Archive for the ‘Chemotherapy’ Category

FDA Staff Questions Benefits of Glaxo, Merck Cancer Drugs

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Posted 18 Mar 2012 — by James Street
Category Ridaforolimus, Sarcoma, Votrient

By Anna Edney – Mar 16, 2012 1:09 PM PT

Fasting and Chemotherapy

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Posted 25 Jul 2011 — by James Street
Category Chemotherapy, Fasting

JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association

Fasting for 2 days protects healthy cells against chemotherapy, according to animal studies conducted at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (Raffaghello L et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 10.1073/pnas.0708100105 [published online ahead of print March 31, 2008]). The cell-protective effects of starvation had previously been demonstrated in antiaging studies.

Researchers found that mice given a high dose of chemotherapy after fasting continued to thrive while half of the normally fed mice died and half experienced lasting weight loss. Importantly, the chemotherapy extended the life span of mice injected with cells from an aggressive human tumor, and the animals later gained back the weight they had lost due to food deprivation.

Laboratory studies of normal human brain cells and cancerous brain cell lines that underwent a short period of starvation (low glucose) revealed that normal cells also became resistant to chemotherapy, while cancerous brain …

Meet the woman allergic to electricity

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Posted 23 May 2011 — by James Street
Category Chemotherapy, Chemotherapy, General Cancer Research

A British woman cannot use an electric kettle, keeps her washing machine in a concrete outhouse and cannot have neighbours with wireless internet because she is allergic to electricity.

Meet the woman allergic to electricity
Janice Tunnicliffe using an EMF detector Photo: HARVEY HOOK / HOTSPOT MEDIA

Janice Tunnicliffe spends every night playing Scrabble by candlelight with her husband because she claims to have a rare condition called electrosensitivity.

She cannot bear to be anywhere near electromagnetic fields of any kind and, as a result, she cannot watch television, listen to the radio or talk on a mobile phone and has been left completely isolated from the modern world by her condition.

Mrs Tunnicliffe, 55, was struck down with the illness after receiving chemotherapy for bowel cancer three years ago.

Since then she has suffered constant headaches, chest pains, nausea and tingling in her arms and legs whenever she is near electrical devices or items that emit a signal.

Her only relief in this time was when her village, near Mansfield in rural Nottinghamshire, suffered a temporary power cut.

Gene-modified cells could protect against chemotherapy’s toxic effects

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Posted 21 May 2011 — by James Street
Category Chemotherapy, Drugs, genetic research
Published: Saturday, May 21, 2011, 14:43 IST
Place: Washington, DC | Agency: ANI

The usual doses of chemotherapy drugs can cause serious toxic effects in quickly dividing tissues such as the bone marrow.

But now, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre suggest that one possible approach to reduce this toxic effect on bone marrow cells is to modify the cells with a gene that makes them resistant to chemotherapy.

Hans-Peter Kiem and colleagues presented data from a clinical trial in which bone marrow stem cells from patients with brain tumors were removed and modified with a retrovirus vector to introduce the chemotherapy-resistant gene. The cells were then re-infused into the patients.

In the trial, which was designed to evaluate safety and feasibility, patients were safely administered gene-modified blood stem cells that persisted for more than one year and did not show any apparent harmful effects.

“Our initial results are encouraging because our first patient is still alive and without evidence of disease progression almost two years after diagnosis,” Kiem said.

The results of the trial suggest the administration of the modified cells represent a safe method for protecting marrow and blood cells from the harmful effects of chemotherapy in brain tumor patients.

The research was reported at the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy in Seattle.

Curcumin potentiates cisplatin four-fold in head and neck cancer

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Posted 21 May 2011 — by James Street
Category Chemotherapy, Combination Treatments, Complementary Therapy, CURCUMIN, Drug Interactions, Drug Resistance, Drugs, Head and Neck
Published: Friday, May 20, 2011, 23:41 IST
Place: Washington, DC | Agency: ANI

Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Centre have found that a compound derived from curcumin helps cells overcome the treatment failure of head and neck cancer.

