(Posted: 11/22/2012) - Mammograms have done surprisingly little to catch deadly breast cancers before they spread, a big U.S. study finds. At the same time, more than a million women have been treated for cancers that never would have threatened their lives, researchers estimate... "We're coming to learn that some cancers — many cancers, depending on the organ — weren't destined to cause death," said Dr. Barnett Kramer, a National Cancer Institute screening expert. However, "once a woman is diagnosed, it's hard to say treatment is not necessary."

(Posted: 11/13/2012) - Three genetic regions associated with increased lung cancer risk in Asian women who have never smoked have been identified by an international team of scientists (led by NCI researchers). They said their findings provide further proof that the risk of lung cancer among people who never smoked, especially Asian women, may be associated with specific genetic characteristics that distinguish it from lung cancer in smokers.

(Posted: 11/08/2012) - If you take statins to lower your cholesterol, you may also be lowering your risk of death from cancer, new research suggests. A report published in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine is one of a number of recent papers suggesting that statins not only limit the growth of cancer cells but also make them more vulnerable to certain therapies...The National Cancer Institute is wrapping up a clinical trial in the U.S. examining whether statins can help treat melanoma.

(Posted: 11/07/2012) - So, what's it worth to lace up those sneakers and break a sweat for about 30 minutes a day? About 3.5 extra years of life, on average — and about 4.2 additional years for those willing to step up the intensity or put in closer to an hour a day of brisk walking or its equivalent, according to a new study (from NCI)... The results also offer clear evidence that exercise can offset some of the longevity loss that comes with past or continued tobacco use or a history of cancer or heart disease.

(Posted: 11/06/2012) - For people who have had a negative colonoscopy, less-invasive screening options may work just fine for follow-up cancer tests, a new analysis suggests... Knudsen's team fed colon cancer screening and survival data into a NCI model, starting with hypothetical study participants that had a negative colonoscopy at age 50.

(Posted: 11/02/2012) - The online catalog PubMed contains more than 25,000 biology papers about Myc, a gene linked to aggressive cancers, says David Levens, a pathologist at NCI. But most of this work now needs to be reevaluated, according to Levens and a colleague, molecular biologist Richard Young of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They argue that Myc’s cancerous effects are much broader than most people have assumed, and that a flawed experimental method may have thrown off a decade’s worth of Myc research

(Posted: 10/18/2012) - Results of a large study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggest that taking a daily multivitamin might reduce older men’s cancer risk — but not their ultimate risk of dying from cancer. A randomized trial following 14,641 men ages 50 and up (at the start of the trial) for an average of 11 years found that those who took a daily multivitamin (Centrum Silver) were 8 percent less likely to be diagnosed with cancer than those who took a placebo. The men were participants in the Physicians’ Health Survey II (PHS II), a long-term study sponsored by Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute.

(Posted: 10/16/2012) - Matt Hansen holds a small rounded flask of bubbling gold chloride solution that turns from yellow to crimson. On a table beside him, a similar solution slowly turns from clear to purplish-black. The vials hold potentially billions of gold nanoparticles -- each one thirty-thousandth the width of a strand of hair -- the building blocks in an emerging science that is allowing cancer researchers to break new ground in how they treat the disease... With nanotechnology, researchers in the lab -- which is part of the National Institutes of Health and run by federal contractor SAIC-Frederick -- are harnessing ways to reduce side effects and improve the efficacy of cancer drugs by giving scientists more control in targeting treatments, said Dr. Scott McNeil, lab director.

(Posted: 09/27/2012) - Sixteen years ago, right before her 42nd birthday, Jane Baker Segelken was diagnosed with breast cancer. The tumor was small, and she was told that if the cancer didn't return within five years after treatment, her chances for long-term survival were good... Dr. Catherine Alfano, deputy director of the Office of Cancer Survivorship at the National Cancer Institute, says that of the women diagnosed with breast cancer today, 90 percent will be alive in five years compared with 63 percent in the 1960s. "I think the main point about survival rates being much better now is that more people than ever are living with the effects of cancer for many years after their diagnosis and treatment," she says, "which means that doctors and researchers are turning attention to helping survivors understand what the long-term effects of cancer might be, and how to prevent or minimize those."

(Posted: 09/24/2012) - Scientists announced Sunday that they have finished mapping virtually all of the genetic mutations in breast cancer, an effort that could soon change the way patients are treated and eventually help researchers develop better treatments... Among the most striking findings: One of the most lethal types of breast cancer is genetically closer to a kind of ovarian cancer than it is to other breast tumors, according to the paper, published online today in Nature.