http://www.cancercompass.comCancerCompass is an online community committed to offering people living with cancer a place to receive cancer information and news, share knowledge, and share cancer treatment experiences. To learn more, visit our site today.en-us@copy; Copyright 2008, International Capital & Management Company, LLLP. All Rights Reserved.Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:39:45 CDTThu, 24 Jul 2008 07:39:45 CDTCancercompass.com: other cancer60http://www.cancercompass.com/graphics/mini-logo.gifhttp://www.cancercompass.comhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14506,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14506,00.htm?rss=y Control the pain both before and after it hurts By Elaine Wacholtz, PhD For Troy Mikell and his wife, Tami, it is business as usual - but it has not always been that way. They work as a team running T & T Transportation Services, LLC , their freight brokerage business. Eighteen months ago, however, life was very different for Troy, who was recovering from bladder cancer. The pain imposed upon him by the disease proved to be both a blessing and a burden, but learning how to manage that pain led to better healing and quicker recovery. It all started on a Friday in the summer of 2004 during an appointment with his urologist who "reassured Tami and me that the blood I had noticed in my urine had a non-cancerous cause," explained Troy....Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14505,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14505,00.htm?rss=y Use the mind-body connection to promote peace of mindBy Cheryl A. Sweet Inhaling deeply, Laura Sereyko soaked in the scenery from her rural Maine porch. Snuggling in a wooden swing overlooking Lake Escutarsis, she delighted in a hovering hummingbird and the poignant perfume of pines. She closed her eyes, breathed big, and began transporting herself towards total tranquility. "I'm flying over the lake like a bird, guiding myself with my arms," Laura related. "Suddenly, a wand appears and starts to circle my body with white light - good cells - beginning with my head, all the way down to my feet. Out of my feet come colored lights - bad cancer cells. I may repeat this up to 10 times. After it's over, I take several really deep breaths an...Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14504,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14504,00.htm?rss=y How to bring humor back into your life By Christine Clifford Beckwith, CSP Three days after undergoing breast cancer surgery in December, '94, I heard the doorbell ring downstairs from my place of rest in my bedroom. "Mom!" screamed my second-grader, Brooks, "More flowers for your breast!" It was a turning point for me, his innocent statement brought laughter to my already developing self-pity. After all, as a young child of 15, I watched my mother crawl into bed with a diagnosis of cancer at the age of 38. In the months that followed my mother's radical mastectomy, my family watched in horror as she sank into a shockingly deep, clinical depression. Eventually, my father left my mother, no longer able to deal with her depression. S...Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14500,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14500,00.htm?rss=y WESTMINSTER, Colo. -- Allos Therapeutics, Inc. today announced the initiation of patient enrollment in a Phase 2, open-label, single-arm, multi-center study of PDX (pralatrexate) in patients with advanced or metastatic relapsed transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the urinary bladder. "We are pleased to broaden our PDX solid tumor development program into an additional indication," said Pablo J. Cagnoni, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Allos. "TCC of the bladder is an area of high unmet medical need with no agents currently approved for the second-line treatment of advanced or metastatic disease. Given the established role of antifolates in the treatment of bladder cancer, we believe this trial represents an important oppo...Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14502,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14502,00.htm?rss=y Even though cigarette smoking accounts for up to half of all bladder cancer cases, few people are aware of the connection including more than three-quarters of patients who have bladder cancer, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.This knowledge vacuum suggests that urologists and other physicians need to do a much better job of telling patients about the risk of smoking and encourage them to quit, the study authors say. "The general public understands that cigarette smoking can lead to lung cancer, but very few people understand that it also can lead to bladder cancer," says senior author James E. Montie, M.D., Valassis Professor of Urologic Oncology at the U-M Health System. Montie n...Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14497,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14497,00.htm?rss=y U.S. and Canadian researchers have taken steps toward developing a gene test to determine whether a patient's lung cancer is especially aggressive or whether radical treatment can be avoided. The researchers reported Sunday that they had analyzed lung cancer tissue from 442 people to confirm that measuring the activity of certain genes could help predict early on which cases may be the most deadly and which had a better prognosis. Knowing whether a person has an aggressive tumor - one likely to spread quickly and uncontrollably beyond the lungs - is critical in determining the type of treatment needed. The researchers said tracking gene activity, along with taking into account clinical factors like the patient's age...Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14496,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14496,00.htm?rss=y Current study results from the report, 'Stress, immunity, and cervical cancer: biobehavioral outcomes of a randomized clinical trial,' have been published. According to recent research from the United States, "Cancer diagnosis and treatment imparts chronic stressors affecting quality of life (QOL) and basic physiology. However, the capacity to increase survival by improving QOL is controversial." "Patients with cervical cancer, in particular, have severely compromised QOL, providing a population well-suited for the evaluation of novel psychosocial interventions and the exploration of mechanisms by which modulation of the psychoneuroimmune axis might result in improved clinical outcomes. A randomized clinical trial was conducted in cervic...Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14488,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14488,00.htm?rss=y Testicular cancer is a rare beast. It's relatively easy to detect. And it's very treatable. It's also one of the few cancers that can be cured. Yet specialists still debate the best way to continue treatment once the cancerous testicle is surgically removed. "If you ask a surgeon, they might say chemotherapy or a radiologist might say radiation and a medical oncologist will then say let's do either one round of chemotherapy or just observation," said Gil Rodrigues, a medical oncologist with the Milwaukee-area Oncology Alliance. "But the real issue, since we know it's curable, is how can we minimize toxicity during treatment," he said. At a meeting of cancer specialists last month in Chicago, researchers showe...Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14487,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14487,00.htm?rss=y STANFORD, Calif. -- The study of dark-skinned mice has led to a surprising finding about a common protein involved in tumor suppression, report researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The results may lead to new treatments for bone marrow failure in humans. The protein, called p53, has been dubbed the "guardian of the genome" for its ability to recognize DNA damage and halt the division of potentially cancerous cells. However, in a new twist, it appears that p53 also responds to disruptions in the cell's protein factories, leading to changes in skin color and causing anemia in mice. "This may be just the tip of an iceberg," said Gregory Barsh, MD, PhD, professor of genetics and of pediatrics. "When w...Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14480,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14480,00.htm?rss=y Researchers detail in 'Mechanisms of chemoresistance to alkylating agents in malignant glioma,' new data in brain cancer. "Intrinsic or acquired chemoresistance to alkylating agents is a major cause of treatment failure in patients with malignant brain tumors. Alkylating agents, the mainstay of treatment for brain tumors, damage the DNA and induce apoptosis, but the cytotoxic activity of these agents is dependent on DNA repair pathways," researchers in the United States report. "For example, O6-methylguanine DNA adducts can cause double-strand breaks, but this is dependent on a functional mismatch repair pathway. Thus, tumor cell lines deficient in mismatch repair are resistant to alkylating agents. Perhaps the most important mechanism of...Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14472,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14472,00.htm?rss=y FRAZER, Pa. -- Cephalon, Inc. announced today that in a phase 2 study published online today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, 92 percent of patients with relapsed indolent B-cell and mantle cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) responded to treatment with TREANDA(R) (bendamustine hydrochloride) for Injection plus rituximab. This combination study is one of three studies in patients with NHL that Cephalon submitted in December 2007 to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requesting approval of TREANDA for the treatment of patients with indolent NHL who have progressed during or following treatment with rituximab or a rituximab-containing regimen. TREANDA was approved by the FDA in March 2008 for the treatment of patients w...Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14464,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14464,00.htm?rss=y New York, NY -- We all want to believe in something more. Look around. Many of us attend weekly worship services. Others sate our spiritual hunger by reading books on the subject or practicing yoga and meditation. And it's a rare person indeed who won't pray feverishly to...Someone...when a beloved family member is in danger. Yet, if we're honest, most of us will admit we have, at best, an uneasy truce between our spiritual and our rational sides. As much as we want to think we don't just "flicker out" at the moment of death, it's a hard sell in the science- and technology-driven 21st century. It's sad but true. "Believers" are often viewed as fanatics, as naïve or uneducated, or simply as wishful thinkers. But when a Harvard-educated n...Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14460,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14460,00.htm?rss=y DALLAS -- Pulmonologists at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas have begun using a new type of bronchoscopy that utilizes global positioning-like technology to generate 3-dimensional images of the far reaches of complex lung structures. This electromagnetic navigational bronchoscopy is expected to help pulmonologists better diagnose lung cancer, pneumonia and various pulmonary infections. Death rates from these lung conditions continue to increase, according to the American Lung Association, as morality rates from other leading causes of death, including cancer and heart disease, are falling. "This new technology allows us to see safely and clearly into those deep regions of the lungs and diagnose exactly what's causing th...Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14462,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14462,00.htm?rss=y HOUSTON -- U.S. medical scientists say an experimental drug that inhibits tumor blood vessel growth shows promise in slowing progression of metastatic thyroid cancer. The investigational drug (motesanib diphosphate) is a VEGF inhibitor, a biologic agent that targets receptors on a protein known as vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF. The researchers said VEGF is instrumental in angiogenesis -- formation of new blood vessels -- a process that allows tumors to grow and spread. "There is no standard accepted chemotherapy for advanced metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer, and response rates have typically been 25 percent or less," said Dr. Steven Sherman, a professor at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson C...Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDThttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14459,00.htm?rss=yhttp://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,14459,00.htm?rss=y BOSTON -- U.S. medical scientists say they've found circulating tumor cells reveal genetic signatures of dangerous lung cancers, possibly leading to targeted therapy. Massachusetts General Hospital investigators say a microchip-based device they developed -- called the CTC chip -- can detect and analyze tumor cells in the bloodstream to determine the genetic signature of lung tumors. "When the device is ready for larger clinical trials, it should give us new options for measuring treatment response, defining prognostic and predictive measures and studying the biology of blood-borne metastasis, which is the primary method by which cancer spreads and becomes lethal," said Dr. Daniel Haber, the study's senior author. C...Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:00:00 CDT