Fluorouracil is a drug used to treat symptoms of cancer of the colon, breast, stomach, and pancreas. It is also used in a cream to treat certain skin conditions. Fluorouracil stops cells from making DNA and it may kill cancer cells. It is a type of antimetabolite. Also called 5-fluorouracil and 5-FU.
For patients with early stage breast cancer that has spread to the lymph nodes, adding four cycles of docetaxel (Taxotere) into a sequential regimen of epirubicin followed by cyclophosphamide, methotrexate and fluorouracil (CMF) reduces the risk of recurrence and death, updated long-term results show.
A combination of chemotherapy 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.
Pancreatic cancer patients treated with a combination of chemotherapy and radiation after surgery survive approximately six months longer than those receiving surgery alone, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists report.
When administered before chemoradiation, the common anti-cancer drug cisplatin neither improved disease-free survival nor reduced the number of colostomies needed when compared to the standard treatment for patients with anal canal cancer, according to a study published in the April 23 issue of the JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Cancer treatment with chemotherapeutic agents is often associated with delayed adverse neurological consequences - an occurrence often referred to as "chemobrain" - that may compromise the quality of life of a proportion of cancer survivors.
Certain biases may exist in observational studies that compare outcomes of different cancer therapies, making the results questionable.
Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has announced that it has received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market its innovative 5-Fluorouracil-coated (5-FU) Central Venous Catheter (CVC) in the United States.
Patients with breast cancer who developed anemia during chemotherapy had nearly three times the risk of local recurrence as those who did not, according to a study published in the April 1 issue of Clinical Cancer Research¸ a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
The use of combination chemotherapy following surgery did not improve survival in patients with gastric cancer, according to a randomized clinical trial published online March 11 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute .
The addition of the drug gemcitabine with chemoradiation for the treatment of patients who had surgery for pancreatic cancer was associated with a survival benefit, although this improvement was not statistically significant, according to a study in the March 5 issue of JAMA.
Pancreatic cancer patients face the worst survival rates compared to all other forms of human cancer as the disease is nearly impossible to diagnose at an early stage when successful treatments might be possible.
While some targeted therapies - drugs developed to attack specific molecules in the critical chemical pathways occurring within cancer cells - work well by themselves, increasingly researchers are finding that they work better when teamed with other targeted and conventional therapies.
Following promising results in a phase III trial, the drug Taxotere has been given the green light for use in people with head and neck cancer.
Sanofi-aventis announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Taxotere (docetaxel) Injection Concentrate in combination with cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil for induction therapy of locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) before patients undergo chemoradiotherapy and surgery.
Researchers in Australia have shown that positron emission tomography (PET) that uses a radioactive sugar molecule is more useful than mammography and ultrasound in predicting a breast tumour's response to chemotherapy and, therefore, the patient's ultimate likelihood of survival.
A therapeutic cancer vaccine has shown effectiveness when given alongside chemotherapy to patients with metastatic colorectal cancer in a phase II trial, according to researchers at Oxford BioMedica (UK) Ltd.
A therapeutic cancer vaccine has shown effectiveness when given alongside chemotherapy to patients with metastatic colorectal cancer in a phase II trial, according to researchers at Oxford BioMedica (UK) Ltd.
Many patients with incurable advanced colorectal cancer could be offered a more gentle treatment strategy starting with a single chemotherapy drug, as an alternative to current standard initial combination chemotherapy, without compromising their survival.
The number of lymph nodes that contain evidence of cancer is the best predictor of the effectiveness of adding chemotherapy and radiation to a treatment plan prior to surgery in individuals with oesophageal cancer, according to a study published last month in the Annals of Surgery.
Researchers in Slovakia have been able to derive mesenchymal stem cells from human adipose, or fat, tissue and engineer them into "suicide genes" that seek out and destroy tumors like tiny homing missiles.