Cancer Treatment Centers of America — Selective Truth about Survival Rates

by janechin

I’ve seen many commercials for the Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) here in California. The commercials have one thing in common: comparing how the patient may have been treated (bedside manners) by oncologists elsewhere, versus how patients may be expect to be treated by oncologists at CTCA. I’ve seen 2 different commercials and both [...]

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Kanzius cancer treatment looks promising but…

How viable is the Kanzius cancer treatment? Right now my conservative answer is: it looks promising in theory, but it is too early to tell. I look at VIABILITY of a cancer treatment along 2 general lines: Promise of the cancer treatment and Scalability of the cancer treatment. What makes any cancer treatment promising includes, [...]

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Why the Cost of Treating Cancer Remains Unsustainable

From Reuters: Cancer cost “becoming unsustainable” in rich nations Factor: People living longer means that cancer has longer time to incubate and grow, it also means that mutations have many more chances to occur. This means no matter how cost-effective we are able to make cancer treatments by way of introducing alternatives and competitive and [...]

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Can We Ever Have a Cure for Cancer?

I believe here are some myths about a “cure” in cancer that we need to debunk: The idea of cancer as “a” disease and the fixation on a magic silver bullet. Cancer is not “a” disease, and only in rare instances do you have a tight correlation between the cause of a cancer with “a” [...]

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Where Cancer Doth Not Grow

Interesting question on Quora: Is there any body part in which cancer cannot develop? My answer: Hair and nails – but only the dead parts (extensions, not the roots such as follicles). Any part of the body that is made up of living cells requiring extensive homeostatic regulation will be susceptible to cancer, which means [...]

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Why is Cancer Abnormal?

[A slide presentation for your education]

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How Rapamycin and Wortmannin Changes How Cancer Cells Feed

My doctoral research (1994-1999) looked at how 2 different drugs (rapamycin and wortmannin, used as immunosuppressors) affected the way that a type of cancer cells “feed” and get nutrients from their environment when the cells were given a “feeding signal” via a growth factor (TGF-β1). By understanding how each drug works, we could look at [...]

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Doctoral Thesis – Conclusions Chapter

Results presented in this dissertation support a requirement for an integrative examination of cell cycle progression. DNA synthesis measurements must be correlated with protein synthesis- and amino acid transport measurements. The temporal coupling between DNA synthesis and protein synthesis may differ from growth factor to growth factor. Comparative biochemical studies of the effect of rapamycin [...]

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Cryoablation a Strategy for Cancer Bone Pain

Cancer pain is one of the main focus in managing quality of life in cancer. Cancer bone pain is particularly problematic and debilitating, because narcotics and radiation have little effect. Reuters has reported on a study that suggests a “freezing approach” to alleviate cancer bone pain called cryoablation, with response rates in 80% of patients [...]

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Age is Risk Factor in Poly to Colon Cancer Transition

According to a recently published study in the medical journal Gut, age is a risk factor for progression of colon polyps to colorectal cancer (CRC) in both men and women, based on analysis of German cancer registries of 840,149 screening colonoscopies. This suggests that clinicians should consider age and colon screening, such that higher age [...]

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Nexavar Approved for Inoperable Liver Cancer

Nexavar (sorafenib, manufactured by Bayer Pharmaceuticals Corporation and Onyx Pharmaceuticals) has been approved by the US FDA to treat patients with inoperable hepatocellular carcinoma. Nexavar is currently already approved for treating advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), a kidney cancer. Approval was based on results from an international clinical trial containing 600 patients where patients received [...]

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Lung Cancer Awareness

From ThoughtBubbles.org: “There is no media hoopla about lung cancer, even though lung cancer kills more people than breast, prostate, and colon cancer combined.” Yvonne is right; last month we saw a flurry of pink ribbons. How many people know the color of the “lung cancer awareness” ribbon? (answer: clear, to signify that lung cancer [...]

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Too Sexy for My Hair Cancer Blog

I discovered this blog too late, as blogger Lori Miller recently passed away from cancer.

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Quality of Life and Cancer Survival

Cancer research often focuses on treatment options, including safety and efficacy. However, patients care about quality of life as well, and oncologists are beginning to pay attention to quality of life factors. Reuters reported on a study that suggests quality of life issues can influence cancer survival. Based on a study of 239 patients with [...]

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First Epothilone Cancer Drug Approved

US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Ixempra (ixabepilone, manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb) for combination treatment with capecitabine (brand name Xeloda, manufactured by Roche) and single-agent monotherapy for treating metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer that has not responded to other chemotherapy (doxorubicin, epirubicin, paclitaxel, or docetaxel). Ixempra belongs to a class of chemical [...]

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Avastin: It’s For Tumors! It’s For Eyes!

Talk about cannibalizing your own market share; Genentech’s Avastin is giving Genentech’s Lucentis a run for the money. And it really is about the money… but not because Genentech wants it that way. Doctors are using Avastin off-label (not approved by the FDA) as a cost strategy over using Lucentis for treating an eye condition [...]

