Oncology News and Research

RSS

Oncology, meaning bulk, mass, or tumor, and the suffix ''-logy'', meaning "study of") is a branch of medicine that deals with tumors (cancer). A medical professional who practices oncology is an ''oncologist''.

Chemotherapy improves survival for patients with SCLC and LCNEC

Research presented in the July 2012 issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) Journal of Thoracic Oncology, concluded that patients with limited large cell neuroendocrine tumors or with limited stage small-cell lung cancer who were treated with perioperative chemotherapy and surgery had better overall survival outcomes than patients treated with surgery alone.

16 Jun 2012

Anti-TNFs increase risk for herpes zoster infections in IRD patients

Patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases who are treated with anti-tumor necrosis factor medications are significantly more likely to experience herpes zoster infections than those treated with traditional disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs, study results show.

15 Jun 2012

DFINE completes initial phase of STAR Tumor Ablation System trial

DFINE, Inc., the developer of minimally invasive radiofrequency (RF) targeted therapies for the treatment of vertebral pathologies, today announced an upcoming poster presentation at the World Congress of Interventional Oncology (WCIO), June 14-18 in Chicago.

15 Jun 2012

Study: Quirky fruit fly gene can help develop new weapons against cancer

Loyola University Chicago researchers are taking advantage of a quirk in the evolution of fruit fly genes to help develop new weapons against cancer.

15 Jun 2012

LabCorp launches new age-based test protocol for cervical cancer and STD screening

Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings announced today the launch of an innovative age-based test protocol that aids physicians when ordering cervical cancer and sexually transmitted disease (STD) screening tests.

15 Jun 2012

Positive top-line results from Teva’s GALA Phase III trial on RRMS

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. today announced positive top-line results from the GALA (Glatiramer Acetate Low-Frequency Administration) Phase III clinical trial assessing the efficacy, safety and tolerability of 40 mg/1 ml glatiramer acetate injection (GA) administered subcutaneously three times a week compared to placebo in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) patients.

15 Jun 2012

Unifying theory on causes of cancer metastases

A unifying theory on the causes of cancer metastases has been proposed by Alexander R.A. Anderson, Ph.D., chair of Integrated Mathematical Oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center, and Jacob Scott, M.D., a Moffitt Radiation Oncology Program resident that is studying for his Ph.D. at the University of Oxford Centre for Mathematical Biology.

15 Jun 2012

TGen, Scottsdale Healthcare open INNO-206 Phase 2 trial for pancreatic cancer

An investigational drug that acts like a Trojan Horse to deliver cancer killing agents for pancreatic cancer is being studied at the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center Clinical Trials, a partnership between Scottsdale Healthcare and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) that treats cancer patients with promising new drugs.

15 Jun 2012

Quest receives FDA clearance to initiate oregovomab Phase II trial in ovarian cancer

Quest PharmaTech Inc., a pharmaceutical company developing and commercializing products for the treatment of cancer, announces that it has received clearance from the United States Food and Drug Administration to initiate U.S. sites for an ongoing international Phase II clinical trial for oregovomab in advanced ovarian cancer patients.

15 Jun 2012

Antibody that blocks programmed cell death benefits cancer patients

A national research collaboration of senior researchers, including a researcher from Moffitt Cancer Center, has found that 20 to 25 percent of "heavily pre-treated" patients with a variety of cancers who enrolled in a clinical trial had "objective and durable" responses to a treatment with BMS-936558, an antibody that specifically blocks programmed cell death 1 (PD-1).

14 Jun 2012

Cancer experts call for global action on diesel fumes

Diesel exhaust fumes have been classified as carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, following a week-long meeting of international experts.

14 Jun 2012

Prior chemotherapy extends postpalliative survival in pancreatic cancer

Patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer have a more favorable prognosis after palliative chemoradiotherapy if they have previously been treated with a gemcitabine-based therapy, say Danish researchers.

14 Jun 2012

Laparoscopy technique lights up invisible metastases

Fluorescence laparoscopy could be the way forward for cancer surgery and staging, say researchers writing in the Archives of Surgery.

14 Jun 2012

Invuity closes $25M Series D round of financing

Invuity, a leading developer of state-of-the-art surgical visualization and illumination technology, has raised a $25 million Series D round of financing to expand the development, manufacturing and commercialization of the company's advanced medical devices.

14 Jun 2012

Multimedia intervention effective in changing patients' perceptions, attitudes toward clinical trials

Seeking ways to change cancer patients' perceptions and negative attitudes towards clinical trials participation, researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center conducted a study offering two different kinds of intervention to two groups of adults with cancer who had not previously been asked to participate in clinical trials. They found a multimedia psychoeducational intervention to be more effective in changing patients' perceptions and negative attitudes toward clinical trials than standard educational literature.

14 Jun 2012

JAMA: Wage gap persists for women physician-researchers

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the average salary for women doctor-researchers was 16 percent lower than men, even after accounting for speciality, hours, etc.

14 Jun 2012

Updated survival data from Takeda’s brentuximab vedotin Phase II trial on HL

Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, today announced updated survival data from a pivotal Phase II clinical trial of single-agent brentuximab vedotin in patients with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) after autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) showing that the median overall survival has not been reached after a 26.5 month median follow-up.

14 Jun 2012

Cancers often recur after treatment with single drugs that “target” tumor cells’ genetic pathways

Targeted cancer cell therapies using man-made proteins dramatically shrink many tumors in the first few months of treatment, but new research from Johns Hopkins scientists finds why the cells all too often become resistant, the treatment stops working, and the disease returns.

14 Jun 2012

NEJM hails vismodegib as ‘the greatest advance in therapy yet seen’ for advanced BCC

Vismodegib, a new skin cancer drug for patients with advanced basal cell carcinoma tested by TGen, Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare and Mayo Clinic, is hailed as "the greatest advance in therapy yet seen" for advanced basal cell carcinoma in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.

14 Jun 2012

Study investigates how breast cancer cells migrate to bone

Breast cancer cells frequently move from their primary site and invade bone, decreasing a patient's chance of survival. This process of metastasis is complex, and factors both within the breast cancer cells and within the new bone environment play a role. In next week's Journal of Biological Chemistry "Paper of the Week," Roger Gomis and colleagues at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Spain investigated how breast cancer cells migrate to bone.

14 Jun 2012