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Patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer or ovarian cancer showed a positive response to treatment with a recombinant poxviral vaccine, according to a trial published in Clinical Cancer Research.

Lead researcher James Gulley, MD, PhD, director and deputy chief of the clinical trials group at the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology at the National Cancer Institute said, “With this vaccine, we can clearly generate immune responses that lead to clinical responses in some patients.”

New research shows that men experience more debilitating and often permanent side effects of prostate cancer when cancer treatment is coupled with poor lifestyle habits.

The study, presented at the 2011 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference, found that men with prostate cancer suffered far more from side effects, including rectal bleeding, erectile dysfunction, and incontinence, if they were smokers, inactive, or overweight during and after radiotherapy.

Breast cancer drugs used to treat patients with high levels of HER2 may also be effective for head and neck cancers, according to research presented at the 2011 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference this week.

Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Centre, Harvard Medical School, and the biotechnology firm Genentech scanned nearly 700 human cell lines from a range of cancer types and identified all cells that responded to lapatinib, a type of HER2 kinase inhibitor.

A major European study found that the risk of ovarian cancer is significantly diminished for women who take birth control pills for a decade or longer.

The study, published this week in the British Journal of Cancer, included more than 300,000 women enrolled in the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer and Nutrition. The women were taking the combination estrogen-progesterone oral contraceptive pill.

Fat cells in the omentum, a large fatty pad of tissue that drapes over the intestines in the abdomen, fuel the growth of ovarian cancer by supplying nutrients and energy for rapid tumor growth, reports a University of Chicago research team in the recent online publication of Nature Medicine.

A new interactive training tool designed to help oncologists better address patient fears has been developed by a Duke University researcher. The program includes feedback on the doctors’ audio-recorded visits with patients and offers an alternative to higher-priced courses. The study appears in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The research team found that the curriculum resulted in more empathic responses from oncologists. Furthermore, patients reported greater trust in their doctors, an important factor of care that enhances quality of life.

Research published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that as few as 3 to 6 glasses of wine per week increased a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer. The risk of breast cancer also rose based on the amount of alcohol consumed cumulatively throughout her lifetime.

A unique library representing an important new tool for accelerating the development of an entire class of targeted cancer drugs has been created by scientists at Fox Chase Cancer Center. The actions of 178 candidate drugs capable of blocking the activity of one or more of 300 enzymes, including enzymes critical for cancer, have been cataloged and cross-indexed. Read More ›

Chemotherapy combined with an experimental vaccine, TG4010, resulted in more progression-free survival in patients with advanced lung cancer, according to a recent study published in The Lancet Oncology.

The TG4010 vaccine targets MUC1, a protein associated with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of lung cancer.

The phase 2 trial, led by Elisabeth Quoix, MD, a professor of pneumonology at the Université de Strasbourg, included 148 patients with NSCLC.

Patients were divided into 2 groups:

Postmenopausal women enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) who took nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (ie, aspirin or ibuprofen) appeared to have a lower risk of death from colorectal cancer than women who did not use these medications, according to new study results.