December 2022 - Cancer Currents Blog
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New on NCI’s Websites for December 2022
NCI periodically provides updates on new websites and other online content of interest to the cancer community. See selected content that has been added as of December 2022.
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Study Identifies a Potential Cause of Immunotherapy’s Heart-Related Side Effects
In people with cancer treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors, a rare, but often fatal, side effect is inflammation in the heart, called myocarditis. Researchers have now identified a potential chief cause of this problem: T cells attacking a protein in heart cells called α-myosin.
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Reducing the Cancer Burden: Future Directions for NCI's Cancer Control Research
To mark her first year at NCI, Dr. Katrina Goddard lays out her research priorities for the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences and outlines key opportunities for reducing the burden of cancer. These future directions and priorities are outlined in the division’s 2022 Overview and Highlights report.
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Can Chemotherapy Drugs Be Designed to Avoid Side Effects?
Researchers have modified a chemo drug, once abandoned because it caused serious gut side effects, so that it is only triggered in tumors but not normal tissues. After promising results in mice, the drug, DRP-104, is now being tested in a clinical trial.
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Brentuximab Approved for High-Risk Hodgkin Lymphoma in Children and Adolescents
Based on an NCI-sponsored clinical trial conducted by the Children’s Oncology Group, FDA has approved the drug brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) in combination with chemotherapy for some children and adolescents with Hodgkin lymphoma.
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Drug Combination Shows Promise for Rhabdomyosarcoma, but Can It Get to Clinical Trials?
An NCI study in mice has identified a drug combination that may help treat children with rhabdomyosarcoma. But one of the drugs, ganitumab, is no longer being made. Based on the study's promising results, the NCI researchers who led the study want to test the combination in humans.
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Bariatric Surgery May Reduce the Risk of Some Common Cancers
A new study suggests that people with obesity who had bariatric surgery had a much lower risk of five common cancers that aren’t related to hormone levels, including lung, colorectal, and esophageal cancer.