Breath Test Helps Spot Lung Cancer

Breathalyzer for lung cancer...

MONDAY, Feb. 26 -- The future of lung cancer detection may involve a simple, inexpensive breath test that can pick up the chemical "signature" of patients with the disease, a new study suggests.

"Think of it as a proof of principle study," said Dr. Peter Mazzone, lead author of the study and director of the lung cancer program at the Cleveland Clinic. "But there's still quite a bit more work to be done, and I would put it in the five-to-10-year range." People have a variety of different chemicals, called volatile organic compounds (VOCs), present in their breath. Different diseases are thought to alter the production or processing of these chemicals in a way that can be detected.

The earliest studies looking at this phenomenon compared the chemicals and their concentrations in lung cancer patients and healthy patients. "That equipment was expensive and difficult to use and interpret," Mazzone said. "It would be nice, in order to bring it right to the patient, if you had simple-to-use devices that were equally accurate."

The sensor that's the focus of the new study, a colorimetric sensor array, is related to other sensors used for sniffing out bombs at airports or checking to see if vegetables are going bad in a grocery store. Rather than determine the exact chemicals and their concentrations, this sensor changes color depending on the pattern of chemicals. The device is about the size of a nickel and has 36 dots, each made up of a different chemical.

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Cancer cells may help promote tumor growth
Feb. 26 -- New medical research from the University of Michigan has found that cells known as cancer stem cells may be behind the occasional return of cancerous tumors.[/i]

University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center official Diane Simeone told USA Today these cells, that make up less than one percent of a tumor, can play an integral role in the tumors' resistance to treatment.

While radiation or surgical treatment may help remove most of a tumor, the remnants of cancer stem cells can ultimately grow an entire new tumor and threaten patients' lives. The cells can not only copy themselves, but live dramatically longer than ordinary cells.

While researchers have not been able to trace the origins of the cancer stem cells, their ongoing research is increasingly oriented towards determining how best to treat the resilient cells to help facilitate pancreatic cancer treatment. "It's exciting to think that I could potentially have an impact on pancreatic cancer," Simeone said. "I'm not going to have that impact doing surgery."

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New gene cell test for earlier detection of lung cancer...

Gene cell test may aid early lung cancer diagnosis
5 Mar. 2007 - Scientists have developed a test for the early diagnosis of lung cancer.

They hope the analysis of which genes are switched on and off in cells lining the airways leading to the lungs can be used to diagnose patients sooner and make treatments more effective. Lung cancer is the most deadly form of the disease. In Britain it is the most common cancer in men and the third most common in women. In 2002 about 37,700 new cases were recorded and nearly 29,000 deaths.

Part of the reason it is so lethal is that the disease is often diagnosed late. Patients frequently die shortly after learning they have contracted the disease. Only one fifth of patients are alive one year after diagnosis of the disease, which kills 92% within five years. The vast majority of lung cancer sufferers are smokers.
Avrum Spira and his team at Boston University in Massachusetts examined lung tissue collected from 129 current or former smokers.

All were undergoing normal lung examination tests for detecting suspected lung cancer, that involve scraping cells from the inner lining of their airways and examining them under a microscope to look for abnormalities.

More http://www.guardian.co.uk/smoking/St...026640,00.html

A big breakthrough...

Scientists find 100 new cancer genes
3 Mar. 2007 - Scientists have found more than 100 new genes linked with cancer in the first major systematic hunt through tumour cells for faulty DNA.

The search through a fraction of the entire human genetic make-up, or genome, will provide new targets for anti-tumour drugs and help establish what causes a cancer - inheritance, sunbathing or exposure to chemicals. It will also speed the search for blood tests to diagnose the disease earlier. The survey, published today in the journal Nature, is hailed as the first milestone of a £10 million survey launched in 1999 that is the broadest to link faulty genes to the way cells multiply out of control in 200 cancers.

However, the team only looked at 500 of 25,000 genes and focused on single letter DNA "spelling mistakes". "The human genome is a vast place and this, our first deep systematic exploration in cancer, has thrown up many surprises", said Professor Mike Stratton, co-leader of the international Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, near Cambridge. There was a wide variation in the numbers of mutations linked with cancers, with some malignant cells - such as from testicular cancer - containing surprisingly few.

