Cancer Carnival #50: Host and Post

The next edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival (#50!) will be hosted at The Beaker - the blog of the Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute. Be sure to get your posts in. The Carnival will appear October 7.

Cancer Carnival #49

Welcome to the Cancer Research Blog Carnival #49. The carnival hits the big 5-0 next month, and we have a new host lined up as well, so be sure to get your posts in! But first, this month's edition:

Recently, Canadians across the country were affected by the disease when Jack Layton, federal National Democratic Party leader and Leader of the Official Opposition died of cancer. His family released letter to Canadians, or you can read an excerpt at Confessions of a Science Librarian. The public outpouring of support was tremendous. In the wake of his passing, the Globe and Mail published an article challenging the current language equating the illness with a war or a battle.

But to those touched directly by cancer, equating the illness with a war against the enemy, fighting an adversary, or suffering in order to survive can diminish understanding of the challenges and complexities faced by patients and their families.

In other recent news friends and colleagues recently published in Nature describing the results of a recent clinical trial of oncolytic poxvirus.

Here we show in a clinical trial that JX-594 selectively infects, replicates and expresses transgene products in cancer tissue after intravenous infusion, in a dose-related fashion. Normal tissues were not affected clinically. This platform technology opens up the possibility of multifunctional products that selectively express high concentrations of several complementary therapeutic and imaging molecules in metastatic solid tumours in humans.

This paper has received a lot of attention in the press, though surprisingly not much in the blogosphere.

But since this is a blog carnival, we should get to the posts written our readers. First up, and sticking with the virus theme, is ERV with a post about measles and cancer.

So some kinds of measles can use PVRL4 to infect cells... and well, measles kills the cells it infects... including the tumor cells! Especially adenocarcinomas, apparently! Its not that we could use measles to deliver an anti-cancer drug or gene to tell the tumor to commit suicide or something-- measles is naturally lytic, thus 'naturally' oncolytic! It just kills the cancer, all on its own.

Still at Scienceblogs, Orac has a two-part post on the complexity of cancer and how quacks take advantage

Johnson's article has been used as the basis of an argument that, because our understanding of cancer has changed significantly over the last decade, "conventional" scientists don't understand cancer, the implication being that the quacks do. Today, in part I of what will be a two-part post, I'll discuss the NYT article, its good, its bad, and its indifferent, hopefully in the process illuminating how complex cancer is. Tomorrow or Thursday, I'll lay some not-so-Respectful Insolence on a quack who uses this article as a jumping off point to argue for cancer quackery, particularly his hilarious criticisms of the article's "shortcomings."

Next up is a post about recent research into using dogs as cancer detectors. This is something we've written about on the Bayblab before. From the post:

However, the fact that the sniffer dogs were able to detect lung cancer, even in the presence of interference from other conditions such as COPD as well as tobacco smoke, points to the presence of a stable marker for lung cancer that may eventually be isolated. Researchers told WebMD that the dogs' accuracy surpassed even that of combined CT scan and bronchoscopy.

Our friend Walter at HighlightHEALTH has a similar post up.

That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. Stay tuned for an announcement of next month's host. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage. Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available. For a broader collection of science-related blog carnivals, sign up for the Science, Medicine, Environment and Nature Blog Carnival Twitter Feed.

Cancer Research Blog Carnival #48

Welcome to the Cancer Research Blog Carnival #48 (4 years of the Cancer Carnival!) I think it's becoming clear that getting these up on Fridays just isn't working for me, so it may be time to switch to a Saturday post date. Either way, without further ado, here are the posts:

Starting things off, our friends at the MolBio Hut (formerly MolBio Research Highlights) send us a post on adult stem cells and cancer relapse. This post is part of a blog feature that consists of posts on new research written by the authors of those papers. This is a great idea, and hopefully there will be many more in the series.

Given the fact that these “relapse-causing cells” are long lived and able to regenerate whole tumors, we sought out to find whether there was a relationship between cancer recurrence and intestinal stem cells. In this “Direct Connection”, I will describe our work entitled “The Intestinal Stem Cell Signature Identifies Colorectal Cancer Stem Cells and Predicts Disease Relapse”, published earlier this year on Cell Stem Cell.

Genome Engineering sends us s couple of posts for the carnival. First is discussion of new research into a broad spectrum cancer vaccine.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. It is generally a slow growing form of cancer, though some men have a more aggressive form of the disease. Conventional management of prostate cancer includes ‘watch and wait’, surgery or radio-or chemotherapy. Animal studies of a prostate cancer DNA vaccine have suggested a new approach to cancer treatment that may have potential to stabilise or cure tumours.

Of course this is still in very early stages and hasn't moved beyond animal models. Next is new research published in Nature on genes associated with estrogen-receptor negative breast cancer.

