Cancer Currents: An NCI Cancer Research Blog
A blog featuring news and research updates from the National Cancer Institute.
Researchers have identified a biological mechanism that may help explain a longstanding association between obesity and an increased risk of colorectal cancer in humans. In mice, the researchers found, the excess intake of calories reduced the production of a hormone that activates a signaling pathwayinvolved in suppressing the development of tumors in the colon and the rectum.
Expression of the hormone, guanylin, which is only produced and acts in the colon, is often reduced in obese individuals.
Many women cancer survivors have problems with mobility and other physical functioning as a result of persistent peripheral neuropathy caused by chemotherapy treatment, according to a new study. The problems with physical functioning were associated with a substantial increase in the women’s risk for injurious falls.
The study findings were presented on January 11 at the 2016 Cancer Survivorship Symposium in San Francisco.
NCI’s Center for Global Health (CGH) was established in 2011 to foster research and collaboration aimed at better addressing the global burden of cancer, particularly in countries where the incidence of and deaths from cancer have been rising. In honor of World Cancer Day, CGH Director Ted Trimble, M.D., M.P.H., discusses CGH’s efforts to pursue key opportunities in global cancer research.
Last week, all 69 NCI-Designated Cancer Centers released a consensus statement on human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination in the United States. The statement describes the continued low rates of HPV vaccination as “a serious public health threat,” recommends that parents have their children vaccinated, and urges clinicians “to be advocates for cancer prevention by making strong recommendations for childhood HPV vaccination.”
In this interview, Noel Brewer, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and chair of the National HPV Vaccination Roundtable, discusses the issue and some of the key actions that can help to improve HPV vaccination rates.
In August 2015, NCI and the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group launched NCI-MATCH, the largest, first-of-its-kind precision medicine cancer clinical trial to date. As the trial has progressed, we felt it was a good time to bring the cancer community up to date on the status of NCI-MATCH and, importantly, our plans moving forward.
NCI-MATCH has two key parts. The first is a screening step (called Step 0), in which tumor samples undergo genomic screening to determine whether their tumors contain specific gene abnormalities (actionable mutations) that can be matched to FDA-approved or investigational drugs (or drug combinations) being studied in the trial.
NCI recently released the Cancer Nanotechnology Plan 2015. In this interview, Piotr Grodzinski, Ph.D., director of NCI’s Office of Cancer Nanotechnology Research, discusses the 2015 plan as well as new developments in nanotechnology-based therapeutics and diagnostics and the clinical opportunities being generated by the nanotechnology field.
Educating patients with cancer about clinical trials prior to their first visit with their oncologist can improve their ability to make decisions about whether to enroll in a trial, according to a new study.
Patients in the study who took part in a tailored, video-based educational program had a better understanding of clinical trials and fewer concerns about issues such as randomizationand side effects than patients who received text-based educational materials, the study authors reported. Overall, however, regardless of the type of educational material patients received, eventual enrollment in a clinical trial was much higher among patients in the study than is typically seen in clinical practice.
Researchers have developed a new approach for treating tumors that express mutant versions of the p53 protein, which are present in more than half of all cancers. The approach, the research team believes, could be especially beneficial in women with an aggressive and common subtype of ovarian cancer called high-grade serous.
Approximately 80 percent of ovarian cancers are the high-grade serous subtype, and nearly all tumors of this subtype have mutant forms of p53. Patients with this subtype usually aren’t diagnosed until the cancer is advanced, so long-term survival rates are low, with fewer than half of women alive 5 years after diagnosis.
As many in the cancer community are aware by now, during his State of the Union address to Congress last week, President Obama gave a strong endorsement of Vice President Biden’s hopes to launch a large-scale cancer research initiative.
Prior to the State of the Union address, the Vice President had already met with several leading cancer researchers about his plans. And, last Friday, NIH Director Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., and I joined the Vice President at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where he continued these discussions. The Vice President then traveled to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, so he could hear the perspectives of cancer experts from around the world about the challenges and opportunities before us.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved alectinib (Alecensa®) on December 11, 2015, for some patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with mutations in the ALK gene.
The agency granted an accelerated approval for alectinib for patients whose cancer is no longer responding to the ALK-targeted agent crizotinib (Xalkori®) or who are unable to tolerate further treatment with crizotinib because of side effects.
Reports from two early-stage trials of new oral drugs provide hope for patients with high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that has returned after prior treatment. Results from both trials were presented last month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
Some patients with CLL, the most common type of leukemia in the United States, do well even without treatment, whereas others need chemotherapy to manage their disease. Chemotherapy can keep the disease in check for years without symptoms or need for further treatment, but virtually all patients relapse. Ultimately, for most patients, there is no curative therapy.
In this post, Barry Kramer, M.D., M.P.H., director of NCI’s Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP), discusses a new NCI-funded research effort intended to help guide treatment decisions for people diagnosed with cancer following a screening test.
Research into the prevention and early detection of cancer is entering a new era. With our greater understanding of how cancers develop and, far too often, flourish—and with the availability of powerful new technologies—our approach to preventing cancer, how we screen for it, and how we manage very early-stage disease is now more refined.
Researchers studying brain tumors have identified a previously unknown genetic mechanism that may contribute to cancer. Their findings suggest that a change in how DNA is arranged, or packaged, in the cell nucleus may inappropriately activate a gene associated with brain cancer.
Bradley Bernstein, M.D., Ph.D., of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA, and his colleagues published their findingsDecember 23 in Nature. The study focused on brain tumors known as gliomas and included lower-grade gliomas, which frequently have mutations in isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) genes.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three new drugs for the treatment of multiple myeloma that has returned after prior therapy.
On November 16, the FDA approved daratumumab (Darzalex®) for patients who have previously received at least three prior treatments. On November 20, the agency approved ixazomib(Ninlaro®) to treat patients with relapsed multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior treatment, and on November 30 it approved elotuzumab (Empliciti®) for patients who have received one to three prior therapies.
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved two targeted therapies for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
The agency approved osimertinib (Tagrisso™) for patients who have developed the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) T790M mutation in their tumors after prior treatment with an EGFR-targeted therapy, and necitumumab (Portrazza™), in combination with standard chemotherapy drugs, for the initial treatment of patients with metastatic squamous NSCLC.
In a survey of cancer survivors, many reported having experienced financial difficulties—such as going into debt, filing for bankruptcy, and consistent worry about financial issues—related to their disease and its treatment.
The findings from the study were published November 7 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
NCI is constantly publishing new information on its websites, so periodically we provide updates on new content of interest to the cancer community.
Earlier this year, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced that he was undergoing treatment for advanced melanoma that included the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda®)—part of a class of drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors. He recently reported that his most recent MRI scan did not reveal any signs of the original cancer or any new tumors.
In this interview, James Gulley, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Immunotherapy Section in the Genitourinary Malignancy Branch of NCI's Center for Cancer Research and director of the Center's Medical Oncology Service, discusses checkpoint inhibitors, their impact on patient care, and future directions for these therapies.
An international team of scientists has identified a possible new treatment target for pediatric neuroblastoma. Based on promising findings in animal models, the team is planning an early-stage clinical trial of a drug that inhibits this target in children with neuroblastoma.
The findings were published November 4 in Science Translational Medicine.
On November 10, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of cobimetinib (Cotellic™) in combination withvemurafenib (Zelboraf®) to treat patients with metastatic melanoma.
Both drugs block targets that act at different steps in the samesignaling pathway, the mitogen-activated protein kinase, or MAPK, pathway. Cobimetinib inhibits the activity of an enzyme known as MEK, and vemurafenib inhibits the enzyme BRAF.
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