News

The article by Posadas and Figlin on systemic therapy in advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) provides a very interesting and comprehensive review of our current knowledge concerning the treatment of RCC.

Axitinib has shown promising results in phase II and III trials, including the AXIS trial in patients with metastatic clear cell RCC who failed on other treatments.

A novel treatment method called stem cell educator therapy appears to reverse the effects of type 1 diabetes, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and colleagues in China report.

In this video, Dr. Neil Riordan, Founder and President of the Stem Cell Institute in Panama, discusses the scientific rationale for using adipose tissue-derived stem cells and T-regulatory cells to treat MS and rheumatoid arthritis.

Researchers in Israel have completed a clinical trial that successfully tested the use of gene therapy to restore sight to patients suffering from Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA).

Multiple myeloma (MM) remains incurable despite the current approaches used in initial therapy, including more effective induction therapy, one or more autologous stem-cell transplants, and consolidation/maintenance strategies.

In a Cleveland Clinic video, William Rigby, MD, of Dartmouth Medical School, discusses B-cell and T-cell-directed therapy for rheumatoid arthritis.

Diffuse large B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma is typically a chemotherapy-sensitive malignancy, justifying dose-intense therapy with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for patients unlikely to achieve cure with standard-dose regimens.

Stem cell-based therapy is an important potential treatment to restore vision in patients with a wide range of retina disease.

The authors of "ALK-Targeted Therapy for Lung Cancer: Ready for Prime Time," in this issue of ONCOLOGY, address the newest developments in the field of targeted therapies for advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

A study published online on May 10, 2011 in the British Journal of Cancer has shown evidence for a new prognostic factor in breast cancer: an increase in cancer stem cell population after primary systemic therapy. The study results indicate that putative cancer stem cells may be chemoresistant to conventional anthracycline-based chemotherapy and may have a role in disease progression following chemotherapy treatment.

Yankees' pitcher Bartolo Colon has resurrected his career with the help of a disputed therapy involving stem cell injections.

My 2002 article provided an overview of the various interleukin-2 (IL-2)–based treatment regimens that had been explored over the preceding two decades

Study shows that injection of experimental gene therapy reduces pain symptoms in patients with persistent, severe cancer pain.

The march toward personalized cancer care may have taken a step forward with the discovery of a potential biomarker

A gene therapy called NLX-P101 dramatically reduces movement impairment in Parkinson's patients.

A model example of personalized cancer therapy that has demonstrated improved patient outcomes is the use of anti-HER2 treatment. Breast cancer patients screened via molecular diagnostics and identified as having amplification of the HER2 gene generally have a poorer prognosis, but show better responses to anti-HER2 treatment.

Imatinib (Gleevec) improves the ability to proceed with allogeneic stem cell transplantation and improves 5-year overall survival (OS) when used as induction therapy in patients with Philadelphia chromosome positive (Ph ) acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in the United States.

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is diagnosed at an early stage, when it is amenable to surgical resection in approximately 20% to 25% of cases.

In the first in-human study fo human umbilical tissue-derived cells as cell-based therapy for retinal degenerative diseases, all seven patients tolerated the subretinal injection well and had no postoperative visual loss.

The dream that stem cell therapy may someday be used to protect against or restore glaucoma-related vision loss seems to be moving closer to reality.

Patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer achieved a significant increase in survival time when tumor treating fields (TTF) therapy was added to their chemotherapy. In a single-arm, phase II study, physicians delivered TTF therapy, using the NovoTTF-100L from Novocure, to 42 patients with stage IIIb-IV metastatic NSCLC who had failed prior treatments. Patients in the study received TTF therapy for 12 hours a day in combination with pemetrexed (Alimta) every three weeks until disease progression.

Research from Japan documenting remarkable survival rates among patients with inoperable lung cancer may only hint at the potential of proton-beam radiation therapy. The study out of the Proton Medical Research Center in Tennoudai, Japan, documented high survival rates for 55 patients suffering from stage I inoperable non-small-cell lung cancer.

Patients with incurable NSCLC are less likely to progress to second-linetherapy with the right maintenance regimen. But maintenance therapyalso means committing patients to continuous treatment without anybreaks or chances to recover from adverse events.

CAL-101 and GA101 demonstrate active results in indolent B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia while a secondary analysis of a pralatrexate (Folotyn) trial shows a benefit for peripheral T-cell lymphoma patients who fail second-line therapy.

The effectiveness of RT in the palliative setting is sometimes overlooked; however, RT can provide excellent palliation for patients whose disease becomes refractory to other modalities.