Breast cancer can be divided into two main types – oestrogen receptor-positive and oestrogen receptor-negative. Up to a third of breast cancers are oestrogen receptor-negative and are generally harder to treat because they are not responsive to treatments such as tamoxifen or other hormone-related treatments. There have been fewer advancements in therapeutics for this group. US researchers have linked a gene with this form of cancer and published the results in Nature.

Sticking with cancer-related genes, also check out brief posts on leukemia genome sequencing to identify recurrent mutations and analysis of ovarian cancer genes in the Cancer Genome Atlas.

Over at Bionews, we have a post describing research into gene silencing that may have implications for cancer treatment.

Some cancer drugs already work through demethylation, but this process is non-specific, which can cause side effects and other problems, Dr Alfonso Bellacosa, an associate professor at Fox Chase, explained. Using a specific process it could be possible to turn on incorrectly silenced genes, leading to potential cancer therapeutics that target the mechanisms underlying cancer development.

Finally, we have a two part piece on peer-reviewed research searching for new cancer drugs (part 1, part 2)

Metastasis—the spread of cancer from the place where it first started to another place in the body—is the most common reason that cancer treatments fail. To metastasize, some types of cancer cells rely on invadopodia, cellular membrane projections that act like feet, helping them “walk” away from the primary tumor and invade surrounding tissues. To determine how cells control invadopodia formation, Sanford-Burnham scientists screened a collection of pharmacologically active compounds to identify those that either promote or inhibit the process. They turned up several invadopodia inhibitors that target a family of enzymes called cyclin-dependent kinases (Cdks), revealing a previously unrecognized role for Cdks in invadopodia formation. These findings appeared online July 26 in Science Signaling.

Keep an eye on that blog as the host of a future edition of the Cancer Carnival.

That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage. Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available. For a broader collection of science-related blog carnivals, sign up for the Science, Medicine, Environment and Nature Blog Carnival Twitter Feed.

Cancer Research Blog Carnival #45

The latest edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival (#45!) is now live. You can go check it out here.

Call for Posts

The Cancer Research Blog Carnival is coming up this Friday, December 3 and we want your blog posts. Submit your cancer science blogging here or email us at the address in the sidebar, then stay tuned this Friday for the latest edition.

The Cancer Carnival is Coming

The Cancer Research Blog Carnival is due to arrive this Friday, November 5. If you haven't already, email us your recent cancer related posts, or submit them using this form.

Cancer Research Blog Carnival #38 - Breast Cancer Awareness Month

The latest edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival is up at Highlight HEALTH.

Welcome to the 38th edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival, the monthly blog carnival that discusses what’s new in cancer research. In recognition of October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, this edition’s focus is on breast cancer.

As usual, Walter has done a fantastic job hosting, with a carnival loaded quality posts. Go check it out.

Cancer Carnival #36

Once again, it's the first Friday of the month, which means it's time for the Cancer Research Blog Carnival. The Carnival relies on posts and hosts, so be sure to submit your posts for next month, and if you're tired of seeing it here on the Bayblab, drop us a line to sign up as a host. On to the posts...

First up, we have a post from Byte Size Bio that arrived just after the last carnival went live. In it, he looks at a paper investigating a role of pseudogene mRNA in regulating tumour biology. By interacting with miRNA, some of these pseudogene mRNAs may act as tumour supressors or oncogenes!

PTEN1 is a pseudogene which shares a very recent common ancestor with PTEN. A mutation in PTEN1 prevents it from being translated into a protein product, but it can still be transcribed to PTEN1 mRNA. Laura Poliseno and her colleagues have shown that PTEN1 mRNA, being very similar in sequence to PTEN mRNA attracts miRNA molecules that target PTEN mRNA. In other words, PTEN1 mRNA lures PTEN-specific miRNA molecules away from PTEN mRNA, lowering the number of inactivated PTEN mRNAs.

This is a pretty cool finding, and the post was an Editor's Selection from Researchblogging.org, so be sure to check it out.

Here at the Bayblab, Rob points to recent research about fructose metabolism in pancreatic cancer. Orac, at Respectful Insolence, also writes about this study.

So how was fructose metabolized in pancreatic cancer cells? For the most part, it was used to generate nucleic acid synthesis. Compared to glucose, fructose induces is preferentially metabolized via the nonoxidative pentose phosphate pathway to synthesize nucleic acids and increase uric acid production. What this means is that fructose provides the raw materials for cancer cells to make more DNA, which cells must do in order to divide and proliferate.

At the Spittoon, 23andMe's blog, their SNPwatch feature highlights mutations associated with liver cancer in Hep-B infected patients.

Rs12136376 is near several genes: KIF1B, UBE4B and PGD. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that one or more of these genes are plausible candidates for HCC susceptibility. Changes in the region of the genome where they are found are commonly seen in many different cancers, including HCC.

Details of the SNP, the analysis and outcomes are all explained in the post.

Keith Robison at Omics! Omics! discusses a project undertaken by Genentech and Affymetrix to scan over 400 tumour genomes for mutations. Keith has a really good explanation of the methodology while MassGenomics has a broader overview of the study findings.

