A new study suggests that a person’s risk of progressing from a benign condition called monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) to multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, can change over time. On average, about 1% of people with MGUS go on to develop multiple myeloma each year. Doctors typically estimate a person’s risk of progressing soon after MGUS is diagnosed, using a test that measures the amounts of certain markers in the blood. That initial risk assessment guides how much follow-up care the patient receives. But according to the new findings, published July 18 in JAMA Oncology, the levels of those blood markers—and the risk of developing cancer—can…
Author: Brett Johnson
One property of cancer cells that can help them gain and maintain a foothold in the body is their ability to evade detection and destruction by the human immune system. Some tumor cells, for example, make higher-than-normal amounts of proteins called “don’t eat me” signals, which are found on the cell surface. These “don’t eat me” proteins are a type of immune checkpoint. They are “like invisibility cloaks for the cancer,” preventing white blood cells called macrophages from detecting, engulfing, and devouring the tumor cells, explained Irving Weissman, M.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine. In a new study, Dr. Weissman and his colleagues have…
Drugs known as PARP inhibitors are used to treat some women with advanced ovarian cancer that has returned after earlier treatment. Now, results from three new clinical trials show that the drugs might also benefit women who are newly diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. The studies—which tested the PARP inhibitors niraparib (Zejula), olaparib (Lynparza), and veliparib, respectively—involved women with high-grade serous epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer. Standard initial treatment for women with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer typically includes first-line therapy with a combination of surgery and chemotherapy, sometimes followed by maintenance therapy—an additional treatment intended to help prevent the cancer from coming back.…
New results from a large clinical trial show that the immunotherapy drug durvalumab (Imfinzi) can prolong survival in some people with advanced small cell lung cancer (SCLC). In the study, treatment with durvalumab combined with a standard chemotherapy regimen increased overall survival in patients with newly diagnosed advanced SCLC by approximately 3 months compared with those treated with standard chemotherapy alone. Although the improvement in survival with immunotherapy was modest, it is noteworthy because SCLC has been such a recalcitrant disease, said Anna Farago, M.D., Ph.D., a lung cancer specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, who was not involved in the trial. “We now have two…
Waiting for medical results is like watching a pot that doesn’t want to boil. When diagnosing lung cancer, many people are left waiting for what seems like an eternity. And once the results are in, the waiting doesn’t necessarily end. Those diagnosed with lung cancer often undergo additional tests to determine whether or not they will respond positively to novel immunotherapy treatments. Of course, more tests mean more waiting. Each moment waiting for results is another moment further away from receiving a clean bill of health. Luckily, thanks to a new device, lung cancer patients may be able to get results in mere…
The drug tamoxifen can help prevent breast cancer in women at an increased risk of the disease. But many women who stand to benefit from tamoxifen do not take the drug—a pill—because of concerns about side effects, such as hot flashes and the increased risk of blood clots and stroke. To explore alternatives to oral tamoxifen that might have fewer side effects, researchers are testing a topical form of the drug in two clinical trials. These randomized placebo-controlled studies are evaluating a gel formulation of tamoxifen called 4-hydroxytamoxifen (4-OHT) that women apply directly to the breasts. The goal of this…
Paige, a New York-based company, is working to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of cancer by providing pathologists, clinicians and researchers with insights drawn from decades of data diagnosed by world experts in cancer care. Paige uses large-scale machine learning algorithms that are trained at petabyte-scale from tens of thousands of digital slides. They are developing novel deep learning algorithms based on convolutional and recurrent neural networks as well as generative models that are able to learn efficiently from an unprecedented wealth of visual and clinical data. Paige derive their name from four different concepts that represent the company as…
Tests for inherited genetic mutations can provide women diagnosed with ovarian or breast cancer with important information that can have implications for family members and potentially guide treatment decisions and longer-term screening for second cancers. However, many women with ovarian and breast cancers are not receiving these genetic tests, a new study suggests. An NCI-funded analysis of data on more than 83,000 women from large cancer registries in California and Georgia found that, in 2013 and 2014, only about one-quarter of women with breast cancer and one-third of women with ovarian cancer underwent testing for known harmful variants in breast…