New paper out this week shows alcohol is probably not correlated with the breast cancer precursor malignancy, DCIS or ductal carcinoma in situ.

We know that excess alcohol is related to risk of breast cancer, and so one would suspect a link through increased DCIS leading to increased breast cancer, yet this proved not to be the case in the current study.

By the way, no news organization picked this up today, though I thought it makes for some interesting news.

Journal of the American Dietetic Association reports this week that your diet before diagnosis with ovarian cancer affects your longevity, and by quite a bit.»

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This was in NEJM this week. 

"Ten years after treatment, accelerated, hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation was not inferior to standard radiation treatment in women who had undergone breast-conserving surgery for invasive breast cancer with clear surgical margins and negative axillary nodes."

Andrew Pollack is probably the single most influential health writer in America. He has the bully pulpit the closest thing to a national platform. His reporting is excellent balanced and thorough. I had the privilege of speaking with him in April 2009 for a tamoxifen article though he did not quote me in the story. So it was somewhat provocative that Mr. Pollack seems not altogether happy about the trend towards maintenance therapy. Higher costs longer treatment.

Salt Lake City April 8 2009 -- Myriad Pharmaceuticals Inc. announced today that the FDA has approved an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to begin a Phase 1 clinical study with its Hsp90 inhibitor MPC-3100 for the treatment of cancer. The clinical development plan for MPC-3100 is designed to expedite the drug candidate through the clinical development path. The Phase 1 trial will assess the safety and pharmacokinetics profile of MPC-3100.

A microbiology meeting this week held out a tantalizing bit of data: the food we eat influences the types of bacteria that grow in our colons. Diets high in complex carbohydrates encouraged the growth of favorable bacteria that produced beneficial chemicals and vitamins. Diets high in meat encouarged the growth of less favorable bacteria which might contribute to the production of carcinogenic substances in the gut.

Malignant breast masses often show evidence of increased blood flow compared to normal tissue or benign masses. Using 3-D power Doppler ultrasound radiologists are able to identify vessels with higher flow speeds which likely designate cancer. Lead author Dr. LeCarpentier Ph.D. assistant professor in the Department of Radiology at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and colleagues took out a study on 78 women between the ages of 26 and 70 who where scheduled for biopsy of a suspicious breast mass.

A study undertaken by Dr. Mark Heaney and colleagues at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York published findings yesterday claiming that Vitamin C supplements may reduce the efficacy of cancer drugs including Novartis' Gleevec. Vitamin C treated human cancer cells were tested with chemotherapy drugs in lab dishes. The drugs administered killed between thirty and seventy percent less tumour cells than if the human cancer cells had not been treated with Vitamin C. The results were published in the medical research journal Cancer Research.

In what has been called by Medical News Today "a significant breakthrough in the fight against two of the world's deadliest cancers" scientists in the US have mapped out the complete genetic blueprint of more than twenty thousand genes that are involved in 24 pancreatic cancers and 22 brain cancers. The genetic mapping includes not only the single gene mutation but also the pathways which connect them and which help to keep the tumors growing and developing.

PF-3512676 passes Phase II test in lung cancer Immune molecule shows promising result in early study