For decades, esophageal cancer has defied scientific attempts to discover a therapy that extends patients’ survival, year after year claiming the lives of such illustrious people as Humphrey Bogart, Christopher Hitchens and Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas. Now a large clinical trial offers hope, finding that a drug that…...

Melanoma skin cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the UK, with around 16,200 people diagnosed each year. And in the last decade the number of cases in men have increased by 47%. A new link between higher levels of testosterone in the blood and increased risk of melanoma skin…...

A couple of years ago, Joseph Shrager, MD, professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Stanford School of Medicine, noticed a statistical anomaly in his practice. It seemed that patients were diagnosed with lung cancer at a surprisingly higher rate at 65 years old than, say, at 64 or 66. “There was…...

Over the last several decades, certain foods have been vilified as being potentially carcinogenic, or capable of causing cancer. So which ones are the biggest culprits? And how can you eat to prevent cancer or reduce the chances of a recurrence if you’ve been diagnosed? Below are the foods at the…...

New research offers insight into why regular, long-term use of low-dose aspirin may reduce the risk of death from colon and rectal cancers. Researchers have found that aspirin prevents blood cells called platelets from producing an enzyme that allows them to clump together. Tumor cells can often attach to these…...

Barrett’s oesophagus is a condition that can lead to oesophageal cancer in a small number of people. It’s usually diagnosed in hospital by endoscopy (passing a camera down into the stomach) following a GP referral for longstanding heartburn symptoms. The Cytosponge test, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge,…...

A novel formulation of the prostate cancer drug abiraterone acetate — currently marketed as Zytiga — will dramatically improve the quality of life for people suffering from prostate cancer, as pre-clinical trials by the University of South Australia show the new formulation improves the drug’s effectiveness by 40 per cent.…...

Breast cancer patients who are overweight or obese might benefit less from treatment with docetaxel, a common chemotherapy drug, than lean patients. An international team of researchers based this conclusion on a retrospective analysis of data from a large clinical trial. In most European countries, more than 50% of women…...

In the watery inside of a cell, complex processes take place in tiny functional compartments called organelles. These compartments are bound by thin membranes. But in the past few years, research at Whitehead Institute and elsewhere has shown that there are other cellular organelles held together without a membrane. These…...

Brief points covered in the America Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting I held on April 27-28th: -Treating BRAF-Positive Melanoma by adding checkpoint inhibitor Tecentriq (atezolizumab) to a combination of two targeted drugs Zelboraf (vemurafenib) and Cotellic (cobimetinib) -PARP Inhibitor (targeted drugs that inhibit DNA damage repair) are…...