Patterns of mutations were likened by Prof Stratton to an "archaeological record written into the DNA of each cancer". • Previously unsuspected mutations that contribute to the formation of paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, have been discovered. The find, by a team led by Dr James Downing from St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, also provides a roadmap for the identification of unsuspected mutations in adult cancers.

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Cancer cure from marine biology...

Marine moss may harbour cancer cure
Saturday 10th March, 2007 : A researcher from Oregon Health and Science University believes that the discovery of a gene cluster present in moss, which protects larvae of a marine invertebrate from predator fish, may be the first step toward engineering cancer-fighting drugs.

Dr. Margo Haygood, professor of environmental and biomolecular systems at OGI School of Science and Engineering, says that this molecule also confounds a variety of cancer cell lines. "The larvae are covered with a skin of bryostatins. They need this kind of protection. We also discovered there are bryostatins on the root structures of the adults, perhaps to help them maintain their territory. But their main function is protecting the larvae," said Haygood, whose research was described recently in the Journal of Natural Products.

Scientists have long known that bryostatins, particularly a type of the compound called bryostatin 1, have anti-cancer properties, and they are even conducting clinical trials on its efficacy. But getting this molecule in large quantities has been a big problem in the way of pharmaceutical development. "Getting enough of the bryostatin to do real chemistry is difficult," Haygood said.

So her team came up with a method that might someday lead to the commercial production of bryostatins themselves. They sequenced the genes from two closely related strains of the Endobugula sertula bacterium found in different Bugula neritina bryozoan species, and isolated a gene cluster "proposed to code for the biosynthetic machinery to make a common precursor" of the 20 known bryostatins, called bryostatin 0. "What's exciting and unusual about this is this is an uncultivated symbiont," Haygood said.

More http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=233143

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Radio-wave alternative to chemotherapy...

Cancer Victim Invents Possible Chemo Alternative
Nov. 2, 2007: Suffering Under Chemotherapy, Retired Man Develops Radio-Wave Treatment

This is the story of a man whose reaction to a cancer diagnosis was to go to his garage and invent something -- a machine that serious scientists are now taking seriously. John Kanzius made his fortune owning radio stations in Pennsylvania, then retired with his wife to Florida. Five years ago, he was diagnosed with leukemia. While he was undergoing chemotherapy he decided there has to be a better way to fight this illness. And even though he wasn't a doctor, he figured he could figure it out himself.

Kanzius said he was inspired to invent his cancer-fighting machine after seeing the children who were getting chemotherapy at the same time he was. "I noticed young kids losing their smiles, losing their hair. And I said to myself, 'Today's chemotherapy is cruel. There's gotta be a better way to cure cancer,'" Kanzius told ABC News. So he set out to invent his own chemotherapy alternative, and his wife, Marianne, had a front row seat.

"He woke me up in the middle of the night making all this clamor in the kitchen," she said. Using pie pans, spare parts from ham radios and know-how from his days as a radio engineer, he invented the first generation of what would become a machine that uses radio waves -- not radioactivity -- to fight cancer. Now could a garage invention turn into a breakthrough cancer treatment?

Some medical professionals think maybe. "It's beyond remarkable," said Dr. Steven Curley of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. "He was just a private citizen who just came up with an idea and had the wherewithal and the tinkering ability to do it." Curley and his colleagues at the center took Kanzius' made-in-the-garage invention very seriously. They began testing the radio-wave technology on animals, and say they completely destroyed liver cancer tumors in rabbits. The findings will be part of a study to be published in the journal Cancer.

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New cancer treatment with UV light rays...

UV light is used to fight cancer tumors
Nov. 5, 2007 -- British scientists have developed a technology that uses ultraviolet light to activate antibodies that specifically attack cancerous tumors.

Professor Colin Self and Stephen Thompson of Newcastle University created a procedure that allows antibodies to be activated by UV-A light and then targets them to a specific area of the body just by shining a probe at the relevant part. The procedure, said the researchers, maximizes the destruction of the tumor while minimizing damage to healthy tissue.

