Muara Teweh!

For a subset of cancer types, treatment needs to be much tougher than is typically done, study finds

Even if they’re very small (1 centimeter or less), certain kinds of breast cancer tumors can still be aggressive and require maximum therapy, U.S. researchers say.

A team at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., found that outcomes for women with HER2 positive (HER2+) and triple negative (HER2- and ER/PR-) tumors that have not spread to the lymph nodes may not depend on tumor size alone.

About 15 percent to 20 percent of breast cancers are HER2+, and about 10 percent to 15 percent are triple negative.

“This is a small study, and so we can’t make treatment recommendations from it, but it appears that biology and not only size matters when it comes to selecting therapy for small, invasive tumors,” lead researcher Dr. Surabhi Amar, a fellow in hematology/oncology, said in a prepared statement. » Read more after the jump →

The dean of the highly ranked medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, was fired this week, and he suggested on Friday that the move came as a result of questions he had raised about the institution’s financial accounting.

The dean, David A. Kessler, a former commissioner of the federal Food and Drug Administration, wrote in an e-mail message to faculty members at the medical school that he had “discovered a series of financial irregularities that predated my appointment,” and that he “endeavored to work with the university ever since to solve these problems.” He wrote that on Thursday, the chancellor of the university fired him.

Dr. Kessler, a pediatrician, is known for working to restrict cigarette marketing to children at the Food and Drug Administration. He was the dean of the medical school at Yale before he took the $540,000-a-year post at San Francisco.
» Read more after the jump →

British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline said its breast cancer drug Tykerb may reduce the size of brain tumors associated with breast cancer, when used in combination with chemotherapy.

Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration approved Tykerb for use with Roche Holding’s chemo drug Xeloda (capecitabine) in patients with advanced breast cancer or breast cancer which has spread to other parts of the body. The agency also approved Tykerb with capecitabine for patients who have received prior treatment.

On Sunday, Glaxo said results from a midstage study of 49 patients showed Tykerb plus capecitabine reduced HER2-positive breast cancer which had spread to the brain. HER2-positive breast cancer is a type of cancer that tests positive for a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2), which promotes the growth of cancer cells.

Glaxo said 20 percent of patients who received Tykerb plus capecitabine experienced at least a 50 percent size reduction in measurable brain tumors. The company also said 37 percent of patients experienced a size decrease greater than or equal to 20 percent. » Read more after the jump →

Experts with the World Health Organization are urging countries to step up surveillance of bird flu outbreaks in poultry. The announcement follows Pakistan’s first human bird flu fatality and Burma’s first reported human case of bird flu. As Naomi Martig reports from VOA’s Asia News Center in Hong Kong, concern is also growing that as colder weather sweeps through much of the northern hemisphere, so will cases of the potentially deadly virus.

Hospital staff clean and disinfect room in isolation ward where bird flu patient was treated in Abbotabad, Pakistan, 17 Dec 2007

The World Health Organization says the bird flu virus is likely to become more prevalent in the coming months, because just as people are prone to sickness in cold weather, so are birds. » Read more after the jump →

Reuters - Shares of Cytori Therapeutics Inc (CYTX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) rose more than 9 percent, after the biopharmaceutical company said an independent study in Japan showed that its breast reconstruction procedure was safe and well tolerated in all women.

The procedure, in which adipose tissue-derived stem and regenerative cells were used for breast reconstruction following partial mastectomy, evaluated 21 women, and no rejection or immune response was observed, the company said in a statement on Saturday.

Patient satisfaction of the outcome was 79 percent with a mean follow up period of 7.7 months, the company said.
» Read more after the jump →

12 million new cases — many preventable — were diagnosed this year, American Cancer Society reports

MONDAY, Dec. 17 (HealthDay News) — Cancer continues to cut a deadly swath across the globe, with the American Cancer Society reporting 12 million new cases of malignancy diagnosed worldwide in 2007, with 7.6 million people dying from the disease.

The report, Global Cancer Facts & Figures, finds that 5.4 million of those cancers and 2.9 million deaths are in more affluent, developed nations, while 6.7 million new cancer cases and 4.7 million deaths hit people in developing countries.

“The point of the report is to promote cancer control worldwide, and increase awareness worldwide,” said report co-author Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, director of the society’s Cancer Occurrence Office.
» Read more after the jump →

Officials from Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich’s administration visited 13 hospitals and health organizations throughout the state to train healthcare administrators to teach women about the new expanded features of IBCCP and the way they can qualify for the program.

The new IBCCP is the first of its kind in the country to ensure that all uninsured women have access to breast and cervical cancer screenings. More than 260,000 more women will be eligible for screening and treatment through the program. For more information, log on to www.cancerscreening.illinois.gov.