducted in part by researchers at HonorHealth Research Institute and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).

Antioxidants may boost cancer spread

CANCER DIGEST ­– Oct. 19, 2015 - A team of scientists at the Children’s Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) has made a discovery that suggests cancer cells benefit more from antioxidants than normal cells, raising concerns about the use of dietary antioxidants by cancer patients. 

The study done in mice suggests a mechanism that may explain why cancer patients have often had worse outcomes in clinical trials involving giving antioxidants to these patients.

Dr. Sean Morrison, director of pediatric genetics, UT

 “The idea that antioxidants are good for you and has been so strong that there have been clinical trials done in which cancer patients were administered antioxidants,” Dr. Sean Morrison director of pediatric genetics at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center said in a press release. “Some of those trials had to be stopped because the patients getting the antioxidants were dying faster. Our data suggest the reason for this: cancer cells benefit more from antioxidants than normal cells do.”

More peace, no increased pain for cancer patients who die at home

CANCER DIGEST – Oct. 12, 2015 – Dying at home could be beneficial for terminally ill cancer patients and their relatives, according to a study published online in the journal BMC Medicine.

The study shows that, according to questionnaires completed by their relatives, those who die at home experience more peace and a similar amount of pain compared to those who die in a hospital, and their relatives also experience less grief. However, this requires discussion of preferences, access to a comprehensive home care package and facilitation of family caregiving.

Surgery for certain melanoma patients doubles survival time

CANCER DIGEST – Oct. 8, 2015 – Patients with melanoma who undergo surgery to remove cancer that has spread into the abdomen live more than twice as long as those treated with drug therapy alone, according a new research study presented to 2015 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons in Chicago this week.

In this study, which updated data tracked over 45 years of 1,623 patients treated at the John Wayne Cancer Institute, overall survival was defined as how long the patient lived after diagnosis of stage 4 melanoma, in which the cancer has spread to parts of the abdomen, including the GI tract, liver, spleen, adrenal glands and other organs.

Imperfect match may be just as good as perfect match for blood cancers

A scanning electron 

microscope image 

from normal circulating 

human blood. – Wikipedia

CANCER DIGEST – Oct. 7, 2015 – Using a half-matched donor bone marrow transplant may be just as good as a full match for treating blood cancers like leukemia and lymphomas, new research shows.

In the first study to compare the gold standard full-match to a half-match transplant using an identical protocol, researchers at the Thomas Jefferson Kimmel Cancer Center have shown three years after transplant approximately 70 percent of the patients in both groups were still alive and cancer free.