"I would describe this development as the equivalent of ultra-specific magic bullets," Self said. "This could mean that a patient coming in for treatment of bladder cancer would receive an injection of the cloaked antibodies. She would sit in the waiting room for an hour and then come back in for treatment by light.

"Just a few minutes of the light therapy directed at the region of the tumor would activate the T-cells, causing her body's own immune system to attack the tumor." The details of the new technology are presented in two papers in the current issue of the journal ChemMedChem.

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Genetic flaws to spread of lung cancer mapped...

Scientists map gene flaws linked to spread of lung cancer
Monday, November 5, 2007 -- Scientists have mapped the genetic aberrations underlying lung cancer and discovered a gene that plays a critical role in spreading the deadly disease, according to a study published Sunday.

The massive DNA study, involving dozens of research centers worldwide, sheds important light on the biological basis of lung cancer and will help shape new strategies for treatment, the authors said. "This view of the lung cancer genome is unprecedented, both in its breadth and depth," said Mathew Meyerson of Harvard and MIT, who led the research.

"It lays an essential foundation, and has already pinpointed an important gene that controls the growth of lung cells." Each year some 1.3 million people die from lung cancer, making it the most lethal form of the disease, according to the World Health Organization.

The new study focuses on lung adenocarcinoma, which accounts for just under a third of all lung cancer cases. Part of the international Tumor Sequencing Project, the study looked for abnormalities in the DNA of more than 500 tumors from lung cancer patients.

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Using the body's immune system to fight cancer...

Immunotherapy Boost: Stopping Cancerous Tumors Naturally
18 November 2007 - A multinational team of researchers writing in Nature has shown for the first time that the immune system can stop the growth of a cancerous tumor without actually killing it.

Scientists have been working for years to use the immune system to eradicate cancers, a technique known as immunotherapy. The new findings prove an alternate to this approach exists: When the cancer can't be killed with immune attacks, it may be possible to find ways to use the immune system to contain it. The results also may help explain why some tumors seem to suddenly stop growing and go into a lasting period of dormancy. "Thanks to the animal model we have developed, scientists can now reproduce this condition of tumor dormancy in the laboratory and look directly at cancer cells being held in check by the immune system," says co-author Robert Schreiber, Ph.D., Alumni Professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "That will allow us to see if we can model this state therapeutically."

The study's authors call the cancer-immune system stalemate equilibrium. During equilibrium, the immune system both decreases the cancer's drive to replicate and kills some of the cancerous cells, but not quickly enough to eliminate or shrink the tumor. "We may one day be able to use immunotherapy to artificially induce equilibrium and convert cancer into a chronic but controllable disease," suggests co-author Mark J. Smyth, Ph.D., professor of the Cancer Immunology Program at the Peter McCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia. “Proper immune function is now appreciated as another important factor in preventing the development of some cancers. Further research and clinical validation of this process may also turn established cancers into a chronic condition, similar to other serious diseases that are controlled long-term by taking a medicine."

Scientists first proposed that the immune system might be able to recognize cancer cells as potentially harmful more than a century ago. Under a theory that came to be called cancer immunosurveillance, researchers suggested that if this recognition took place, the immune system would attack tumors with the same weapons it uses to eliminate invading microorganisms. Current immunotherapy efforts use therapeutic agents to increase the chances that the immune system will recognize and attack tumors.

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Popping bubbles to treat cancer
Monday, 19 November 2007, The technique is to be brought into clinical trials

Scientists at the University of Oxford are trying to harness the energy released when bubbles burst as a way of killing off cancer cells.

They have built a device to beam waves of ultrasound into the body, generating bubbles at the site of a tumour. When these bubbles pop, they release energy as heat - killing rogue cells. The UK team plans to apply its new technique in clinical trials; it will be used in treating patients with kidney and liver tumours.

These clinical trials of High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (Hifu) are being conducted at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford.

No surgery required

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First blood test for lung cancer...

Lung Cancer Blood Test in the Works
Dec. 7, 2007 -- Test Checks Levels of 4 Proteins in Blood; May Lead to Earlier Detection of Lung Cancer

The first blood test for lung cancer may be one step closer to reality. Doctors at Duke University have developed a lung cancer blood test that focuses on four blood proteins. The test isn't ready for lung cancer screening. But if it succeeds in further studies, the test may help detect lung cancer at an earlier, and more treatable, stage.

