Recent advances in colonoscopic technology are featured in a number of studies presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology this week. In this research some technologies fare better than others at improving detection of potentially pre-cancerous growths in the colon known as adenomas.

Three studies presented this week at the American College of Gastroenterology’s 74th Annual Scientific meeting in San Diego underscore the growing disparities in gastrointestinal disease, particularly colon cancer and Barrett’s Esophagus, among certain ethnic and gender populations, including African Americans, Latinos and women.

In trying to better predict a patient’s response to chemotherapy for cancer treatment, a team of investigators at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey (CINJ) and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, has identified a way to better manipulate a gene product to cause cancer cells to die. And in order to further examine this mechanism, researchers also created a new vehicle for pre-clinical testing of cancer treatments that acts as a bridge between experimental models and human subjects.

A healthy dose of exercise is good medicine, even for lymphoma patients receiving chemotherapy, University of Alberta researchers have found.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Arzerra (ofatumumab) for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a slowly progressing cancer of the blood and bone marrow. Arzerra is approved for patients with CLL whose cancer is no longer being controlled by other forms of chemotherapy. CLL primarily affects people older than 50 and arises from a group of white blood cells known as B-cells that are part of the body’s immune system.

IntroductionAlterations in cell-cycle regulators have been implicated in human malignancies including breast cancers. PD 0332991 is an orally active, highly selective inhibitor of the cyclin D kinase (CDK)4 and CDK6 kinases with ability to block retinoblastoma (Rb) phosphorylation in the low nanomolar range. To identify predictors of response, we determined the in vitro sensitivity to PD 0332991 across a panel of molecularly characterized human breast cancer cell lines.
Methods:
47 human breast cancer and immortalized lines representing the known molecular subgroups of breast cancer were treated with PD 0332991 to determine IC50 values. These data were analyzed against baseline gene expression data to identify genes associated with PD 0332991 response.
Results:
Cell lines representing luminal estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) subtype (including those that are HER2 amplified) were most sensitive to growth inhibition by PD 0332991 while non-luminal/basal subtypes were most resistant. ANOVA identified 450 differentially expressed genes between sensitive and resistant cells. pRb and Cyclin D1 were elevated and CDKN2A (p16) was decreased in the most sensitive lines. Cell cycle analysis showed G0/G1 arrest in sensitive cell lines and Western blot analysis demonstrated that Rb phosphorylation is blocked in sensitive lines but not resistant lines. PD 0332991 was synergistic with tamoxifen and trastuzumab in ER+ and HER2 amplified cell lines, respectively. PD 0332991 enhanced sensitivity to tamoxifen in cell lines with conditioned resistance to ER blockade.
Conclusions:
These studies suggest a role for CDK4/6 inhibition in some breast cancers and identify criteria for patient selection in clinical studies of PD 0332991.

An expert in cancer proteomics at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has received $4.8 million in federal stimulus funding from the National Cancer Institute to co-lead a pilot study to assess the feasibility and scalability of a project that aims to measure all of the proteins in the human body. “If successful, this study could help to stimulate a larger international endeavor that would be comparable to the Human Genome Project,” said Amanda Paulovich, M.D., Ph.D.

Cancer Research UK scientists have used a cutting edge microscopy technique to identify genes whose activity could be blocked by drugs to stop the spread of the breast cancer. The research is published in Nature Cell Biology* . The scientists from Cancer Research UK’s

At the end of a 10-year, coast-to-coast study of women with an unusual form of breast cancer, Richard J. Barth Jr., M.D., and three fellow researchers are making the case for a particular combination of treatments to stop the tumors in their tracks. In the August 2009 issue of the Annals of Surgical Oncology, Barth, an associate professor of surgery at Dartmouth Medical School (DMS), and his colleagues – among them Wendy Wells, M.D.

First lady Michelle Obama framed health care reform as a women’s issue at a breast cancer event on Friday, “marking the third time in recent weeks she has weighed in on the health debate so directly,” Politico reports. Obama was joined by several House members, breast cancer survivors and advocates at the White House event.