Articles

For gastric cancer patients with severe peritoneal metastases, 5-fluorouracil (FU)-based chemotherapy regimens provided only marginal improvement in time to treatment failure (TTF) and overall survival (OS). In a retrospective analysis of 92 patients treated between 2001 and 2007, median TTF was 1.9 months, and median OS was 4.6 months. The researchers concluded that a combination of paclitaxel and 5-FU holds promise for this population, but that studies are needed to determine if sequential of combined therapy is better.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved sunitinib malate (Sutent, Pfizer) as the first anti–vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy to treat progressive, well-differentiated pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNETs) in patients with unresectable, locally advanced, or metastatic disease.

WASHINGTON, DC—New biomarkers for urologic cancers should help clinicians not only diagnose prostate and bladder cancers but also help them distinguish between indolent and aggressive disease. Urologists and oncologists learned about 3 new biomarkers for prostate cancer at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Urological Association, held this week in Washington, DC.

By replacing CA 125 with a multivariate index assay (OVA1 blood test, Vermillion Inc), researchers showed the potential of a modified version of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists guidelines to identify more ovarian malignancies before surgery. The modified guidelines detected almost 80% of all missed malignancies and more than 90% of missed epithelial ovarian cancers. The new guidelines, however, decreased specificity and positive predictive value.

Impaired Hydroxylation of 5-Methylcytosine in TET2-Mutated Myeloid Malignancies

Serum Albumin Affects Methotrexate Level Variability and Methotrexate Toxicity