Finally, in another piece of research blogging, Michelle at C6-H12-O6 looks at a paper invesigating the effects of caloric restriction on glioblastoma multiforme, a malignant and invasive brain cancer.

As I said, CR-induced ketosis has been known to reduce non-invasive brain tumors. It appears that cancer cells are highly dependent on glycolysis for energy and for some reason (unknown to me, although I'm sure there's literature out there on it) seem incapable of mitochondrial respiration. As such, they cannot use ketones for energy like healthy cells can. Up until now, this hasn't been tested in more invasive cancers, where the tradeoff in neurological impairment might be worth it to stop or delay the spread of the cancer.

This is a nice write up with a good description of the background metabolism. And I don't just say that because of my own interest in CR.

That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage. Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available. For a broader collection of science-related blog carnivals, sign up for the Science, Medicine, Environment and Nature Blog Carnival Twitter Feed.

Cancer Carnival #35

Once again, it's the first Friday of the month. Right between Canada Day and Independence Day, and in the middle of World Cup month so it's a bit of a light carnival this time around.

Over at Health and Life, our friend David has a post about melanoma and a new drug to treat it:

Ipilimumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4). This marker is associated with promoting a regulatory response by the immune system, slowing it down. By knocking it out, ipilimumab may shift the body’s immune response from inaction into action.

Health and Life often features new drug info and is a good place for pharm-minded folks.

At the Stem Cell Network blog, I have a post up about new developments in the world of hematopoiesis and touch upon some of the implications they might have for cancer research.

[A]cute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a cancer of the blood. As the name implies, it is the result of uncontrolled growth of cells from the myeloid lineage caused by dysregulation of the corresponding stem cell. Effective treatment requires the identification and targeting of the appropriate cells.

The Spittoon, the 23andMe blog, highlights 2 new cancer-associated SNPs. First is a genetic variant contributing to melanoma risk and mole count.

When Duffy’s team examined data from about 2,000 adolescents of European ancestry living in Australia, they found that each copy of a T at variant rs12203592 was associated with a significant increase in numbers of “flat” nevi (the most common type of nevus). When they looked at data from the parents of the adolescents, however, they saw no such effect. In fact, the data suggested that the C version of rs12203592 – not the T version – was associated with higher nevus counts in older people. Comparing these results with data from thousands of individuals from the UK confirmed the differing age-dependent effects of rs12203592.

Mole counts is something we've talked about before. The Spittoon post goes on to describe how these same variants affect melanoma risk. The second set of SNPs have to do with testicular cancer, reported in Nature Genetics.

Clare Turnbull and colleagues analyzed the DNA of 979 men with testicular cancer and 4,947 controls, all of European descent. Many of these men were included in the group’s previous study. The four SNPs most strongly associated with testicular cancer were then followed up in an additional sample of 664 cases and 3,456 controls, where evidence of association was also found.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Orac discusses cancer overdiagnosis and overtreatment, ERV notes the difficulties in epigenetic approaches to cancer treatment, HighlightHealth points to new information about vitamin D and cancer (which seems contrary to research from a few years ago) and for the epidemiologists, The Pump Handle dissects the recent President's Cancer Panel report.

That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage. Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available. For a broader collection of science-related blog carnivals, sign up for the Science, Medicine, Environment and Nature Blog Carnival Twitter Feed.

Cancer Carnival #34

It's the first Friday of the month, which means it's time for the Cancer Research Blog Carnival!

May was Neurofibromatosis (NF) Awareness Month, with NF Awareness Day falling on May 20. HighlightHealth highlights the occasion with 10 things to be aware of, beginning with a description of the condition.

Neurofibromatosis (NF) is a genetically inherited disorder that predisposes individuals to the development of a variety of benign and malignant tumors in the central and peripheral nervious systems. The disorder affects neural crest cells and causes tumors to grow along various types of nerves and can also affect the development of bones and skin.

HighlightHealth also offers some preliminary coverage of the Children's Tumor Foundation's NF conference. This year's conference will feature constant updates and videos from the floor which will be accessible here. Staying with the NF theme, we also have the story of Jaqueline, a girl (now 2 years old) who was diagnosed with NF at 4 months and is now the inspiration for a children's character with the same disease.

On the topic of conference coverage, Alexey at Hematopoiesis has some coverage of the recent AACR meeting, including a link to what he describes as the most interesting talk of the meeting on the subject of cancer stem cells.

This talk was the most interesting for me maybe from the entire annual 2010 AACR meeting. Because it made me to look at cancer stem cell concept from other side - side of cancer non-stem cells.

The post offers some highlights, or you can watch the entire talk here. The AACR has over 80 hours of audio, with accompanying slides where available accessible for free on their website.

At the 23andMe blog, The Spittoon, the latest SNPwatch article profiles new genetic associations for nasopharyngeal cancer.

