Here are a few newsworthy items in the world of cancer research

• Research led by scientists at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a new drug that may significantly prolong life and provide improved quality for patients with mastocytosis, a rare disease of the immune system. The drug is called Midostaurin. Read more about this research in the New England Journal of Medicine.
• New research from Thomas Jefferson University may help identify the challenges that are important to African American women breast cancer survivors. The study should help in devising programs that will address cancer disparities and improve health outcomes. The findings were reported in Supportive Care in Cancer.
• Scientists in the UK have discovered that esophageal cancer can be classified into three different subtypes, making it possible for testing targeted treatments tailored to patients’ disease for the first time. Their discovery is furthered discussed in Nature Genetics.
• According to the European Society for Medical Oncology, deaths from ovarian cancer fell worldwide between 2002-2012 and are predicted to continue to decline in the USA, European Union (EU), and Japan. Read more on this global trend in the Annals of Oncology.

• Scientists at Polytechnique Montréal, Université de Montréal and McGill University have developed nanorobotic agents with the capability of going through the bloodstream and administering a drug with precision by specifically targeting the active cancerous cells of tumors. Further discussion is found in Nature Nanotechnology.
• Cancer survivors have long complained of cognitive decline following chemotherapy. This effect has been dubbed “chemo brain.” A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, set out to investigate the effects of chemo brain over a longer period of time. Their findings provided one of the first animal models to demonstrate the long-term cognitive deficits resulting from a chemotherapeutic treatment used in treating humans for breast cancer. The results were published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.
• Cancer overtakes heart disease as number one cause of death in 12 European nations. The report can be found in European Heart Journal.
• A randomized study published in the NEJM, found that the MammaPrint test that analyzes the 70 critical genes identified in breast cancer, demonstrated improved prediction of clinical outcomes for early-stage breast cancer in women.  The study involved over 6000 patients, 1500 of which were identified as low risk based on genomic factors.  These 1500 were later randomly assigned to two groups where one group received chemo and the other group did not. After five years, survival rates were similar.
• The New York Times recently published a series of articles that explore the novel uses of immunotherapy to combat cancer:
  • What is Immunotherapy?
  • Harnessing the Immune System to Fight Cancer
  • Setting the Body’s “Serials Killers” Loose on Cancer
  • Immunotherapy Offers Hope to a Cancer Patient, But No Certainty

Surfing the web, I uncovered these new items worth sharing:

• Researchers at the University of Hawaii have developed a computational algorithm to analyze “Big Data” from tumor samples to better understand cancer. The algorithm is called Joint Analysis of Many Matrices by ITeration (JAMMIT) and it uses advance math to identify patterns in molecular data. Further discussion is found in BioData Mining.
• Scientists in Australia have discovered a new class of drugs that may be effective in treating incurable myeloma. These targeted therapies are furthered discussed in the journal Blood.
• More support for minority focused research with increased community participation would help improve scientific knowledge of chronic disease among all races and ethnic populations according to a paper published by lead researchers at Tufts. Their discussion is presented in Health Affairs.
• Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand and the South African Centre for Excellence in PalaeoSciences have discovered a fossilized human toe bone, which dates back 1.7 million years, that shows evidence of osteosarcoma. This fossilized foot bone is the oldest evidence yet that ancient humans suffered from cancer. Read more about this discovery in Science Alert.