Curcumin is the principal curcuminoid of the popular Indian spice turmeric.

When researchers added a curcumin-based compound, called FLLL32, to head and neck cancer cell lines, they were able to cut the dose of the chemotherapy drug cisplatin by four while still killing tumor cells equally as well as the higher dose of cisplatin without FLLL32.

“This work opens the possibility of using lower, less toxic doses of cisplatin to achieve an equivalent or enhanced tumor kill. Typically, when cells become resistant to cisplatin, we have to give increasingly higher doses. But this drug is so toxic that patients who survive treatment often experience long-term side effects from the treatment,” said senior author Thomas Carey, professor of otolaryngology and pharmacology at the U-M Medical School.

That tumours become resistant to cisplatin is a major reason why head and neck cancer patients frequently see their cancer return or spread. It also plays a big role in why five-year survival for head and neck cancer has not improved in the past three decades.
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In the current study, researchers compared varying doses of cisplatin alone with varying doses of cisplatin plus FLLL32 against two sets of head and neck cancer cells: one line that was sensitive to cisplatin and one line that was resistant.

They found that FLLL32 decreased the activation levels of STAT3, sensitizing both resistant and sensitive tumor cells to cisplatin. Further, lower doses of cisplatin with FLLL32 were equally effective at killing cancer cells as the higher doses of cisplatin alone.

The study is detailed in Archives of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery.

Green Tea Blocks Benefits Of Cancer Drug

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Posted 11 May 2011 — by James Street
Category Chemotherapy, Vitamins and Supplements

ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2009) — Contrary to popular assumptions about the health benefits of green tea, researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) have found that the widely used supplement renders a cancer drug used to treat multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma completely ineffective in treating cancer.

The study, which found that a component of green tea extract (GTE) called EGCG destroys any anticancer activity of the drug Velcade in tumor-bearing mice, will be published in the journal Blood.

“Our finding that GTE or EGCG blocked the therapeutic action of Velcade was completely unexpected,” says lead author Axel H. Schönthal, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “Our hypothesis was that GTE or EGCG would enhance the anti-tumor effects of Velcade, and that a combination of GTE with Velcade (or EGCG with Velcade) would turn out to be a superior cancer treatment as compared to treatment with Velcade alone.”

Herbal remedies, including green tea, have become a popular remedy for cancer patients dealing with side effects of chemotherapy. However, these supplements are unregulated and, for most, their beneficial and/or detrimental effects have not been qualified through research.

Using preclinical models and tumor-bearing mice, the researchers found that the unusually effective blockage of Velcade’s therapeutic activity was based on the chemical interaction between molecules. The EGCG molecule and the Velcade molecule were able to form chemical bonds, meaning that the Velcade molecule could no longer bind to its intended target inside the tumor cells.

Clincal trials to verify these results in humans would be highly unethical to conduct, because of the predictably unfavorable outcome. Nevertheless, the researchers expect the results of the study to be applicable to cancer patients.

“The most immediate conclusion from our study is the strong advice that patients undergoing cancer therapy with Velcade must avoid green tea, and in particular all of its concentrated products that are freely available from health food stores,” says Schönthal. “It is important to spread this message to health care providers who administer Velcade to patients.”

Schönthal points out that for patients on Velcade, supplementing with green tea products should reduce the burden of harsh side effects—which might be attractive to the patient, but comes at a high cost.

“Essentially, in addition to not being able to attack tumor cells, Velcade would be unable to cause side effects either,” he says. “As a result, the patient would feel a lot better and conclude that the consumption of GTE helped cope with side effects—while in reality, Velcade simply wasn’t active in the first place.”

The research findings are part of a larger project run by the team called “Yin-Yang Properties of Green Tea Extract in Combination Cancer Chemotherapy: From Encouragingly Beneficial to Dangerously Detrimental.”

“Obviously, the combination of GTE or EGCG with Velcade is an example of ‘dangerously detrimental,’ “Schönthal says. “But we are also studying another well-established chemotherapeutic drug, where the inclusion of EGCG appears to yield an ‘encouragingly beneficial’ outcome, which is more in line with our original expectation that GTE should be beneficial, not detrimental.”

