PHILADELPHIA – A combination of chemotherapyterm agents that have been tested in other tumor types appears to be a promising alternative to standard treatment for advanced non-small cell lung cancer, according to a report in the August 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

In a phase II multicenter study of 56 patients with an advanced form of this common lung cancer, endpoints including response rate, progression-free survival, and overall survival from use of S-1 and irinotecanterm were similar to, or better than, those reported from standard treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy regimens.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have shown that an MGH-developed, microchip-based device that detects and analyzes tumor cells in the bloodstream can be used to determine the genetic signature of lung tumors, allowing identification of those appropriate for targeted treatment and monitoring genetic changes that occur during therapy. A pilot study of the device called the CTC-chip will appear in the July 24 New England Journal of Medicine and is receiving early online release.

"The CTC-chip opens up a whole new field of studying tumors in real time," says Daniel Haber, MD, director of the MGH Cancer Center and the study's senior author. "When the device is ready for larger clinical trials, it should give us new options for measuring treatment response, defining prognostic and predictive measures, and studying the biology of blood-borne metastasisterm, which is the primary method by which cancer spreads and becomes lethal."

NEW YORK (June 26, 2008) - The Mesothelioma Center within the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center is now recruiting patients for a clinical research study of a new targeted radiation and chemotherapyterm protocol for pleural mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung's lining that is almost always caused by previous exposure to asbestos.

The standard treatment for pleural mesothelioma is currently surgery to remove the patient's lung - a potentially debilitating consequence.

"Current surgical and chemotherapy treatments of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma are unsatisfactory, and have not been shown to significantly prolong survival. In this study, we will investigate whether a combination of chemotherapy and radiation targeted directly at the lung's lining can improve outcomes while avoiding surgery," says Dr. Robert Taub, the study's principal investigator, director of the Mesothelioma Center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia and professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. "In addition, this approach has shown to have minimal toxic side effectsterm compared to systemic chemotherapy."

OAK BROOK, Ill. (June 10, 2008) – Screening for lung cancer with computed tomography (CT) may help reduce lung cancer deaths in current and former smokers, but it won't protect them from other causes of death associated with smoking, according to a new study published in the July issue of the journal Radiology.

"Our study suggests that screening may be one way to reduce risk of death from lung cancer," said the study's lead author, Pamela McMahon, Ph.D., senior scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor in radiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "However, the number-one goal should still be to quit smoking, because it will reduce risk of death from many causes, including lung cancer."

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have found that carrying a common genetic disorder doubles the risk of developing lung cancer in smokers and nonsmokers.

The study is published in the May 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, a journal published by the American Medical Association.

Researchers found that the genetic disorder, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (Ą1ATD), could explain up to about 12 percent of lung cancer patients in this study and likely represents the same widespread risk in the general population. "This is a seriously underdiagnosed disorder and suggests that people who have lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) in their families should be screened for these gene carriers," says Ping Yang, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic epidemiologist and lead investigator on the study.

Boston, MA--Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine have developed a new “clinicogenomic model” to accurately test for lung cancer. The model combines a specific gene expression for lung cancer as well as clinical risk factors. These findings currently appear on-line in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States and the world, with more than one million deaths worldwide annually. Eighty-five to 90 percent of subjects with lung cancer in the United States are current or former smokers with 10 to 20 percent of heavy smokers developing this disease.

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) -- an interventional treatment that "cooks" and kills lung cancer tumors with heat -- greatly improves survival time from primary or metastaticterm inoperable lung tumors, according to a study released today at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 33rd Annual Scientific Meeting. Of the 244 patients suffering from lung metastases (195 patients) or primary non-small cell lung cancer (49 patients), 70 percent were still alive at two years, including 72 percent for lung metastases and 64 percent for primary lung cancer. These survival results are similar to surgical results from other studies, but the interventional treatment is less invasive and has far fewer side effectsterm and less recovery time. The researchers found that RFA often can completely destroy the primary tumor and, therefore, extend a patient's survival and greatly improve his or her quality of life. Survival thus becomes dependent on the extent of disease elsewhere in the body.

