Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention

The Translational Genomics Research Institute and Scottsdale Healthcare have discovered lung cancer ‘pathways’ that could become targets for new drugs, according to a scientific paper published online today by the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.

Dr. Glen Weiss, Director of Thoracic Oncology at TGen Clinical Research Services (TCRS) at Scottsdale Healthcare, said the study showed the value of conducting computer modeling, or “in silico” research.

TCRS is a partnership of TGen and Scottsdale Healthcare. The partnership allows molecular and genomic discoveries made by TGen and others around the world to reach the patient bedside in the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare as quickly as possible through clinical trials with agents directed at specific cancer targets.

Researchers hope that over time in silico research will help lower health care costs while speeding up the process of turning scientific discoveries into treatments for patients.

“There are pathways that you can identify just from an in silico analysis. And we can use these types of tools to explore treatments for patients, down the road,” said Dr. Weiss, an Associate Investigator in TGen’s Cancer and Cell Biology Division and the senior author of the paper, which will appear in print in JTO’s November edition.

The study sought to identify metabolic pathways — a series of chemical reactions occurring within a cell — that could be targeted by drugs in patients with both small-cell and large-cell lung cancers. Small-cell lung cancer represents about 15 percent of all lung cancers. The rest are classified as non-small cell lung cancer, of which large-cell lung cancer represents about 10 percent.

The study used publicly available data sets, searching for connections that may have been previously overlooked.

“Within those datasets, there are common pathways. We point out some examples that provide some proof-of-principle from the in silico search,” said Dr. Weiss, who was joined in his research by TGen’s Dr. Chris Kingsley and by Dr. Anoor Paripati of the Scottsdale Clinical Research Institute at Scottsdale Healthcare.

As an example, the study cites one particular signaling pathway, Wnt/ß-catenin, that could be targeted by two drugs, vorinostat and dasatinib, both of which are under study in clinical trials.

“This is an exploration of the publicly available data sets in an attempt to answer a new question. It shows that you can look at pathways and identify targets. We did our validation by looking at what’s been tested, or what’s available already,” Dr. Weiss said.

In silico research, which is far less costly than conducting genetic profiling analysis of cancer tumors, will become more common as the National Cancer Institute ramps up its cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid, also known as caBIG.

Such in silico research should lead to targets for further laboratory and clinical research, and also should help clinicians provide more personalized treatment for patients, Dr. Weiss said.

“There is going to be a wealth of profiling data out there in the near future. You can then apply techniques like this, and hopefully design smarter clinical trials to find the drugs that would work,” Dr. Weiss said.

Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention – Researchers from McGill University in Montreal surveyed nearly 3,600 Canadian men aged 35 to 70 and found those who averaged at least a drink a day had higher risks of a number of cancers than men who drank occasionally or not at all.

These included cancers of the esophagus, stomach, colon, lungs, pancreas, liver and prostate.

When the researchers looked at individual types of alcohol, though, only beer and “spirits” — and not wine — were linked to elevated cancer risks.

In general, the odds increased in tandem with the men’s lifetime alcohol intake, according to findings published in the Cancer Prevention and Detection. With several cancers, men who drank at least once a day tended to have higher risks than those who drank on a regular, but less-than-daily, basis.

When it came to esophageal cancer, for instance, men who had a drink one to six times per week had an 83 per cent higher risk than teetotalers and less-frequent drinkers, while daily drinkers had a three-fold higher risk.

In addition, when the researchers looked only at daily drinkers, the risks generally increased with the number of years the men had been drinking daily.

“Our results show that the heaviest consumers over the lifetime had the biggest increases in the risks of multiple sites of cancer,” researcher Dr. Andrea Benedetti told Reuters.

Many studies have suggested that moderate drinking — usually defined as no more than a drink or two per day — can be a healthy habit, particularly when it comes to heart disease risk.

But the current study suggested that even such moderate drinking levels are linked to higher risks of certain cancers, at least when the alcohol of choice is beer or liquor.

The question of whether moderate drinkers should cut down, however, cannot be answered by a single study.

