Cancer Research News

Here are a few highlights of cancer research news that have recently caught my attention this month:

  • New data on Lung cancer incidence rates from 2005-2009 are indicating a decrease among women and men in the United States in some states and stable trends in others. Continued efforts on tobacco prevention and control strategies are key to reducing the overall number of cases.
  • Scientists at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute have developed a new computer/mathematical model to predict the behavior of a patient’s tumor and best treatment options. For more, please read ScienceDaily.
  • New Study published in Circulation Research explores the relationship between percentile ranking and citation impact of NIH cardiovascular R01 grant applications for the period between 2001 and 2008.

Please feel free to contact Marisol Hernandez for comments on the latest cancer research news.

MSK in the News

MSK teams up with the LGBT Cancer Network and more…

  • MSK hosted a conference on cancer in the LGBT community.  In conjunction with the National LGBT Cancer Network, the conference, held at Memorial Sloan Kettering on Jan 18th, was attended by allied health professionals, students, researchers, clinicians and survivors.  The intention of the conference was to provide attendees information about LGBT cancer risks and care of LGBT individuals, among other goals.
  • Mark Kris, Chair in Thoracic Oncology at MSK recently discussed new drugs for lung cancer.  One of the groups of drugs Dr. Kris talked about was antibody medications that are still in trials. They may provide significant benefits for lung cancer patients which so far, appear to be long lasting. Continue reading

Blog Buzz

Changes coming to HealthCare.gov, the op-eds that outraged many cancer patients on social media, and Copyright Week…all catching my attention this past week!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is sponsoring a six day Copyright Week, highlighting principles they believe “should guide copyright policy and practice” as Kevin Smith of the Scholarly Communications @ Duke blog explains.

If you haven’t heard about the flap on twitter and other social media over two recent op-ed pieces by a husband and wife in the Guardian and NY Times (the first was retracted and the other is here) criticizing metastatic breast cancer patient and blogger, Lisa Bonchek Adams, I want to give readers here a sense of what happened without trying to round up all the responses. The op-ed pieces have been criticized for breaches of journalistic ethics, factual inaccuracies, and a failure to understand what Adams was trying to communicate. Many of the criticisms are expressed clearly in Social Media is a conversation, not a press release, The NY Time’s Public Editor Margaret Sullivan responded with Readers lash out about Bill Keller’s column on a woman with cancer.

Following the decision on FCC rules this week here are a few views… from Tim Wu on The New Yorker’s Elements, Who killed net neutrality?. Over on WonkBlog John Blevins tells everyone to Relax…

From iHealthBeat, a round-up of reports that Accenture will take over Healthcare.gov.