(Posted: 06/21/2013) - Scientists have discovered the survival secret to a genetic mutation that stokes leukemia cells, solving an evolutionary riddle and paving the way to a highly targeted therapy for leukemia. In a paper based on an animal study, published in Cell, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center (home to the NYU Cancer Institute) describe how a mutated protein, called Fbxw7, behaves differently when expressed in cancer cells versus healthy cells.

(Posted: 06/20/2013) - Two clinical studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine with an accompanying editorial suggest that the novel agent ibrutinib shows real potential as a safe, effective, targeted treatment for adults with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and for patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). Both studies, co-led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) and at MD Anderson Cancer Center, were published in the Journal’s June 19, 2013 online edition.

- Local chemical signals released by fat cells in the mammary gland appear to provide a crucial link between exposure to unrelenting social stressors early in life, and the subsequent development of breast cancer, researchers from the University of Chicago report in an animal study published in the July 2013 issue of the journal Cancer Prevention Research. Some forms of stress exposure may be associated with an increased risk of certain types of aggressive breast cancer. But the mechanisms linking the biology of social stress to cancer have been hard to identify. To unravel that mechanism, the researchers looked for differences between mice raised in small groups and those that grow up in an isolated setting—an established model of chronic stress without social supports.

(Posted: 06/18/2013) - A new drug called pyrvinium pamoate inhibits aggressive forms of prostate cancer that are resistant to standard drugs, according to a study conducted in an animal model by the City of Hope, Beckman Research Institute, in Duarte, Calif. The results were presented at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

(Posted: 06/18/2013) - Many men with low-risk, localized prostate cancers can safely choose active surveillance or “watchful waiting” instead of undergoing immediate treatment and have better quality of life while reducing health care costs, according to a study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital.

(Posted: 06/17/2013) - Advanced metastatic melanoma is a disease that has proven difficult to eradicate. Despite the success of melanoma-targeting drugs, tumors inevitably become drug resistant and return, more aggressive than before. In the current issue of the journal Cancer Cell, researchers at The Wistar Institute describe how they increase the effectiveness of anti-melanoma drugs by combining anticancer therapies with diabetes drugs. Their studies, conducted in cell and animal models of melanoma, demonstrate that the combined therapy could destroy a subset of drug-resistant cells within a tumor.

(Posted: 06/14/2013) - Newly discovered genetic variations may help predict breast cancer risk in women who receive preventive breast cancer therapy with the selective estrogen receptor modulator drugs tamoxifen and raloxifene, a Mayo Clinic-led study has found. The study is published in the journal Cancer Discovery.

(Posted: 06/14/2013) - Precisely what causes breast cancer recurrence has been poorly understood. But now a piece of the puzzle has fallen into place: Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania (home of the Abramson Cancer Center) have identified a key molecular player in recurrent breast cancer – a finding that suggests potential new therapeutic strategies. The study, performed in an animal model, implicates the tumor suppressor protein Par-4 in recurrent breast cancer.

(Posted: 06/14/2013) - A protein used by embryo cells during early development, and recently found in many different types of cancer, apparently serves as a switch regulating the spread of cancer, known as metastasis, report researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center in the June 15, 2013 issue of the journal Cancer Research.

(Posted: 06/12/2013) - Researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have found that the burden of bladder cancer on the population is very high, and that more intense surveillance and treatment in the first two years after diagnosis could reduce the number of patients whose cancer returns after treatment and lower the death rate from this disease. The study was published online ahead of press in the journal Cancer.