The study was funded by the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.

Targeting Inflammatory Kinase as an Adjuvant Treatment for Osteosarcomas

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Posted 22 Apr 2011 — by James Street
Category Chemotherapy, Human osteosarcoma research, Inflamation, Local Recurrence, Lung Metastases, Metastases, Molecular Osteosarcoma Studies, Osteosarcoma, Proteomics

Kyucheol Noh, MD1, Kyung-Ok Kim, PhD1, Neel R. Patel, BS1, J. Robert Staples, BS1, Hiroshi Minematsu, PhD1, Kumar Nair, BA1 and Francis Young-In Lee, MD, PhD1

1 Center for Orthopaedic Research, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Columbia University, 650 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032. E-mail address for F.Y.-I. Lee: fl127@columbia.edu

 

Investigation performed at the Center for Orthopaedic Research, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Columbia University, New York, NY

A commentary by John H. Healey, MD, is available at www.jbjs.org/commentary and is linked to the online version of this article.

Disclosure: In support of their research for or preparation of this work, one or more of the authors received, in any one year, outside funding or grants in excess of $10,000 from the Orthopaedic Science and Research Foundation. Neither they nor a member of their immediate families received payments or other benefits or a commitment or agreement to provide such benefits from a commercial entity.

 

Background A subset of patients with aggressive osteosarcomas responds poorly to conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy. Recent evidence from studies involving the liver, skin, stomach, and colon suggests that carcinogenesis is associated with inflammation. Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)/extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) has diverse roles in cancer and inflammation. The hypothesis of the present study is that targeted ERK1/2 inhibition will demonstrate anti-cancer effects in osteosarcoma both in vitro and in vivo.

Methods The therapeutic effect of PD98059, a MAPK/ERK pathway inhibitor, was examined with respect to cell death, survival, and anti-apoptotic protein expression by means of flow cytometry and immunoblotting in vitro. Additionally, we transplanted green fluorescent protein and luciferase-tagged 143B osteosarcoma cells into the proximal part of the tibia of nude mice. Mice were randomly assigned to treatment with doxorubicin, PD98059, or both. Vehicle-treated mice served as controls. Treatment outcome was assessed by measuring bioluminescence and by monitoring survival.

Results In vitro, ERK1/2 blockage increased the expression of pro-apoptotic proteins and increased cell death in 143B osteosarcoma cells. Doxorubicin treatment increased the expression of Bcl-2, an anti-apoptotic protein, but this upregulation was blocked by combined treatment with PD98059, suggesting a role for ERK1/2 in conferring drug resistance. In osteosarcoma-bearing mice, targeting ERK1/2 with PD98059 resulted in prolonged survival in comparison with vehicle-treated control mice (median survival time, sixty-seven days compared with seventy-four days; p = 0.0272; survival ratio = 0.9122; 95% confidence interval = 0.4354 to 1.389). Standalone doxorubicin treatment yielded similar animal morbidity (median survival time, sixty-seven days compared with seventy-six days; p = 0.0170; survival ratio = 0.8882; 95% confidence interval = 0.4181 to 1.358). Combined PD98059 and doxorubicin treatment further prolonged survival (median survival time, sixty-seven days compared with eighty-two days; p = 0.0023; survival ratio = 0.8232; 95% confidence interval = 0.3606 to 1.286).

Conclusions Inhibiting ERK1/2 signaling resulted in osteosarcoma cell death by upregulating pro-apoptotic genes and inhibiting the Bcl-2-mediated resistance to doxorubicin. In osteosarcoma-bearing mice, ERK1/2 targeting alone or in combination with doxorubicin prolonged survival as compared with untreated mice.

Clinical Relevance Our study highlights the anti-cancer effect of the inflammatory kinase inhibitor PD98059 on osteosarcoma cells by inducing cell death and by inhibiting a potential drug-resistance mechanism. Taken together, these results suggest that ERK signaling blockade (targeted therapy) may be considered as a new targeted adjuvant therapy for osteosarcoma.