Researchers from Singapore, China and the United States studied about 5,000 people with NPC and 5,000 controls, as well as more than 250 families, all of southern Chinese descent. As expected, a strong genetic effect was seen in areas of the genome that encode the previously identified immune markers. But variants in three other regions were also associated with NPC risk. Two of these associations were statistically significant. The third SNP did not make the cut off, but was highly suggestive.

Click the link to find out more.

Here at the Bayblab, AC reports on a study that claims killing of cancer cells by homeopathic preparations. Is there something to it, or is this a breakdown of the peer review process? What's worse is that the paper is being flaunted by pushers of alternative medicine.

Most shockingly, according to the New Scientist, this study was mentioned in the British parliament as an argument for more funding for alternative medicine.

Nevermind the fact that it has been thoroughly picked apart again and again.

Finally, Orac revisits the issue of cell phones and cancer, commenting on a recent paper from the Internation Journal of Epidemiology.

That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage. Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available. For a broader collection of science-related blog carnivals, sign up for the Science, Medicine, Environment and Nature Blog Carnival Twitter Feed.

Cancer Carnival #32

The 32nd edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival is now live at Health and Life. Go check it out - we've got ERVs, breast cancer genes and more! The next edition is still homeless, but will appear here or elsewhere on May 7. In the meantime, you can send your cancer-related posts using the form found here.

Cancer Carnival Coming Next Week

Don't forget - it's almost time for the 32nd edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival. If you have a post you'd like to share, submit it using this form and if you don't have something already written, it's not too late to put something together. This edition will be hosted at Health and Life on April 2nd.

Cancer Carnival #31

It's the first Friday of March, which means it's time for the latest cancer blogging round-up. Starting things off, the Mad Lab Rat offers up some research blogging describing a bacteria-derived molecule, Azurin, that can induce apoptosis and preferentially binds to cancer cells (in this case breast cancer).

Azurin was first discovered as the toxin that attacks cellular macrophages. It's produced by the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa the 8821M strain of which was found to produce a high concentration of Azurin. When applied to both normal and cancerous cells (taken from a breast cell carcinoma) the Azurin preferentially entered the cancerous cells.

Mad Lab Rat also points out that the same molecule slows HIV-1 spread and inhibits malarial parasite growth.

From Highlight HEALTH, Diana Gitig blogs about research suggesting a link between cancer and Alzheimer's disease - or rather a reverse link.

The fact that Alzheimer’s disease has a reciprocal relationship with cancer whereas vascular dementia does not implies that it is neurodegeneration, and not cognitive impairment, that provides the protection from cancer. This idea is bolstered by findings that people with Parkinson’s disease, another age-associated neurodegenerative disorder, also have a decreased risk of most cancers. And it makes sense upon consideration of the natures of the two diseases. Cancer is a disorder of uncontrolled growth and/or a lack of timely cell death; Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, in contrast, are caused by vast swaths of inappropriate neuronal cell death. It stands to reason that genetic or environmental factors that promote one condition would suppress the other.

With Alzheimer's and cancer being two of the most feared age-related diseases, the posting points out, at least we don't need to fear them both at the same time and, more importantly, discovering links such as these helps understand the underlying mechanisms of both.

Once and future host Health and Life offers some thoughts on cancer medications.

The goal of future cancer treatments is to find the molecular pathways that are deregulated in cancers and target them alone. Think doing a targeted missile strike on a house instead of carpet bombing a city.

The limitations to targeted treatments include the sheer complexity of cancers. You can knock out one pathway that leads to cancer formation only to have the tumor adopt another approach. Cancer doesn’t form when just one thing goes wrong, rather it happens when many things go wrong at once.

In it, they discuss the challenges of some specific treatments - such as Tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors - as well as some broader strategies being used.

Here at the Bayblab, I try, somewhat unsuccessfully, to answer a question posed to me: does rolling cigars or cigarettes increase your cancer risk?

Finally, a student guest post at Aetiology looks at the role of HPVs in cancer development - skin cancer.

Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are small DNA viruses that infect epithelial cells. There are well over 100 subtypes of HPV. The subtypes that infect cutaneous epithelia are termed beta-HPVs and those that infect the mucosal epithelia are termed alpha-HPVs. Some alpha-HPVs have received attention as strong risk factors for the development of cervical cancer. Less public awareness has been generated over the role of HPVs in the development of other cancers such as vulvar, vaginal, anal, head and neck, and penile cancers. Only recent research has focused on an association between HPV infection and skin cancer development.

Health and Life had so much fun last time that they will be taking up hosting duties again next month, so start writing those cancer posts. And as always, we're constantly on the lookout for future hosts so leave a comment or send an email if interested!

That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage. Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available. GrrlScientist is setting something similar up for a broader swath of science and nature blog carnivals ("Science, Medicine, Environment and Nature Blog Carnival Twitter Feed"). It's in its infancy, so you can find details and offer thoughts here or sign up for the feed here.

