Here's a quote from NYT today: "Stomach cancer patients who received Herceptin in addition to standard chemotherapy lived a median of 13.8 months compared with 11.1 months for those who treated with standard chemotherapy alone." Herceptin? So this is a survival improvement of almost three months in a tough to treat area. If true this result makes herceptin FDA approvable for gastric cancer. It appears that the drug is being used in patients with a high Her-2 level in their original tumors though details are scanty.

The question I get most often as an oncologist is "Is there anything else I can do to prevent a recurrence of my cancer?" So far the answers are few and far between. If you'd asked me about two years ago I would have said that a low-fat diet would prevent the recurrence of breast cancer. The work is still being done on that question but two studies have failed to confirm the initial promising results so I have stopped giving that advice. Wine consumption prior to a lymphoma diagnosis is protective according to a research paper presented at the AACR annual meeting going on now.