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Virtual Reality Is a Tool for Education, Relaxation for Nurses and Patients
Simulated experiences using virtual reality (VR) can help oncology nurses alleviate a patient’s anxiety before undergoing treatment, provide comfort in palliative care settings, and serve as an educational tool for both nurses and patients.
Oncologist Burnout Could Be Rising for These Reasons
While other physician specialties have seen a decline in burnout, oncologists are reporting slightly higher rates of burnout. Medscape's "Physician Burnout and Depression Report 2024" surveyed 9,226 physicians across 29 specialties between July 5 and Oct. 9. In the rankings, 53% of oncologists said they experienced burnout. This is a 1% increase over the 2023 report, though oncologists jumped to the second-most burned out specialty, up from the 12th spot in 2023.
How Serious Is FDA Warning About Revolutionary Blood-Cancer Treatment?
The Food and Drug Administration announced in December 2023 that it’s investigating reports of secondary cancers in patients who received CAR T-cell therapy, one of a suite of immunotherapies that have revolutionized cancer care over the past decade. The treatment reprograms a patient’s T cells, a key part of the immune system, to recognize and attack cancer cells.
Clinical Biomarkers Are the Key to Precision Medicine in Prostate Cancer
Current treatment approaches increasingly rely on cancer biomarkers to gain information about a patient's cancer to predict which treatment may work best for them, a practice known as precision medicine. At a fundamental level, precision medicine focuses on selecting the right treatment, for the right patient, at the right time to optimize health outcomes. Precision medicine looks at genetics, the environment, and lifestyle of a patient and accounts for specific information about the cancerous tumor to aide in diagnosis, estimate prognosis, select therapy, and monitor the efficacy of treatment.
Diet and Exercise Interventions Improve Chemotherapy Outcomes for Women With Breast Cancer: Study
A new Yale Cancer Center study finds a targeted diet and exercise intervention could improve outcomes for women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. In the study, published September 1 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, women recently diagnosed with breast cancer targeted were offered interventions aimed at adopting dietary and physical activity guidelines with the goal of fighting chemotoxicity and improving therapy adherence.
Scientists Employ AI To Predict Brain Cancer Outcomes
Stanford Medicine scientists and colleagues create an algorithm that could help physicians better understand and target complicated brain tumors.
Expanding the Impact of CAR T Cell Therapy: An Immunotherapy Strategy Against All Blood Cancers
A broad new strategy could hold hope for treating virtually all blood cancers with CAR T cell therapy, which is currently approved for five subtypes of blood cancer. Scientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the potential efficacy of this approach in preclinical tests.
A New Targeted Treatment Shows Promise for Select Patients with Stomach Cancer
An international phase 3 clinical trial, done in participation with Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian, found that a new targeted treatment called zolbetuximab, given in combination with a standard chemotherapy, extended survival for patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer that overexpressed a specific biomarker. If approved, zolbetuximab will be the first targeted therapy in the U.S. for patients with previously untreated advanced gastric or esophageal junction cancer that is human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative and overexpresses the protein claudin-18 isoform 2 (CLDN 18.2).
THIO Followed by Cemiplimab Shows Early Promise in Advanced NSCLC
The sequential combination of THIO (6-thio-2’-deoxyguanosine) and cemiplimab (Libtayo) provided a progression-free survival (PFS) benefit in the first 2 patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) enrolled to the part A safety lead-in portion of the phase 2 THIO-101 trial (NCT05208944).
AI Model Could Help Improve Outcomes Of Prostate Cancer Focal Therapy
Scientists at UCLA developed an AI model that helps determine how extensive cancer is within the prostate gland. In a series of tests, the AI model was found to be more accurate at predicting tumor margins than magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), potentially improving the effectiveness of focal therapy, standardizing treatment margin definition, and reducing the chance of cancer recurrence.
Risk Factors for Nasopharyngeal Cancer
A risk factor is anything that raises a person’s chance of getting a disease such as cancer. Different cancers have different risk factors. Some risk factors, like smoking or diet, can be changed. Others, like a person's age or family history, can’t be changed. But risk factors don’t tell us everything. Having a risk factor, or even many risk factors, does not mean that you will get the disease. And many people who get the disease may have few or no known risk factors. This article spotlights some of the risk factors that make a person more likely to develop nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC).
PD-1/CTLA-4 Combination Drives Progress Across Tumor Types
Immunotherapy has been unsuccessful in advanced solid tumors refractory to standard therapy, including PD-1 and CTLA-4, because of hostile tumor microenvironments. The tide has begun to change, however, with the advent of a novel combination that can penetrate cold and immunotherapy-refractory tumors.
Awareness of the HPV-Cancer Connection, Vaccine Rates Are Lagging
Fewer Americans are aware of the fact that the human papillomavirus (HPV) can cause certain types of cancer, and vaccination rates against the virus are lagging, according to recent research presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2023
Ultra-Processed Foods May Be Linked To Increased Risk Of Cancer
Higher consumption of ultra-processed foods may be linked to an increased risk of developing and dying from cancer, an Imperial College London-led observational study suggests.
Exercise As Medicine In The Treatment Of Cancer
In 1996 there were four randomized controlled trials that had tested the effects of exercise on outcomes within people living with and beyond cancer. By 2010, there were 82 exercise and cancer trials. But by 2018, there were over 680 trials noted in the National Library of Medicine. As a result of that exponential increase in evidence, sixteen major medical associations came together in 2018 to review the evidence and develop exercise guidance.
First Test Of Anti-Cancer Agent PAC-1 In Human Clinical Trials Shows Promise
A phase I clinical trial of PAC-1, a drug that spurs programmed cell death in cancer cells, found only minor side effects in patients with end-stage cancers. The drug stalled the growth of tumors in the five people in the trial with neuroendocrine cancers and reduced tumor size in two of those patients. It also showed some therapeutic activity against sarcomas, scientists and clinicians report in the British Journal of Cancer.
NCI Study Advances Personalized Immunotherapy For Metastatic Breast Cancer
An experimental form of immunotherapy that uses an individual’s own tumor-fighting immune cells could potentially be used to treat people with metastatic breast cancer, according to results from an ongoing clinical trial led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Center for Cancer Research.
Early Cancer Therapeutics Group
The Early Cancer Therapeutics Group at Mayo Clinic offers patients whose cancers haven’t responded to standard chemotherapy or other treatments the opportunity to join an early-phase clinical trial of a potential new treatment.
How Melanoma Prepares Lymph Nodes for Metastases
Melanoma cells release small extracellular packages containing the protein nerve growth factor receptor (NGFR), which primes nearby lymph nodes for tumor metastases, according to a new study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators.