Cancer Currents: An NCI Cancer Research Blog
A blog featuring news and research updates from the National Cancer Institute.
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New Targeted Therapies Show Promise for Treating Advanced GISTTwo early-phase clinical trials testing new targeted therapies for advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) have produced promising preliminary results.
Both therapies are designed to shut down an aberrant molecular signaling pathway that drives most cases of GIST. The phase I trials are still ongoing, but the early results hint at their potential effectiveness in patients who have already tried several other treatments, shrinking or stabilizing tumors in some trial participants.
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Brain Cancer’s Cholesterol Addiction May Offer New Treatment StrategyTo survive and grow, brain cancer cells are heavily dependent on a constant supply of cholesterol provided by other brain cells, a new study suggests.
Moreover, the researchers found that brain cancer cells take in more cholesterol than normal brain cells and subvert normal mechanisms of cholesterol regulation, allowing them to stockpile cholesterol. But this dependency creates a potential vulnerability, the researchers showed. In mice with human brain tumors, treatment with a drug that depletes cholesterol killed tumor cells, slowed tumor growth, and improved survival.
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Single Tumor Cells Reveal Clues to Biology of Multiple MyelomaIndividual tumor cells circulating in the blood of patients with multiple myeloma may be a new source of information about the genetic changes driving the disease, according to the results of a pilot study.
In the study, researchers isolated individual tumor cells from the blood of patients with multiple myeloma. They then analyzed these cells and found that they provided as much, if not more, information about the genetic changes associated with multiple myeloma as cells collected from the bone marrow.
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FDA Approves New Use for Daratumumab in Multiple MyelomaThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two new uses for the drug daratumumab (Darzalex®) in patients with multiple myeloma.
Daratumumab was originally approved by the FDA in November 2015 as a stand-alone treatment for patients whose cancer has progressed after receiving at least three prior treatment regimens using standard combination therapies. Under the new approval, patients can receive daratumumab in combination with either of two other standard therapies if their disease has progressed after only a single prior treatment regimen.
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Immune-Cell Traps May Aid Cancer MetastasisCancer cells are infamous for recruiting normal cells to help them grow and spread. Now a new study suggests that cancer cells may exploit a normal function of neutrophils, the most common form of white blood cell, to help form metastatic tumors.
Other studies have linked neutrophils to cancer metastasis and suggested how they might achieve this task. This new study, the authors believe, may help to fill in some of the blanks in this process.
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FDA Approves Nivolumab for Head and Neck CancerThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved nivolumab (Opdivo®) on November 10 for the treatment of squamous cell cancer of the head and neck (SCCHN).
Nivolumab is already approved for the treatment of several other cancers. This new approval is for the use of nivolumab in patients with SCCHN that has progressed during chemotherapy with a platinum-based drug or that has recurred or metastasized after platinum-based chemotherapy.
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Prescription Subsidies Reduce Breast Cancer Treatment DisparitiesSubsidies for prescription drugs can increase the use of hormone therapies among women with early-stage breast cancer, according to the results of a new study. The subsidies may also help to decrease racial/ethnic disparities in the use of these medications, the study found.
According to the study authors, the findings suggest that, by improving the likelihood that patients will follow the prescribed treatment (adherence) and continue the treatment for the duration prescribed (persistence) for these adjuvant therapies, prescription subsidies could help reduce the risk of cancer returning in a sizable portion of women.
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Device Uses Cancer Cells' Mass to Predict Response to TreatmentScientists have designed a device that can detect minuscule changes in cell mass and may allow researchers to predict how cancer cells will respond to drug treatment. Such a device could potentially help clinicians determine personalized treatment regimens for individual patients, the study authors believe.
Using cancer cells from patients and mice, the researchers showed that the device, which measures changes in the mass of single cells, correctly predicted whether the cells were sensitive or resistant to a particular drug.
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NCI’s Office of Cancer Survivorship: Celebrating 20 Years, Planning for Continued ProgressThis year marks an important milestone for the cancer community: the 20th anniversary of NCI’s Office of Cancer Survivorship (OCS). I’ve been privileged to be the director of the OCS for 17 years, and every day I continue to be amazed by the progress we’ve made in advancing survivorship research over such a short period.
Established by NCI in 1996 as a result of an executive order signed by President Clinton, the office was created in recognition of the growing number of cancer survivors and the need for more research to better understand and meet their unique needs.
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More Immunotherapy Options Approved for Lung CancerThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new immunotherapy option for some patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and expanded the approval of another immunotherapy drug for NSCLC so that it is now available for more patients.
On October 18, the agency approved atezolizumab (Tecentriq®) for the treatment of metastatic NSCLC that has progressed during or after first-line chemotherapy with a platinum-based drug.
