Articles

Men with prostate cancer who receive androgen deprivation therapy may, in all likelihood, suffer from fatigue if they have single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 3 proinflammatory genes.

The Cancer Institute of New Jersey (CINJ) is 1 of 41 National Cancer Institute‒designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the United States. CINJ delivers advanced comprehensive care to adults and children, and CINJ investigators are heavily involved in research.

Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related death in females in the United States.1 There will be an estimated 22,280 new cases and 15,500 deaths related to ovarian cancer in 2012.¹ The prognosis of advanced ovarian cancer is poor, with a 5-year survival rate of 5% to 20%. A platinum-based doublet chemotherapy post cytoreductive surgery has been the standard of care for the past decade.

Meta-Analysis Actually Shows Fewer Serious Adverse Events
Ameta-analysis reported at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Ameri­can Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) supports the new guidelines that recommend weight-based chemotherapy dosing for obese cancer patients.^1,2

Although preliminary, a recent ex­perimental study published online in the journal Genetics (Wallace MD, et al. Genetics. 2012;192: 385-396) found that lack of the neurofibromin 1 (NF1) gene was observed in more than 1 of every 4 experimentally induced breast cancers. The study findings also suggest that tamoxifen will not be effective in cancers that lack the NF1 gene.

The incidence of heart failure and cardiomyopathy were significantly increased in women with breast cancer treated with trastuzumab either alone or in combination with anthracycline-based chemotherapy, according to the results of a recent large, population-based, retrospective cohort study.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved regorafenib (Stivarga, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) for the treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) who have been previously treated with fluoropyrimidine-, oxaliplatin-, and irinotecan-based chemo­therapy, an anti-VEGF therapy, and, if KRAS wild type, an anti-EGFR therapy. Regorafenib approval was granted on September 27, 2012.

On October 4, 2012, the FDA and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that all healthcare professionals cease use and remove from pharmaceutical inventory any product produced by the New England Com­pounding Center (NECC).

The American Society of Clini­cal Oncology 2012 Breast Can­cer Symposium, held September 13-15 in San Francisco, California, offered all members of the cancer team an upfront view of new data and an opportunity for one-on-one interaction with experts. The following are a few research items of interest to oncology pharmacists.

Immigration status and language barriers of caregivers appear to influence the care of Hispanic children with cancer and impact the experience of the families within the medical system