Tiny diamonds show promise against tough cancers

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Posted 10 Mar 2011 — by James Street
Category Chemotherapy, Drug Testing, NanoTechnology

By Kerry Sheridan (AFP) – 14 hours ago

WASHINGTON — US researchers said Wednesday they have found a way to attack late-stage breast and liver cancer tumors by attaching a potent chemotherapy drug to tiny carbon particles known as nanodiamonds.

The technique was tested in mice and showed that nanodiamonds helped the drug, doxorubicin, get inside the normally chemo-resistant tumor and shrink it, said the study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Without the nanodiamonds, the drug was either rejected by the body and failed to work on the tumor, or in higher doses it was too powerful for the patient to survive.

“This is the first work to demonstrate the significance and translational potential of nanodiamonds in the treatment of chemotherapy-resistant cancers,” said the study.

The research shows promise for possible use in humans because chemotherapy drug resistance causes treatment to fail in 90 percent of cancers that have spread inside the body, known as metastatic cancer.

“What is most interesting from this study is when we took an even higher dose of the drug, that dose was so toxic that the animals all died. They didn’t even last long enough to finish the study,” said lead author Dean Ho of Northwestern University.

“But when we took that same higher dose and bound it to the nanodiamond, not only did all the animals survive the study, the tumor sizes were the smallest that we saw in the study,” he told AFP.

Ho said he became interested in using carbon particles to deliver drugs more than three years ago, and was attracted to nanodiamonds because they have been shown in automotive uses to work well with water, a key requirement in medical uses, too.

“We also saw that the shape of the diamond was very conducive because it is a very ordered structure and that is always good for biology,” Ho added.

Nanodiamonds are typically formed in explosions, such as in coal mining or oil refinery operations, and are even thought to result from meteorite landings.

“What is neat about it is it is almost like a waste material, it is going to be produced anyways,” said Ho.

“So instead of throwing it out, taking this by product and simply processing it with things like acid washing, milling, sonification, it can yield very uniform particles of between two and eight nanometers in diameter.”

Ho said it would likely be a few years before the therapy may be available on the market, and that researchers would first look at how the technique works in larger animals before human clinical trials can start.

“Nanodiamonds possess numerous hallmarks of an ideal drug delivery system and are promising platforms for advancing cancer therapy,” said co-author Edward Chow, a postdoctoral fellow with the GW Hooper Foundation, which helped fund the research, and the University of California, San Francisco.

Other funding for the study came from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the American Cancer Institute.

Bone Drug Zoledronic Acid May Help Prevent Spread Of Early Lung Cancer

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Posted 03 Mar 2011 — by James Street
Category Chemotherapy, Combination Treatments, experimental treatments, Lung Metastases

28 Feb 2011

A drug that is currently used to help treat bone metastases in patients with lung cancer could also be useful at an earlier stage of treatment, to prevent the cancer from spreading in the first place, Italian researchers have found.

Dr Michela Quirino and colleagues from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome have reported important new evidence that zoledronic acid may be able to prevent lung cancer metastases from recruiting the new blood vessels they need to survive. This process of recruiting new blood vessels is called angiogenesis.

“Our investigation represents the first clear clinical evidence of the anti-angiogenic effect of zoledronic acid in patients with metastatic lung cancer,” Dr Quirino said. “It also represents the first biological basis in lung cancer for the clinical investigation of zoledronic acid not only for metastatic lung cancer, but also in early disease.”

Dr Quirino presented findings from a study of 41 patients with advanced lung cancer.

Each patient was administered 4 mg of zoledronic acid, and their blood levels of several molecular markers of angiogenesis were measured before and 48 hours after the injection. Those markers included the molecules VEGF, PDGF, b-FGF and HGF.

“We found a statistically significant reduction of VEGF levels at day 2 after 4 mg ZA intravenous infusion compared with basal values,” Dr Quirino said. Blood levels of bFGF were also significantly reduced. “Some studies reported that VEGF secretion is induced by bFGF and this could support our results,” she added.