Cancer Carnival #29

Happy New Year, and welcome to the first Cancer Research Blog Carnival of 2010. It will be a light one - the holiday season kept us all busy - but there's still some good stuff to be had. We also have some new hosts lined up in the new year starting next month at Health and Life.

In fact, we'll kick things off with a post from that blog, comparing Tamoxifen to Arimidex as adjuvant therapy for cancer.

There has been a lot of debate about how to prevent cancer from coming back in post-menopausal women after initial treatment. We discussed in our comparison of Tamoxifen with aromatase inhibitors the debate in general, and now will analyze Tamoxifen vs Anastrozole, brand name Arimidex, directly.

The author, David, does a nice job of summarizing various studies comparing the two drugs. The blog itself features a large amount of cancer blogging, much of it from a pharmacological point of view and looks to be a nice resource for health information in general, and drug uses and side effects specifically.

Next up GeriPal responds to news stories that morphine and other opiates may promote cancer growth and spread with some research blogging

This is an interesting line of research and one that gave the makers of Relistor a shot in the arm (as one website put it – “a possible new indication for Progenix's Relistor could revive its fortunes”.) I find the pathophysiology behind this incredibly interesting from an academic standpoint, however it is neither something that would warrant such dramatic headlines nor spur thoughts that it is anything but research in its infancy.

As usual, the headlines don't tell the full story, but GeriPal has it, so click through to find out the real deal.

Something we don't often think about while focussing on human disease is cancer in animals. PetPip reminds us that pets get cancer too, and how to cope.

Speaking of animals with cancer, one favourite from past carnivals has been the transmissible tumours among tasmanian devils. A recent paper in Science has determined the origins of these tumours, as Carl Zimmer describes in the New York Times

When the tumor disease was discovered, many scientists assumed that it was caused by a rapidly spreading virus. Viruses cause 15 percent of all cancers in humans and are also widespread in animals.

But subsequent studies failed to turn up a virus. Instead, Anne-Maree Pearse and Kate Swift, of the Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment in Tasmania, discovered something strange about the tumor cells. The chromosomes looked less like those in the animal’s normal cells and more like those in the tumors growing in other Tasmanian devils.

The full story is pretty fascinating, and worth the read. Razib Khan at Gene Expression adds a bit more, commenting on the dire predictions for the devil's demise and pointing out that some animals are, in fact, immune.

That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage. Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available.

Cancer Carnival #28

Welcome to the Cancer Research Blog Carnival #28, and the final edition of 2009. We have a full slate of editions open for hosting in the new year, so send us an email at bayblab@gmail or leave a note in the comments.

First up LabRat has some nice research blogging on the motility of cancer cells.

In order to break away from the neoplasm and spread the disease cancer cells must gain motility. Studying how cancer cells move can be difficult in vivo because the conventional method of immuno-histology (which involves taking slices out of a tumour during development then fixing and staining them) prevent movement all together. Newer work has been done using Intravital imaging [...], where a fluorescently-labelled tumour is generated in an animal and then observed while the animal is anaesthetised.

Lab Rat discusses some of the findings, and the difference between single cell and group motility.

Next our friend Alexey at Hematopoiesis has a review of a couple of papers that discuss the stem-like qualities of T-cells. How does this relate to cancer? He explains:

Because adult stem cells, cancer stem cells and self-renewing T-cells share common features (chemoresistance, quiescence…) chasing for efficient killing of the cancer we can also kill memory T-cells and shut down long-lasting immunity after therapy. Bad news.

Bad news indeed. But it is followed up by good news, so head there to read it.

Cancer screening - always an interesting topic as detection techniques get more sensitive - was discussed over at Scienceblogs recently, spurred on by new recommendations for breast cancer screening. Orac at Respectful Insolence kicked things off:

No, I wasn't surprised that recommendations to scale back mammographic screening were released. I saw it coming, based on a series of studies, some of which I've discussed right here on this very blog. What surprised me is how much of a departure from current mammography guidelines the USPSTF recommendations were and, even more so, that they were released this year.

It is a lengthy post, and worth the read for the details of the changes and the reaction of an oncologist. The recommendations call for a reduction in mammography (and self-examination) based in part on potential harms such as overdiagnosis and unnecessary biopsy. Greg Laden has a different point of view

It seems to me that the solution being recommended is this: Let's have less information at hand so that we don't fuck up our use of that information. If we don't have information that we can misuse, then we can't misuse it.

Finally, Mike the Mad Biologist discusses what happens when woo-ism meets cancer prevention wherein he discusses clinical trials of drugs which halve the risk of breast cancer. Yet they aren't embraced with enthusiasm.

I could understand if you tried the medication, and you felt lousy. Somehow, I don't think "a spiritual element" is going to halve the probability of breast cancer. (Before anyone thinks I'm picking on women, men seem just as idiotic regarding prostate cancer prevention--which has a much lower survival rate). But people who are frightened will engage in activities that lend the illusion of control (there is little conclusive evidence that diet can significantly lower breast cancer rates in older women*). The terror of knowing that there's is a one-in-five chance of getting cancer, combined with the knowledge that, even with medication, there is still a one-in-ten chance of getting cancer has to be terrifying.