Of the 49 patients (ages 27-85) with non-small cell primary lung cancer who were treated with RFA, 85 percent had no viable lung tumors after one year on imaging, and 77 percent had no viable lung tumors after two years, which indicates a cure. This study was conducted in tumors four centimeters in diameter or smaller, and even better results were obtained for tumors smaller than two centimeters.

For those of you with Small Cell Lung Cancer located in the UK, Please read on, a clinical trial organization is searching for patients:

We are currently seeking patients who have been diagnosed with Small Cell
Lung Cancer (later stages). This is an informal discussion and the
patient is free to disclose as much or as little information as they wish.
We would not expect the patient to discuss anything they are not
comfortable in doing so and the patient is free to end the interview at
any stage.

We abide by the Data Protection Act and a range of industry codes of
conduct (including MRS, ESOMAR guidelines), which means the research is
entirely confidential and that participants are guaranteed anonymity (i.e.
their name/address will at no point be passed on to any third parties).

We are currently seeking patients who have been diagnosed with Small Cell
Lung Cancer (later stages).  This is an informal discussion and the
patient is free to disclose as much or as little information as they wish.
 We would not expect the patient to discuss anything they are not
comfortable in doing so and the patient is free to end the interview at
any stage.

The interviewing group abides by the Data Protection Act and a range of industry codes of
conduct (including MRS, ESOMAR guidelines), which means the research is
entirely confidential and that participants are guaranteed anonymity (i.e.
their name/address will at no point be passed on to any third parties).

The interviewer will meet the patient at a time and place convenient to
the patient.  The aim of this research will be to use the information to
help our client develop new treatments and support services, which are
able to meet their needs.

As a thank you for your referral and the patient’s participation you will be provided with the following incentive:

Incentive for the patient for a 1-hour interview:       £50
Incentive for the patient for a 2-hour interview:       £150

The cells that promote the metastaticterm transformation are called endothelial progenitor cells, or EPCs, and are found in the bone marrow. The CSHL research team reports in the January 11 issue of Science that EPCs regulate an “angiogenic switch” – a key mechanism that causes formation of blood vessels in tumors and triggers tumor growth.

“A majority of malignant primary tumors have already spread to other organs by the time they are clinically diagnosed,” noted Vivek Mittal, Ph.D., head of the CSHL research team and corresponding author of the Science paper. “Current efforts are focused on preventing metastatic spread, yet, paradoxically, insights have been lacking on how dormant metastatic lesions, after they have colonized distant organs, grow into large, lethal lesions.”

“Our study has focused on cells from primary tumors in mice that have spread and established micrometastases in secondary organs such as the lung,” said Dingcheng Gao, Ph.D., a CSHL postdoctoral fellow and lead author of the Science paper. “We’ve dissected the heart of the angiogenic switch and demonstrated that micrometastases recruit EPCs from the bone marrow. These EPCs, in turn, regulate the angiogenic switch that activates blood-vessel growth and transforms these dormant lesions into life-threatening macrometastases.”

Drs. Mittal, Gao and colleagues at CSHL showed in experimental mice that levels of a protein called Id-1 increase dramatically in EPCs when tumors are present. By using a technique called RNA interference, or RNAi, to block the expression of Id-1 in living animals, the team was able to prevent mobilization of EPCs to the site of metastasisterm, and thereby inhibit the angiogenic switch. This, in turn, interrupted the process in mice by which micrometastases are converted into lethal macrometastases. Notably, increased survival was noted in the tumor-bearing animals that were treated with this method. The next step is to perform a similar study in humans.

“This study has raised the prospect of a novel therapeutic target, and suggests that selective targeting of EPCs, perhaps in combination with chemotherapyterm, may prove to be a clinically feasible approach in the treatment of people diagnosed with cancer that has metastasized to the lungs,” Dr. Mittal said.