The Science Behind Beer and Health
October 2006 (Medialink) – Who knew that beer may help reduce the risk of heart disease and certain other chronic diseases related to aging? According to a professor of medicine and public health at the Boston University School of Medicine, it may. Dr. Curtis Ellison spoke at a conference on a panel called, “Beer: To Your Health!,” held by the Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Policy at the University of Maryland-College Park. This conference reviewed the science on health benefits of moderate beer and alcohol consumption and the challenges of communicating a balanced message to the public.

Brewed from barley, malt and other grains, some studies suggest that beer may have heart-healthy benefits and that older adults who consume moderate amounts of alcohol may have a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, osteoporosis – and maybe even obesity.

The key is moderation. U.S. dietary guidelines define “moderation” as one drink per day for women, and two for men. Experts say that for those who choose to drink, alcohol should be consumed with food – and that the total number of alcoholic drinks should not be averaged out for the week. That means people should not save their ‘drink a day’ all week and then have seven drinks on Saturday night.

Iressa, the lung cancer drug, may be ready to make a comeback: A study concludes it can radically slow the deadly disease better than the standard chemotherapy regimens in certain patients.

The research released Wednesday is the first to show Iressa can be more effective than chemotherapy as a first-line treatment, and some experts are hopeful it will prompt the Food and Drug Administration to allow wide use of the drug, made by AstraZeneca PLC. Others are skeptical. Though the study shows an effect on cancer growth over one year, the drug’s impact on long-term survival is still in question. Also, the study was done in Asia, and the drug seems to work best with specific patients — Asians, women and nonsmokers who carry a specific gene mutation.

“I’d venture to say that additional studies will be requested in the United States population,” said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society’s deputy chief medical officer.

AstraZeneca, which funded the study, is not planning a new push for expanded FDA approval of the drug, a company spokeswoman said. But the company is continuing to share data about the drug with federal health officials, she added.

Iressa is a daily pill that more precisely targets cancer rather than healthy cells. It’s an attractive alternative to standard chemotherapy, which involves trips to a hospital or clinic for infusions of poisonous chemicals that cause nausea and hair loss. In 2003, the FDA approved Iressa as a last-resort treatment for patients with the most common form of lung cancer, called non-small-cell lung cancer. The market was significant: Lung cancer kills more Americans than any other kind of tumor, and the Cancer Society estimates it will cause nearly 160,000 U.S. deaths this year. Non-small-cell lung cancer represents 85 percent of lung cancer cases.

But in 2005, the FDA stopped allowing new patients to go on Iressa after early results from a federally sponsored study failed to show it improved lung cancer patients’ survival rates. Another lung cancer pill, Roche Group’s Tarceva, acts in a way similar to Iressa and remained on the market as a treatment for patients not helped by chemotherapy. There wasn’t widespread outcry at the loss of Iressa because Tarceva remained available, said Dr. Edward Kim, a lung cancer specialist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Interest in Iressa continued, though, as doctors have become increasingly interested in personalized approaches to cancer treatment. Studies have shown some drugs work better in certain breast and colon cancer patients than others, and earlier studies have found that Iressa dramatically shrunk tumors in patients who had lung cancers with a specific genetic mutation. That kind of scenario is observed in only a small fraction of U.S. lung cancer patients, but is much more common in Asia, scientists say.

The latest study was led by Dr. Tony Mok of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and involved about 1,200 patients throughout southeast Asia. The study group included the kind of people most likely to have the mutation, said Dr. Pasi Janne, a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute lung cancer specialist.

The study measured cancer growth within a year after treatment, comparing patients who got Iressa to others who got chemotherapy. After one year, 25 percent on Iressa were alive without their cancer getting worse, as compared to 7 percent of those on chemo. Results were even better in those with the mutation. In those without the mutation, chemotherapy was more effective. The study was published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. A second study released by the journal concluded that large-scale screening of lung cancer patients for the genetic mutation is feasible and can lead to wiser treatment.

Cancer Facts : How Does Lung Cancer Develop? embedded by Sandy Hutchens

Lung cancer develops when smoking, air pollutants and free radical formation damages sensitive lung tissue, causing the cellular DNA to restructure and malfunction. Avoid lung cancer by quitting smoking with information from a doctor in this free video on cancer.

Expert: Dr. David Cathcart
Bio: Dr. David Cathcart specializes in occupational medicine and has an in-depth knowledge of cancer, as well as experience dealing with cancer patients and treatment for multiple years.