That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage. Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available.

Cancer Carnival #27

The 27th edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival is now up at MolBio Research Highlights. Go check it out!

Cancer Carnival #26

Here we are again with the Cancer Research Blog Carnival #26 - your monthly roundup of posts from the cancer blogosphere.

The first post comes from the blog Asbestos Lung Cancer which, as you might guess, focuses on asbestos-related disease. This post discusses asbestosis symptoms and detections.

A history of asbestos exposure may provide the first clue to the diagnosis of asbestos diseases such as asbestosis and asbestos pleural disease. It often takes decades involving the patient’s asbestos exposure and the appearance of early symptoms such as shortness of breath and chest pain.

Francisco Barriga, who blogs at MolBio Research Highlights (who will be hosting the next edition, so start writing those posts!) follows up on a previous post on cancer stem cells (featured in Cancer Carnival #23) with some research blogging: Targeting cancer stem cells: chemical style.

In a previous post I tried to summarize the major points underlying the Cancer Stem Cell Hypothesis, which states that tumors are hierarchically structured and that a particular subpopulation of cells, cancer stem cells (CSCs), are capable of initiating and sustaining the growth of the tumor. This has obvious clinical implications since eliminating these cells would lead to the definitive disappearance of the tumor.

He takes a look at a recent Cell paper that takes a high-throughput approach to targetting cancer stem cells and finding that conventional chemotherapeutics aren't effective against this population.

Here at Bayblab, and staying on the cancer stem cell theme, AC takes a look at a new paper from Cancer Research that finds that a widely prescribed diabetes drug might be effective against breast cancer stem cells.

A friend of the bayblab sent me a link to a paper that just came out in Cancer Research showing promising results of Metformin against breast cancer. Not only does the drug seem to selectively kill CD44 positive breast cancer stem cells, but it seems to inhibit mammosphere formation.

Like the Cell paper above, one conclusion seems to be that future effective drug treatments will require targetting both tumour 'bulk' cells and cancer stem cells.

At HighlightHEALTH, the results are in and Allison Bland reports on lifestyle changes that prevent breast cancer. A recent update to the 2007 report by the American Institute for Cancer Research/World Cancer Research Fund (AICR/WCRF) that describes certain measures that can be taken to reduce breast cancer deaths

The study is an update to the breast cancer chapter of Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective. Earlier conclusions were based on data from 873 studies evaluating the relationship between diet, physical activity, obesity and cancer. The 2009 update includes evidence from an additional 81 studies.

The report estimates that over 70,000 breast cancer cases in the U.S. — 40% of cases every year– could be avoided every year by simple lifestyle changes.

The post provides more details on the report, and outlines some of the preventative measurest that can be taken.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Orac lays the smack down on Bill Maher for some wacky views on medicine and cancer

Maher responds that he "doesn't know whether Laetrile works," but that he knows that "the shit we've tried for the last 50 years doesn't. I know they've made no progress as far as cancer in this country. So, yes, there are people who actually go out of this country when they get cancer. Some of them come back alive after a death sentence. But in this country you can't talk about that. I might get arrested right now."

Follow the link to find out the many ways Maher has it wrong.

Finally, September marked the passing of Patrick Swayze who succumbed to pancreatic cancer. More here and here. One alt-med 'treatment' for pancreatic cancer is called the Gonzalez protocol. The Journal of Clinical Oncology recently published a study showing that this regimen is substantially worse than standard care. You can read more at Science-based Medicine and Neurologica.

That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage. Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available.

November's issue will be posted at MolBio Research Highlights. If you'd like to host a future edition, email bayblab@gmail.com

Cancer Carnival #25

Welcome to the 25th edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival - your monthly roundup of cancer related blogging.

Unless you've been cut off from all news, you're probably aware of the debate over health care reform happening in the United States. Sandy Ordonez has sent us this overview, which includes interviews with doctors and insurance providers.

Cancer, of course, doesn't care if you're rich, poor, uninsured or where you're from. The Viewspaper looks at the issue of cancer in India - much of which is tobacco related - as well as their own National Cancer Control Programme.

Erin Cline Davis, from the 23andMe blog The Spittoon, keeps us up to date with the latest SNPs associated with cancer, this time genetic variants associated with childhood ALL.

Fred Lee from Healthcare Hacks discusses a recent study from the Journal of the American Medical Association that looked at the effects of aspirin on cancer survival.

In addition to lessening pain while also helping to prevent heart attacks and strokes, aspirin is now believed to increase the chance of survival for patients suffering from colon cancer. In fact, a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that colon cancer patients reduced their risk of dying from the disease by as much as 30% when they took aspirin in conjunction with surgery and chemotherapy.

