(Posted: 10/28/2012) - Men whose testosterone drops following radiation therapy for prostate cancer are more likely to experience a change in PSA levels that signals their cancer has returned, according to new research from Fox Chase Cancer Center. The findings were presented on October 29 at the American Society for Radiation Oncology’s 54th Annual Meeting. Specifically, men whose testosterone fell following various forms of radiation therapy were more likely to experience an increase in prostate-specific antigen—often the first indication the cancer has recurred.

(Posted: 10/27/2012) - A study from the Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute comparing how physicians discuss clinical trials during clinical interactions with black patients versus white patients further confirms racial disparities in the quality of communication between physicians and patients. Oncologists provided black patients with less information overall about cancer clinical trials compared with white patients, according to data presented at the Fifth AACR Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities, Oct. 27-30, 2012.

(Posted: 10/26/2012) - Risk prediction models developed from an ancillary study of the Prostate Lung Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (PLCO) may be useful in the public health sector for identifying individuals who are at risk for adverse smoking outcomes, such as relapse among former smokers and continued smoking among current smokers, and those who may benefit from relapse prevention and smoking cessation interventions, according to a study from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University published October 26 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

(Posted: 10/25/2012) - Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have discovered a unique immune gene signature that can predict the presence of microscopic lymph node-like structures in metastatic melanoma. The presence of these immune structures, the researchers said, appears to be associated with better survival and may indicate the possibility of selecting patients for immunotherapy based solely on the immune-related makeup of their tumors.

(Posted: 10/25/2012) - Findings from a nationwide study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute suggest that patients with advanced lung or colorectal cancer are frequently mistaken in their beliefs that chemotherapy can cure their disease. The study, published in the Oct. 25 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, found that 69 percent of patients with advanced lung cancer and 81 percent of patients with advanced colorectal cancer did not understand that the chemotherapy they were receiving was not at all likely to cure their disease.

(Posted: 10/25/2012) - A protein that is necessary for lactation in mammals inhibits the critical cellular transition that is an early indicator of breast cancer and metastasis, according to research conducted at the University at Buffalo and Princeton University and highlighted as the cover paper in November issue of Nature Cell Biology.

(Posted: 10/25/2012) - The latest genomic analysis of pancreatic tumors identified two new pathways involved in the disease, information that could be capitalized on to develop new and earlier diagnostic tests for the disease. Baylor College of Medicine scientists were part of an international effort, the first to report findings from primary tumors in the disease. Previously only cell lines or tumors transplanted into mice had been used because the tumors are so small. The Baylor College of Medicine is home to the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center.

(Posted: 10/24/2012) - Deciding the ideal treatment for patients with metastatic prostate cancer that stops responding to initial therapy could be guided by certain analyses of cancer cells isolated from the patients' blood, according to data published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston, a component of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, established a way to isolate cancer cells from the blood of patients with prostate cancer and to measure readouts of androgen receptor signaling in each of the individual cancer cells in the blood.

(Posted: 10/24/2012) - A new study by scientists at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center and Mayo Clinic shows that a blood marker is linked to pancreatic cancer. The researchers say the study is the first time pancreatic cancer risk has been linked to differences in telomeres’ length in blood cells.

(Posted: 10/23/2012) - The breast cancer treatment brachytherapy — heralded for its low complication rates — actually results in more complications than whole-breast radiation one year after treatment, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the October issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Rather than irradiating larger areas of the breast, as in whole breast irradiation, brachytherapy temporarily implants radiation sources in catheters within the surgical site. The Yale School of Medicine is home to the Yale Cancer Center.