News by Subject Medicine & Health

Six in seven women with a family history of breast cancer opt out of taking tamoxifen as a preventative measure, according to a study funded by Cancer Research UK and published in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment today.

Quality of life for women treated with a more targeted radiotherapy treatment -- called accelerated partial breast irradiation -- is at least as good as quality of life for women treated with standard radiotherapy, according to research presented at the ESTRO 37 conference and published simultaneously in The Lancet Oncology.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive form of the disease accounting for 12 to 18 percent of breast cancers. It is a scary diagnosis, and even though chemotherapy can be effective as standard-of-care, many patients become resistant to treatment. A team at The University of Texas MD Anderson led a study which may explain how resistance evolves over time, and potentially which patients could benefit from chemotherapy.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified a protein that is strongly associated with metastatic breast cancer and that could be a target for future therapies.

Existing microscopy-based methods of detecting apoptosis, such as TUNEL (terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick-end labeling), have limited quantitative capabilities due to insufficient signal-to-noise ratios. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute and National Cancer Institute-Frederick have addressed this issue via development of a highly specific apoptosis assay designed for immunofluorescence microscopy analysis of fixed core needle biopsy specimens.

Despite the great successes of targeted cancer drugs and the promise of novel immunotherapies, the vast majority of people diagnosed with cancer are still first treated with chemotherapy. Now a new study by UCSF researchers using techniques drawn from computational biology could make it much easier for physicians to use the genetic profile of a patient's tumor to pick the chemotherapy treatment with the fewest side effects and best chance of success.