The effect is only effective with tumours that overexpress Cox-2. The mechanism of action is still unclear - other Cox-2 inhibitors have been tested, such as celecoxib (Celebrex), and they have effects in vitro even when Cox-2 inhibition is removed.

Fred continues with his healthcare hacks, describing a NEJM study that shows that weightlifting may alleviate one of the possible side-effects of breast cancer treatment, lymphedema.

Though the idea has been argued for years, this is the first study with the size, scope and duration to give it clinical relevancy to the notion that not only is exercise not bad for breast cancer survivors, but that it might be beneficial, as well. Breast cancer survivors who were suffering from lymphedema were divided into two sections: one group was told not to change their exercise habits, while the other took part in a 90 minute weightlifting class twice a week for 13 weeks. After the classes, the subjects worked out on their own for an additional 39 weeks.

This runs contrary to past recommendations to avoid strain, such as heavy lifting, on the affected areas.

We have another double-hit of submissions from Kat Arney who blogs for Cancer Research UK. First, she demystifies recent claims that we're "2-years from a cure for breast cancer", explaining the science behind estrogen receptor regulated microRNAs and why the recent findings are still a long way from a cure.

Dr Stebbing’s results help to unravel the complex communications circuits within cells that controls the activity of our genes, and helps to explain how this goes wrong in cancer. Now we know more about this, we can start to look for potential treatments.

One speculative idea might be to add extra processed miRNAs to breast cancer cells, to switch off the oestrogen receptor so the cells stop growing – but this needs to be explored in further experiments.

Dr. Arney also directs our attention to the BRAF gene, which is defective in 70% of melanomas, in an ongoing series focusing on Cancer Research UK-funded work

One of the key players in certain signalling cascades is BRAF, a protein produced from the instructions carried by the BRAF gene. BRAF is a kinase, a protein that sticks chemical ‘tags’ onto other proteins, activating them in order to pass on signals in the cell. And, as you might expect, faults in BRAF can have big implications for cells – and for cancer.

Here at the Bayblab, Bayman discusses transmissible tumours in tasmanian devils, raising some questions about tumour immunology and the effectiveness of cancer vaccines. Among the issues raised: why, if tumours are effective at evading the immune system, aren't more tumours transmissible? Ian York at Mystery Rays from Outer Space tries to answer that question.

The most important factor, I suspect, has nothing to do with immunology. These tumors are unusual in that they have a built-in way of contacting new hosts. TDFT is spread through bites, CTVT is spread sexually. There’s no similar way that, say, a liver tumor, or a brain tumor, could be spread. So that immediately rules out the vast majority of tumors; even if they could survive after transmission, there’s no chance of a transmission chain. But still, most tumors would be rejected even if they did manage to be transmitted.

The posts and comments across both blogs are interesting and worth the read. Ian continues his posts about transmissible tumours by looking at a human case: the vertical transmission of tumours from mother to fetus.

Malignancy during pregnancy isn’t all that uncommon (0.1% of pregnancies, it says here), so the handful of cases with actual spread of the tumor to the fetus are “numerically inconsequential”. What was different about these 14 cases? We don’t really know, in general. Almost all of the described cases are earlier than 1965, predating the molecular era of medicine.

Another interesting case of transmissible tumour, even if the mechanism of immune evasion isn't clear. But as he points out, "these stories are still worth keeping in mind when thinking about tumour transmission" (and tumour immunology).

That's it for this month's Cancer Research Blog Carnival. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage. Don't forget, the CRBC has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available.

If you'd like to host a future edition, email bayblab@gmail.com

Cancer Carnival #23

Welcome to the 23rd edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival! Most of our readers are probably either recovering from Canada Day or gearing up for Independence Day, but there's always time for some science in between.

Kicking things off this month, we have PalMD following up on his Cancer 101 posts (some of which were featured previously in the Cancer Carnival) with Cancer 202 - Radiation Therapy. In it he briefly discusses the basics of radiation treatment including its effects on normal tissue and how to target a tumour.

Radiation is a powerful tool in medicine, but like any tool, whether it be a knife or a pill, it must be wielded properly and ethically. The best medicine combines good science, compassion, and ethical behavior to help people. Radiation therapy is one of medicine's most sophisticated techniques, and must be used only by certain experts. It's also really cool.

PalMD does a great job of explaining the basics in an easy to understand way. If you missed any of the other posts in this series, check them out here.

Next up, MolBio Research Highlights sends us some blogging on peer reviewed research. The topic? Cancer Stem Cells. Francisco Barriga is inspired by three recent papers and tries to make sense of it all with a nice review of current thinking and controversy.

[D]uring the last years there has been a lot of controversy regarding the existence, function and clinical implications of cancer stem cells. This confusion stems (no pun intended) from the lack of clarity in the field nowadays, arising mainly from misconceptions regarding the origin and function of these cells. On top of all of this is the confusion derived from media-hype and some not-so knowledgeable scientific journalists.