That's the goal of Edward Patz Jr., MD, and colleagues. They point out that lung cancer is the No. 1 cause of cancer death and that because there aren't any lung cancer screening tests, patients are often diagnosed when their cancer has become hard to treat.

"We talk about how devastating this disease is all the time, but we still don't have a screening system in place that can detect lung cancer early, without exposing patients to the risks of biopsy and surgery," Patz says in a news release. "This study is an important step in the right direction," he says.

Lung Cancer Blood Test

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Man With Deadly Skin Cancer Saved by New Treatment...

Cancer Patient Saved With Own Immune Cells
June 18, 2008 - Oregon man with advanced melanoma saved by experimental treatment, but doctors cautious

An Oregon man, given less than a year to live, had a complete remission of advanced deadly skin cancer after an experimental treatment that revved up his immune system to fight the tumors. The 52-year-old patient's dramatic turnaround was the only success in a small study, leading doctors to be cautious in their enthusiasm. However, the treatment reported in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine is being counted as the latest in a small series of successes involving immune-priming treatments against deadly skin cancers.

"Immunotherapy has become the most promising approach" to late-stage, death-sentence skin cancers, said Dr. Darrell Rigel, a dermatology researcher at the New York University Cancer Institute in New York who had no role in the research. Still, the immune-priming experiments have yet to yield a consistent therapy. Even researchers who worked on the experiment involving nine patients and just one success are quick to couch the result. "This is only one patient," said study co-author Dr. Cassian Yee of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. And two years after his remarkable recovery, the patient fell out of contact with researchers and scientists do not know his current condition. The man, who lives in a small town in Oregon, has declined media interviews, Yee said.

Melanoma is a cancer in the skin cells that make pigments and cause skin to tan, as part of the body's attempt to protect itself from ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. Cancer begins when radiation overloads and damages the cells, causing mutations. About 62,000 news cases are diagnosed in the United States each year, and there are about 8,000 melanoma deaths. When caught early, melanomas can be easily treated by surgically removing the cancerous patch of skin. But "once it has spread, basically nothing works," Rigel said.

More ABC News: Cancer Patient Saved With Own Immune Cells

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New lung cancer technique...

Circulating Tumor Cells Reveal Insights Into Lung Cancers
Wednesday, July 2, 2008; A new technique for finding and analyzing stray cancer cells in the blood of lung cancer patients may make it possible for doctors to one day not only determine the genetic "signature" of particular tumors but to monitor changes in those cells and adjust treatments accordingly.

"I think this is key to personalized medicine," said Dr. Daniel Haber, senior author of a paper detailing the technology, to be published in the July 24 issue of theNew England Journal of Medicinebut released early online Wednesday. "As we get to targeted therapies in increasing numbers, and increasing understanding about the genetics that guide targeted therapies, we need a way to know what we're treating." The "CTC chip" technology described in the new paper may also one day aid in the detection of cancers that are likely to spread. "This is an early warning sign we could use for earlier detection," said Haber, who is director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston.

A previous study published inNatureused the CTC (Circulating Tumor Cells) chip technology to look at CTCs in lung, pancreatic, prostate, breast and colon cancers. The CTC chip successfully found such cells in 99 percent of the samples. "We're very interested in the biology of these cells because no one has really been able to study metastasis [spread of cancer to other parts of the body] in action," Haber said. "These are the cells that cause metastases and the lethality of cancer. Now that we can identify and purify them in decent numbers, we can study and hopefully identify some of their vulnerabilities. It opens up a whole field of human metastasis and human therapies."

The CTC chip is a silicon chip about the size of a business card that has 80,000 "columns" coded with an antibody that acts like a "glue" to capture tumor cells "that have no business being in the blood," Haber explained. Haber and his colleagues analyzed blood samples from 27 patients with non-small cell lung cancer, 23 who had EGFR gene mutations and four who did not. CTCs were identified in all samples and in genetic analyses from mutations 92 percent of the time. Mutations in EGFR, a protein, can help predict whether these tumors will respond to a family of drugs called tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

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