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Connected Health: An Important Tool for Making Progress against CancerIn the year 2000, when I was director of NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, only about half of U.S. adults had Internet access. The first iPhone was still 7 years in the future. Few health systems used electronic health records (EHRs) for patient care, and the notion of patients communicating with their health providers and accessing their health records via their own computers was science fiction for most people.
There were—and still are, to a lesser extent—large disparities by age and race in access to and use of the Internet, and at NCI, we were already focused on overcoming this “digital divide.” WiFi was not ubiquitous, and I remember many offsite meetings where we had to go outside to get a wireless signal.
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CDC Updates Recommendations on HPV VaccineAdolescents younger than age 15 need only two doses of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, given at least 6 months apart, instead of three doses, according to new recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
Teenagers and young adults between ages 15 and 26 and people with weakened immune systems who start the HPV vaccine series should still get three doses of the vaccine to prevent cancers associated with HPV infection, the CDC and ACIP said.
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Symposium Brings Rising Global Cancer Burden into FocusExperts gathered last month to discuss a topic that is garnering greater attention and interest by world health groups and within the cancer community: the expanding global burden of cancer, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Until recently, cancer in many of these countries has been a secondary health concern, with public health efforts focused more on communicable diseases like malaria or HIV.
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Olaratumab Approved to Treat Advanced Soft Tissue SarcomaThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted accelerated approval to olaratumab (Lartruvo®) for the treatment of some patients with soft tissue sarcoma.
The approval is for the use of olaratumab in combination with doxorubicin in patients with sarcoma that cannot be cured by radiation therapy or surgery and for whom anthracycline-based chemotherapy would be an appropriate treatment.
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Scientists Identify Potential Marker of Resistance to PARP InhibitorsA team led by NCI researchers has identified a potential biomarker that could help predict whether a tumor will respond to a relatively new class of targeted cancer drugs known as PARP inhibitors.
The team’s findings, published September 27 in Oncotarget, showed that cancer cell lines with high expression levels of the gene SLFN11 were more sensitive than cells with low SLFN11 expression to the PARP inhibitors olaparib (Lynparza™) and talazoparib. Cancer cell lines in which the SLFN11 gene was inactivated were resistant to both drugs.
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‘Unexpected’ Vulnerability Creates Treatment Opportunity in Aggressive Type of Lung CancerResearchers have identified a potentially critical weakness in lung cancers that have mutations in the KRAS gene, a cancer-promoting genetic alteration that has proven nearly impossible to target therapeutically. Moreover, the research team showed that a drug already being tested against other types of cancer could successfully exploit this vulnerability in KRAS mutant lung cancer cell lines and mouse models of lung cancer.
The weakness lies in the dependency of KRAS mutant lung cancer cells on a protein, called XPO1, that helps to shuttle molecules involved in important cellular functions from the cell nucleus into the surrounding cytoplasm. The XPO1 inhibitor shrank tumors in several different mouse models of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)—the most common form of lung cancer—with KRAS mutations.
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DINO RNA Molecule Triggers Anticancer Response in Damaged CellsResearchers from Stanford University have identified an important molecule involved in the process that normally causes irreparably damaged cells to self-destruct. This molecule, a type of RNA they nicknamed DINO, helps regulate a vital tumor suppressor protein called p53, which is inactivated in more than half of all cancers.
In DINO, "we've found a new guardian of your genome," said Howard Chang, Ph.D., who led the study. His lab's experiments showed that, once cells accumulate a dangerous amount of genomic damage, the DINO (short for Damage Induced NOncoding) RNA takes part in a process that stabilizes the p53 protein so that it can initiate the self-destruct program, called apoptosis.
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Modified Immunotherapy Approach Shows Promise for LeukemiaAn immunotherapy approach that uses a new method of preparing immune cells may provide a potential treatment option for some patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), results from an early-stage clinical trial suggest.
In the phase I trial, researchers collected the immune cells, called natural killer (NK) cells, from donors, manipulated them to be better cancer killers, and infused the cells into patients with AML who had previously exhausted all other treatment options. The approach—which uses a new method of manipulating NK cells that is different from those used in prior studies—led to partial or complete remissions in five out of the nine patients who could be evaluated. It also appeared to be safe, with patients experiencing only minor side effects.
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Metabolomics Study Reveals another Energy Source for Cancer CellsResearchers have discovered another way that cancer cells may produce the energy they need to survive and grow.
Using new metabolomics technologies, the researchers found that cancer cells can use the compound lactate to fuel biochemical reactions and to generate other compounds needed for cell growth, such as lipids to build new cellular membranes. Metabolomics is the science of measuring small molecules, such as glucose, amino acids, and cholesterol, within a biological sample.
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New on NCI Websites for October 2016NCI’s cancer information products are constantly evolving and growing, so periodically we provide updates on new content of interest to the cancer community.