Francisco clears up some of this confusion with a summary of the cancer stem cell hypothesis and discussion of unresolved issues in the field.

Cancer stem cells are always a hot topic, and Alexey at Hematopoiesis discusses some ways that existing drugs can affect CSC populations.

Recently, anti-cancer activity of some well known drugs was discovered, which was shown to rely on targeting of cancer stem cells (CSC). Explanations for some very effective anti-leukemic drug combination were recently found in the laboratories. I’ll give you some examples of “from-bed-to-the-bench” translation coming from leukemia clinic.

Three drugs, and their possible uses, are examined.

Over at Scienceblogs, there has been some discussion about NIH funding strategies, and whether they're too conservative. Mike the Mad Biologist draws our attention to a New York Times article that laments the lack of progress in cancer cures and wonders if more money should be put into high-risk, high-reward projects. Orac comments on the same article, asking "Are we playing it too safe in cancer research?" and the Mad Biologist continues his analysis of the culture of caution at the NIH.

Finally, there were celebrity deaths in the news last week with one, Farrah Fawcett, losing her battle with cancer at the age of 62. While it was overshadowed by other events, she did get some attention with some raising awareness about anal cancer, some retrospective and discussions with her oncologist.

That's it for this month. Next month is our the Cancer Research Blog Carnival's 2nd anniversary, so start writing those cancer posts, and submit them here. We always need hosts as well, so if you're sick of seeing the carnival here on the Bayblab, email us to sign up for a future carnival. For older editions, visit the Carnival Homepage.

And don't forget, the Cancer Research Blog Carnival now has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available.

Cancer Carnival #22

Welcome to the June edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival - your monthly stop for cancer-related news and breakthroughs. I've been a bad keeper this month, both in soliciting hosts/posts and in timely delivery, so let's jump right in to the good stuff.

Omics! Omics!
Dr. Keith Robison ponders tumor supressors as he moves back into the cancer field, likening cancer researchers to the seven blind men who hasn't yet figured out the elephant in front of them

A great mystery for many such genes is why the tissue specificity of the tumor syndrome? In each of the genes mentioned above, the tumor syndrome appears to be very specific to a tissue type, yet in each of these cases the genes involved have been shown to be parts of cellular machinery used by every cell. Why does a failure of a general part manifest itself so specifically?

The Spittoon
Erin Cline Davis sends us a couple of links from the 23andMe blog's SNPwatch feature.

SNPwatch gives you the latest news about research linking various traits and conditions to individual genetic variations. These studies are exciting because they offer a glimpse into how genetics may affect our bodies and health; but in most cases, more work is needed before this research can provide information of value to individuals.

The first discusses new SNPs associated with testicular cancer, including one that may explain why the disease is more common among caucasians. The second involves a recent study that identifies genetic differences between benign and malignant neuroblastoma, including several SNPs in the BARD1 gene, also mentioned in Dr. Robison's post, above. 23andMe customers can browse their own data for these SNPs, which of course doesn't substitute for professional advice.

Bayblab
Here at the Bayblab, Bayman talks about new systems biology approaches to predicting anti-tumor activity of immune cells.

They fed the info into some sort of machine learning algorithim, which came up with some pretty clear-cut boolean style predictive rules that a mere organic being (aka tumor immunologist) could never have possibly concieved of with a million years of deductive reasoning and experimental testing.

As Bayman puts it: "It's Big Blue beats Kasparov all over again!"

Respectful Insolence
Orac at Respectful Insolence has a post up, Cancer research explained briefly, that explains why we'll never have "a cure for cancer". It's a simple explanation, and one that's important to be aware of. While there, be sure to click through to see the full comic in the post.

Framing Science
Have you ever wondered how accurate some of the information on medical dramas is? What about using a show like House to teach medical ethics? Matt Nisbet writes about misleading medical programs and the balance between raising issue awareness and getting medical facts right, citing the recent cancer-related Gray's Anatomy finale as an example.

"Many people view the cancer problem as much simpler than it actually is," Brawley says. "That's because they get their medical information from television shows. But television shows are by and large fictional, and much of the medical information there is also going to be fictional."

Hematopoiesis
Finally, our friend Alex at Hematopoiesis has written about stem cell derived cancer killing NK cells.

Dan Kaufman’s lab from University of Minnesota demonstrate for the first time efficient cancer killing activity in vivo, mediated by immune cells derived from hESC. They generated natural killer (NK) cells using previously published protocol and investigated their anti-cancer activity on the range of tumors in vitro and in mouse leukemia model.

He goes on to the results and the advantages of such an approach. For a Hematopoiesis bonus, check out this post about the cancer stem cell hypothesis complexity/controversy and how it's changed over the years.

That's it for this installment of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival. We always need hosts and posts so email the Bayblab to sign up, and get your posts in here. Visit the Carnival Homepage for previous editions.

And don't forget, the Cancer Research Blog Carnival now has subscription options; you can follow by email or RSS feed. An aggregated feed of credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals is also available.