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Taxotere Approved for Head and Neck Cancer

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Taxotere (docetaxel, manufactured by Sanofi-Aventis) for combination therapy with cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil to treat locally advanced Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Head and Neck (SCCHN) prior to chemoradiotherapy and surgery. All patients involved in the clinical trial had inoperable tumors or potentially operable tumors but unlikely [...]

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Improper Use of Cancer Pain Drug Led to Deaths

September 26, 2007 Update from the FDA website According to the FDA website, pain drug Fentora (fentanyl buccal tablet) has been linked to serious and fatal side effects in cancer patients who were not appropriately screened for the receiving the drug. The manufacturer of the drug, Cephalon, issued letters to physicians and healthcare professionals on [...]

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Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

Randy Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and told he had months to live. He is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and delivered his “Last Lecture”, an university event where professors are asked to deliver their messages if it were their last chance to do so. For Randy this last lecture is literal. [...]

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Evista Approved for Reducing Postmenopausal Invasive Breast Cancer Risk

Evista (raloxifene hydrochloride, manufactured by Eli Lilly) has been approved by the FDA to treat the risk of invasive breast cancer in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis and in postmenopausal women at risk for invasive breast cancer. Evista is a member of the class of selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) drugs and blocks breast estrogen receptors. [...]

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Older Patients May Still Tolerate Full Dose Chemotherapy

One of the concern oncologists have when treating “older” patients ages 70 or above is whether these patients may tolerate the full range of side effects that accompany dose intensive chemotherapy, and some oncologists are more conservative when treating the elderly patient population. In a recent study published in the Cancer medical journal, Dr. Michelle [...]

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In Europe, Cancer Survival Depends on Where You Live

Today the Economist magazine website cited an editorial from the latest issue of the medical journal, Lancet Oncology that cancer patients’ survival may depend on where they live. Based on almost 3 million new cases diagnosed between 1995-1999 in 23 countries, survival rates were the lowest in central Europe and highest in the Nordic except [...]

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Tumor Size and Location Predicts Survival in Early Stage Lung Cancer

Oncologists from Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and University of California-Irvine analyzed almost 20,000 patients with early stage lung cancer from the California Cancer Registry (years 1989 to 2003) to look at what factors can predict how long these patients live (survival). They found that in patients with early stage lung cancer (Stage I or [...]

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Why People Get Cancer Today

According to UK’s The Evening Standard, “Modern living [is] to blame for cancer epidemic.” The article cites a recent Cancer Research UK report that suggests half of all cancers could be preventable by lifestyle changes, and modern living has caused an increase in other types of cancers that were rare decades ago. Malignant melanoma received [...]

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EU Said No to Genasense, Company Offering Compassionate Use Option

In July, European Medicines Agency rejected Genasense (oblimersen sodium, manufactured by Genta) for metastatic melanoma. Barely a month later, on August 13, 2007, Genta announced that it was making its experimental DNA-based cancer drug available on a named patient/compassionate use basis outside the United States – in other words – the company was going to [...]

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ABC News Anchor has Breast Cancer

Robin Roberts shared news that she has breast cancer on the ABC website today. Luckily, her breast cancer is at an early stage. Robin Roberts found a lump when she did a breast self-exam. ABC has recently lost film critic Joel Siegel to colon cancer, and before that, Peter Jennings to lung cancer. Of her [...]

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Pancreatic Cancer Requires Multiple Approaches to Therapy

A new study looked at multimodal therapies for treating pancreatic cancer and whether multiple approaches to therapy would affect survival of pancreatic cancer patients. Treatment modalities included surgery and chemoradiation therapies. Over the course of the last decade, researchers have found that pancreatic cancer patients are increasingly receiving multiple types of therapies for their cancer, [...]

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Fertility Sparing Surgery for Ovarian Cancer Patients

According to Dr. Gershenson of University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, women with ovarian cancer can preserve their reproductive function by opting for fertility-sparing surgery. Survivors are also more likely to experience more positive relationships with significant others. Gershenson and colleagues studied 132 ovarian cancer survivors and compared their reproductive outcomes [...]

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Encouraging News in Metastatic Breast Cancer

According to Dr. Stephen Chia from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer experience longer survival times than those diagnosed even a decade ago. New chemotherapies and new biological cancer medicines have made this possible. Dr. Chia reported that patients survive on an average of 438 days when [...]

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Avastin Positively Received by EU Agency for Lung Cancer

In Europe, Roche is the distributor of the biological cancer therapy Avastin (bevacizumab, manufactured by Genentech in the U.S.). The company announced that the European Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has recommended first-line use of Avastin in treating lung cancer based on two studies: ECOG study E4599 and the AVAiL study. Together, [...]

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Breath Test Diagnosing Lung Cancer

Current issue of Thorax medical journal suggests a new technology that uses a breath test to diagnose lung cancer with moderate accuracy. Based on the color change of sensors that detect chemicals from the breath test, the doctor may be able to diagnose whether the patient has lung cancer. Background: The pattern of volatile organic [...]

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