Tesaro nausea drug effective in late-stage trials

(Reuters) - Tesaro Inc said its experimental drug for treating chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting was found effective in two late-stage studies.

The trials tested the drug, rolapitant, in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy that can induce vomiting.

The patients either received a combination of two drugs to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy or rolapitant plus the two-drug combo.

Tesaro said it continued to enroll patients in a third late-stage trial of the drug, and was preparing for a marketing approval application by mid-2014.

(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

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Burkitt's Lymphoma of the NIH study found low-intensity therapy is very effective

Known as an excellent long term survival rate have of adult patients with burkitt's lymphoma cancer type-90% or more-treated with low intensity regimen, according to the discovery of a new clinical trial in below. Burkitt's lymphoma is the most aggressive type of lymphoma cancer begins in the cells of the immune system.

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Targeted radiation therapy safe, effective treatment for elderly with pancreatic cancer

Sep. 24, 2013 — A highly targeted cancer radiation therapy may offer a safe and effective treatment option for elderly pancreatic cancer patients unable to undergo surgery or combined chemotherapy and radiation therapy, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Called stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT), the study finds patients lived, on average, six to seven months longer following treatment with minimal side-effects even when they had other severe comorbidities such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease and diabetes.

Two of the patients in the study lived nearly two years.

“Elderly individuals, those ages 75 and older, account for approximately 40 percent of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,” says study lead author Raphael Yechieli, M.D., with the Department of Radiation Oncology at Henry Ford Hospital.

“These patients are too ill to receive any other treatment, but with stereotactic body radiotherapy we’re able to deliver a safe and effective treatment in two weeks that can provide them with a substantial quality of life with minimal side effects.”

The study was presented at the 55nd annual American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) meeting in Atlanta.

In 2013, there will be an estimated 45,220 new cases of pancreatic cancer, and approximately 38,460 will die from the disease, according to the National Cancer Institute. Risk factors for pancreatic cancer include smoking, diabetes, obesity, family history of the disease and pancreatitis. Most people diagnosed with the disease are older than 65.

Surgery is the only known cure for resectable pancreatic cancer, where the cancer is localized to the pancreas and hasn't spread. It is estimated that only 20 percent of pancreatic cancer patients have their tumors present with localized disease amendable to surgical removal.

A select number of those patients, however, are not candidates for surgery due to having other co-morbidities such as COPD, heart disease and diabetes. This leaves only chemotherapy and radiation, or a combination of the two, available for treatment.

But for a large portion of elderly patients with localized pancreatic cancer even chemotherapy and radiation therapy are not options.
The Henry Ford study looked to determine if SBRT – a method of giving radiation that can be highly targeted to the tumor, sparing the normal tissue around it – was a viable option for this group of patients. SBRT provides a higher dose of radiation, meaning patients have fewer treatments. In this case, treatment averaged two weeks.

The study included 20 patients with a median age of 83, all of whom were medically unable to tolerate surgery or combined chemo-radiation therapy. The majority of patients in the study (90 percent) received SBRT treatment at the time of diagnosis.

Seven patients reported side-effects from treatment: nausea, vomiting and fatigue.

Among the patients: 13 had a recurrence of cancer; nine had cancer spread from the original tumor to distant organs or distant lymph nodes.

Median overall survival was 6.7 months, and median recurrence-free survival was 8.1 months. At six months post-treatment, 61 percent of patients were alive; two patients in the study survived nearly two years.

“National trends tell us that very few patients over the age of 75 are getting any treatment at all for pancreatic cancer due to comorbidity risks,” notes Dr. Yechieli. “So we want to push the envelope to give them a treatment option that, while not a cure, is short, effective and safe, and has the potential to give them a good quality of life.”

The next step in this research, Dr. Yechieli says, is to closely follow patients after SBRT and get their direct feedback to measure post-treatment quality of life.

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Proton therapy is cost effective for patients with pediatric brain tumor treatment.

Research affecting mainly children when healthy organs and tissues, spare the Proton line treatment cost effectiveness, external beam radiation therapy were compared with spinal cord and a standard photon radiation therapy, providing accurate tumor dose Proton, announced that the fast-growing brain tumor treatments in the 55 annual general meeting of the American Society of radiation therapy (Astro Boy) by researchers from the Mount Auburn hospital, according to Harvard Medical School (Dana Farber Cancer Institute component) of is a teaching hospital.

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Dyslexia: E-readers 'more effective'

18 September 2013 Last updated at 20:31 ET

A person with dyslexia has difficulty "decoding" words

Short lines of text on electronic devices may help some dyslexic readers increase their reading speed and comprehension, research suggests.

US scientists studied 100 pupils reading on paper and e-readers.

On the device, those who struggled most with sight-word reading read faster and those with limited visual attention spans had better comprehension.

The ability to display text in short lines with fewer words helped pupils focus on each word, they told Plos One.

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Dyslexia

• Dyslexia is one of the most common learning difficulties
• In England, 4%-8% of schoolchildren thought to have some degree of dyslexia
• Dyslexia affects people of all ethnic backgrounds, although a person's native language can play a role
• A language where there is a clear connection between how a word is written and how it sounds, and consistent grammatical rules, such as Italian and Spanish, can be easier for a person with dyslexia.
• Source: NHS Choices

Lead researcher Dr Matthew Schneps, from the Science Education Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told BBC News: "The key factor that's important in the effect being helpful is that there's a few words per line.

"We think that could apply on paper, the blackboard or on any device."

He said dyslexia came in many varieties, but some people may be helped by adjustments to the text that were visual in nature.

"If people are struggling to read they may want to try to simply blow the text up in their small computer-like device to see if having fewer words helps," he said.

Commenting on the study, the British Dyslexia Association said e-book formats and readers were more accessible as they had a large range of font, size, spacing and colour options.

"They can also instantly provide definitions of words from built-in dictionaries," a representative said.

"Additional text-to-speech software can make them even more accessible and ensure that reading is less challenging and remove the stigma that is so often associated for those who can't read."

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Shorter Radiation Course Appears Effective for Early Breast Cancer

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 18 (HealthDay News) -- In women with early breast cancer, three weeks of high-dose radiation is as effective as the current standard -- five weeks of lower-dose treatment, British researchers say.

A short course of radiation given in larger doses -- an approach called hypofractionated radiation -- is safe and effective and causes less damage to healthy surrounding tissue, according to the 10-year results of two British trials. The short course is also more convenient and less expensive.

"For most indications, a three-week course of postoperative radiotherapy can be recommended as standard of care for women with early breast cancer following breast conservation surgery or mastectomy," said study researcher Dr. John Yarnold, a professor of clinical oncology at the Institute of Cancer Research in London.

"Three weeks of treatment is gentler on the healthy tissues without loss of anti-cancer effect, so it represents an improvement for women with early breast cancer," he added.

The report, published Sept. 19 in The Lancet Oncology, may not change current practice immediately, however, said Dr. Stephanie Bernik, chief of surgical oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

The short course is "a great alternative and may eventually replace long-term radiation," Bernik said. But she thinks studies conducted in the United States are needed to convince U.S. oncologists of the benefits.

"They want a little experience with it before they start doing it automatically," she added. "But you will probably see it more and more."

Already, some places in the United States use the three-week course, she said, adding, "we have been waiting for the results of a long-term study."

In this case, between 1999 and 2002, researchers conducted two trials -- U.K. Standardization of Breast Radiotherapy, known as START A and B. The trials tested different radiation doses and timing schedules among 4,451 women treated at 35 centers across the United Kingdom.

START A compared the international standard -- a total of 50 Gy given in 25 small doses over five weeks -- with two other schedules: 41.6 Gy and 39 Gy, each given in 13 treatments over five weeks.

START B compared the international standard with 40 Gy given in 15 doses of 2.67 Gy over three weeks.

Over 10 years of follow-up, the results of START A were similar regardless of the dose of radiation. In all three cases, the cancer relapse rate was about the same, ranging from 6.3 percent to 8.8 percent. Damage to surrounding tissue was also similar regardless of the dose of radiation, the researchers noted.

In START B, similar results were also seen after 10 years, with relapses ranging from 5.5 percent to 4.3 percent. Damage to surrounding tissue, however, was significantly less than in START A, the researchers found.

The outcomes of the two trials were independent of age, tumor grade, stage, chemotherapy use, or use of tumor bed boost -- additional radiation therapy, the study authors pointed out.

More information

For more information on breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.

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