Connecting You to Tomorrow's Biotechnology Innovations
November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month and in the United States, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women. The primary reason for high death rates for lung cancer is the fact that this disease is typically detected in very late stages, when treatment is often of little use. […]
Although national guidelines advise doctors to discuss the benefits and harms of lung cancer screening with high-risk patients because of a high rate of false positives and other factors, those conversations aren’t happening the way they should be, according to a study by researchers from the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Lung […]
Increasingly, doctors are treating lung cancer based on the genetic rearrangements driving the disease. For example, cancers that are driven by changes in the genes ALK, EGFR, and ROS1 can now all be paired with drugs that target these specific changes. However, these cancers are not only dangerous in the lung where they appear, but […]
(UPI) — High levels of a protein found in the bloodstreams of lung cancer patients may lead to a method of detecting the disease earlier, and possibly preventing deaths from it, according to a new study. Researchers found high levels of cytoskeleton-associated protein 4, or CKAP4, in the blood of cancer patients predicted their disease. […]
A drug given to early stage lung cancer patients before they undergo surgery showed major tumor responses in the removed tumor and an increase in anti-tumor T-cells that remained after the tumor was removed, which resulted in fewer relapse cases in the patients. The research teams at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, […]
A team of researchers, led by Professor Lim Chwee Teck from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and NUS PhD candidate Ms Lim Su Bin, has leveraged open source data to develop a personalised risk assessment tool that can potentially predict patient survival rate and treatment outcomes of early-stage […]
Merck & Co’s blockbuster drug Keytruda helped previously untreated lung cancer patients live longer in a late-stage trial, potentially cementing its position as the dominant player in the lucrative lung cancer market. Merck is already considered the frontrunner in the space and Keytruda is expected to earn peak sales of over $10 billion in 2023, […]
Research by Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey investigators has identified novel functions of the superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) enzyme providing support that it could serve as a therapeutic target in the most common type of lung cancer. Results of the work are being presented as part of a poster session at the American Association […]
Inhibition of the oncogenic kinase AKT, a key protein governing the cell cycle, was found to arrest cancer cell proliferation and triggered their programmed death by apoptosis. The study, published today in Oncogene, represents significant progress in the clinical translation of previous basic scientific discoveries. “Understanding the molecular features that govern cancer cell behavior is […]
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) identified thirdhand smoke, the toxic residues that linger on indoor surfaces and in dust long after a cigarette has been extinguished, as a health hazard nearly 10 years ago. Now a new study has found that it also increases lung cancer risk in […]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Imfinzi (durvalumab) for the treatment of patients with stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors are not able to be surgically removed (unresectable) and whose cancer has not progressed after treatment with chemotherapy and radiation (chemoradiation). “This is the first treatment approved for stage III […]
(Marketwatch) Merck KGaA and Pfizer Inc. said on Thursday that avelumab, a cancer immunotherapy, failed to meet the primary objective of a phase 3 trial in patients with a type of lung cancer. The trial didn’t meet the endpoint of improving overall survival in patients whose tumors are PD-L1 positive, the companies said. The Javelin […]
An immune-oncology focused biotechnology company, BriaCell, has provided a clinical update on its lead immunotherapy drug for advanced breast cancer. BriaCell provided further update on its ongoing clinical trial of Bria-IMT™ according to Protocol WRI-GEV-007 (listed in ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT03066947). Six patients have received inoculations since the trial began in early 2017, with the observation […]
Hard to detect in its early stages and hard to treat as it advances, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality around the world, with an estimated 1.6 million deaths each year. New treatments, however, are bettering the odds for people with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which makes up about 85 percent […]
According to the peer-reviewed article in the journal Scientific Reports, placenta-derived cells called PLX cells, exhibit a strong inhibitory effect on various lines of breast, colorectal, kidney, liver, lung, muscle and skin cancers. The research was conducted over more than two years by Pluristem Therapeutics, Inc., a Haifa-based biotechnology company. The article titled “Human Placental-Derived Adherent […]
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center are trying to answer that question by working to develop a blood test for early detection of lung cancer. National Institutes of Health awarded this endeavor a two-year $275,000 grant on Jan. 1. The availability of a simple and cost-effective blood test could change early detection of lung cancer, […]
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers and colleagues have identified a novel drug combination therapy that could prime nonsmall cell lung cancers to respond better to immunotherapy. These so-called epigenetic therapy drugs, used together, achieved robust anti-tumor responses in human cancer cell lines and mice. During the study, published Nov. 30, 2017, in the journal […]
Blood-Based Cancer Tests Reveal Complex Genomic Landscape of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancers A new UC San Francisco–led study challenges the dogma in oncology that most cancers are caused by one dominant “driver” mutation that can be treated in isolation with a single targeted drug. Instead, the new research finds one of the world’s most deadly […]
Cancer cells obtained from a blood test may be able to predict how early-stage lung cancer patients will fare, a team from the University of Michigan has shown. This information could be used to determine which patients are most likely to benefit from additional therapies to head off the spread of the cancer to other […]
Findings from a phase III clinical trial point to a potential new treatment for patients newly diagnosed with advanced, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Compared to the EGFR inhibitor gefitinib (Iressa), one of the standard targeted medicines for this disease, second-generation EGFR inhibitor dacomitinib delayed cancer growth by a median […]