The researchers did not record any significant effect of injecting the drug on the levels of the other two mediators of angiogenesis, PDGF and HGF.

Treatment with zoledronic acid is already an important treatment to manage bone metastases from lung cancer, Dr Quirino noted. Some clinical studies have already demonstrated that zoledronic acid in bone metastases from lung cancer improves clinical outcomes and patient survival.

“If further studies should confirm a possible anti-metastatic effect of this drug, possibly relying also on its anti-angiogenic effect, it could be introduced in the early management of the disease, even as an adjuvant therapy.”

Commenting on the study, which he was not involved in, Prof Ken O’Byrne, from St James’s Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, said: “These observations underline the importance of targeting VEGF in non-small cell lung cancer and the potential role bFGF may have in tumor growth and metastasis. The results lay the groundwork for evaluating the potential role of zoledronic acid in the treatment of lung cancer independently of the effects on bone metastases.”

Source:
Vanessa Pavinato
European Society for Medical Oncology

Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/217561.php

Main News Category: Lung Cancer

Also Appears In:  Bones / Orthopedics,  Vascular,

Scalp Cooling Cap May Help Chemotherapy Patients Keep Hair

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Posted 03 Mar 2011 — by James Street
Category Breast Cancer, Chemotherapy

25 Feb 2011

A feasibility study to test the use of a scalp cooling device that breast cancer patients will wear while undergoing chemotherapy treatment will be conducted at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. This will be part of the first significant study of the medical device in the United States.

The FDA has given approval for an investigational device exemption (IDE) feasibility study to be conducted at both Wake Forest Baptist and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). A total of 20 patients with stage one breast cancer will be involved – 10 at Wake Forest Baptist and 10 at UCSF. The study will test the safety and tolerability of the patented DigniCap™ scalp cooling system which is worn by patients during chemotherapy treatment to prevent hair loss. The IDE feasibility study is the first step required to gain FDA approval.

The scalp cooling device is already in clinical use throughout Europe, Canada and Japan.

Susan Melin, M.D., principal investigator for the study, said data from several large international studies involving almost 1,000 chemotherapy patients indicate the device is safe to use and does prevent hair loss. Melin is an associate professor of Internal Medicine-Hematology and Oncology at Wake Forest Baptist who specializes in breast cancer.

“One of the first questions my patients ask is whether they will lose their hair with the chemotherapy recommended for their breast cancer,” Melin said. “Preventing chemotherapy-induced hair loss by using the scalp cooling cap may relieve severe psychological and emotional stress and improve the patient’s quality of life.”

The DigniCap™ system, developed by the Swedish company Dignitana, features a tight-fitting silicone cap that is placed directly on the head and an outer neoprene cap that insulates and secures the inner one. The cap is connected to a cooling and control unit with touch screen controls. A coolant circulates throughout the inner silicone layer, and the cap is designed to deliver consistent cooling to all areas of the scalp. The device features safety sensors that continuously monitor and optimize the treatment temperature.

When a cap is applied to the head, the temperature of the scalp is lowered and blood vessels surrounding the hair roots contract, resulting in a significant reduction of cytotoxins to the follicle. Reduced blood flow leaves a smaller amount of chemotherapy available for uptake in the cells, and the decreased temperature results in less absorption of and reduced effects from chemotherapy. These factors together reduce the risk of hair loss.

Melin said that a larger efficacy study would include patients with stage one or stage two breast cancer. “Basically, the Dignicap would be used for certain patients who have a moderate chance of their cancer recurring,” she said.

The DigniCap™ system was invented and commercially launched early 2001 and the patented innovation is by Swedish oncology nurse Yvonne Olofsson, who was moved to help her patients cope with the emotionally traumatic condition of hair loss following cytotoxic therapy for cancer.

Source:
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center

Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/217476.php

Main News Category: Cancer / Oncology

Also Appears In:  Breast Cancer,  Dermatology,

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