“Past experiences have highlighted the challenges associated with therapies that target genetically mutant cancer cells. For instance, we know that cancer cells develop resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. We feel that approaches based on targeting the genetically stable components of the tumor microenvironment, such as the EPCs, need to be further explored for effective treatment of cancer.”

“Endothelial Progenitor Cells Control the Angiogenic Switch in Mouse Lung Metastasis” appears in Science on January 11. The compete citation is as follows: Dingcheng Gao, Daniel J. Nolan, Albert S. Mellick, Kathryn Bambino, Kevin McDonnell and Vivek Mittal. The paper is available online at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5860/195

CSHL is a private, non-profit research and education institution dedicated to exploring molecular biology and genetics in order to advance the understanding and ability to diagnose and treat cancers, neurological diseases, and other causes of human suffering.

ATLANTA, December 17, 2007—A new American Cancer Society report estimates that there will be over 12 million new cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer deaths (about 20,000 cancer deaths a day) worldwide in 2007. The estimate comes from the first-ever Global Cancer Facts & Figures, the latest addition to the American Cancer Society’s family of Facts & Figures publications. The report estimates that 5.4 million of those cancers and 2.9 million deaths will occur in economically developed countries, while 6.7 million cases and 4.7 million deaths will occur in economically developing countries. These projections were based on incidence and mortality data from the Globocan 2002 database compiled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

DURHAM, N.C. -- A test for four blood proteins may provide a less-invasive follow-up for patients who have suspicious lesions on chest radiographs or computerized tomography (CT) scans, according to a new study led by Duke University Medical Center researchers.

“CT scans have a very high false positive rate when trying to discover lung cancer,” said Edward Patz, Jr., M.D., a radiologist at Duke and lead investigator on the study. “What that leads to is several follow-up imaging studies or invasive procedures like biopsy, which have risks of their own. This study is the first step in developing a test that would allow us to sample a patient’s blood and determine whether more invasive testing and treatment are necessary.”

PHILADELPHIA - By simply eating four or more servings of green salad a week and working in the garden once or twice a week, smokers and nonsmokers alike may be able to substantially reduce the risk of developing lung cancer, say researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

"This is the first risk prediction model to examine the effects of diet and physical activity on the possibility of developing lung cancer," says Michele R. Forman, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a professor in M. D. Anderson's Department of Epidemiology. Forman presented study results at the American Association for Cancer Research "Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research" meeting Dec. 7 in Philadelphia, Pa. The data are from an ongoing M. D. Anderson case-control lung cancer study involving more than 3,800 participants. Separate epidemiologic risk assessment models were developed for current and former smokers as well as for those who have never smoked ("never smokers").

A review that was released today by the Jounral of the National Cancer Institute concluded today that  Positron emission tomography (PET) is a useful tool for patients.

The review conducted by the Lung Cancer Disease Site Group of Cancer Care Ontario’s Program in Evidence-Based Care led by a Sunnybrook researcher, Dr. Yee Ung, evaluates the accuracy and utility of 18-fluorodeoxyglucose PET (18FDG-PET) in the diagnosis and staging of lung cancer.

“Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related death and early diagnosis provides the best chance for long term survival,” says Dr. Ung, chair, Lung Cancer Site Group, Odette Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook. “It is our hope this systematic review contributes to clinical guideline discussions exploring the potential of PET as part of standard preoperative work-up - along with computed tomography (CT) - to further enhance assessment of early-stage lung cancer.”

Researchers have found that using a special type of drug called a pharmaceutical monoclonal antibodyterm to block the integrin beta6-TGF-beta pathway prevents a serious side effect of radiation therapy for lung cancer patients – pulmonary fibrosis (scarring of the lungs), thereby extending patients’ lives and improving their quality of life, according to a study presented at the Plenary I session on October 29, 2007, at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology’s 49th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.

“The toxicity of pulmonary fibrosis limits the amount of the radiation dose that can be safely given to patients,” said Simon Cheng, M.D., Ph.D., an author of the study and a radiation oncologist at New York University Medical Center in New York. “These study results may lead to more effective radiation therapies for advanced lung cancer, which is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S.”