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Radiotherapy following surgery for breast cancer reduces the chances of cancer recurrence by 50% over the next 10 years, andit minimizes the risk of breast cancer mortality by one-sixth for the 15 years following surgery, a study led by Oxford University researchers has found.

Older women diagnosed with hormone-sensitive breast cancer are more likely to live longer and less likely to experience cancer recurrence when treated with the drug Femara (letrozole) as opposed to tamoxifen, a long-term follow-up study published online October 21 in The Lancet Oncology shows.

Although many patients with cancer have benefited from new drug discoveries over the last decade, a common side effect of these newly developed therapies may be inadvertent effects on the thyroid gland, according to a report published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

A recent study shows postmenopausal women with new-onset breast tenderness after beginning estrogen and progestin therapy may have an increased risk of breast cancer compared to women who don’t suffer breast tenderness. Researchers from UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center conducted the study, which appears in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.

A protein in the nucleus of breast cancer cells that helps stimulate the growth of aggressive breast cancer tumors may be an appropriate target for new drug treatments, researchers from the Duke Cancer Institute report. The study was published in the October 18, 2011, issue of the journal Cancer Cell.

“This is validation of a new drug target for a subset of breast cancers that have poor treatment options,” said the study’s senior author, Donald McDonnell, PhD, chairman of the Duke Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology.

A gene, known as an androgen receptor (AR), is found in both prostate and breast cancers and has opposite effects on the two diseases, according to a recent study.

A safer and more efficient treatment system is being developed for lung cancer patients, according to scientists at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

Women with high-grade ovarian cancer involving tumors with BRCA2 mutations live longer and have a better response to platinum-based chemotherapy, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Institute for Systems Biology report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

There is a new biotechnology that may assist with the detection of prostate cancer and the reduction of unnecessary prostate cancer biopsies along with subsequent overtreatment. Due to the discovery of specific prostate cancer DNA fusions, a new urine test for prostate cancer was developed by researchers at the University of Michigan.

Years after treatment, 45% of cancer survivors in Northern Ireland suffer from physical and mental health problems, according to new research from Macmillan Cancer Support and Queen’s University Belfast.