Results of the Cedars-Sinai study, which appear in the Oct. 1 issue of the Journal of Immunology, support the idea that medications attacking the enzyme may also boost the immune system's ability to recognize and target cancer cells. "When secreted, COX-2 shuts down the immune system," said Dr. John Yu, the study's principal investigator. "We would hope to incorporate use of COX-2 inhibitors in all patients with brain tumors."

Vioxx was withdrawn from the market last month after twice as many patients taking it for at least 18 months suffered heart attacks and strokes during a 2,600-patient trial of the drug's ability to curb precancerous colon polyps. Merck also halted two other cancer-related studies of the drug -- one in men at risk of prostate cancer and another related to preventing colon cancer.

Using brain cancer cells, the Cedars-Sinai researchers said laboratory tests showed that COX-2 set in motion a series of interactions that altered messages sent to dendritic cells, which are responsible for detecting foreign matter and instructing cancer-killing cells to attack the tumor. But T-cells circulating in the bloodstream showed a regulatory response against the patient's cancer cells, the study found. "By using COX-2 inhibitors, these tumors may become more detectable and therefore more vulnerable to destruction by the immune system," Yu said. He said Cedars-Sinai plans to add drugs like Celebrex to its clinical trials for brain tumors. "Studies need to be done to see if there is relevance to other cancers," Yu added.

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Brain Disease Rates Soaring, Pollution Link Cited-(Yahoo News- 18/08/2004)

Deaths from brain diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neuron disease appear to have soared in the past two decades in the world's most developed nations, and researchers are blaming the increase on higher levels of pesticides, industrial chemicals, car exhaust and other pollutants. A report on the study by a Southampton University team, published in the journal Public Health, finds that dementia rates have trebled in men and increased by 90 per cent among women, according to The Independent.

In the late 1970s, there were about 3,000 deaths a year from brain diseases in England and Wales. At the end of the last decade, that figure had risen to 10,000, researchers found. The study examined rates of the diseases in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the U.K. and the United States between 1979 and 1997.

Meanwhile, from Spain came more hopeful news: An ingredient in marijuana may be useful for treating brain cancers, Spanish researchers reported Sunday. The chemicals called cannabinoids could starve tumors to death by halting the growth of blood vessels that feed them, according to a team from Complutense University in Madrid. Their research, published in the Aug. 15 issue of Cancer Research, showed that the cannabis extracts block a key chemical needed for tumors to sprout blood vessels -- a process called angiogenesis.

And for the first time, the team has shown the cannabinoids impede this chemical in people with the most aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme, which is notoriously difficult to treat. They took samples from two patients with glioblastoma multiforme who had not responded to surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment, BBC reported. Samples were taken before and after the patients were treated with cannabinoid solution infused directly into the tumor. In both patients, the tumor was reduced following treatment.

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Combo Therapy Slows Incurable Brain Tumors- (HealthDayNews -16/08/2004)

A combination of immune therapy and chemotherapy slows incurable brain tumors and extends patient survival, says a study in the Aug. 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research. Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center found this approach slowed tumor progression and lengthened survival of patients with aggressive and incurable brain tumors called glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). This method lengthened survival to about 26 months, compared to 18 months for patients who received immune vaccine alone and 16 months for patients who received chemotherapy alone.

Five of the 12 patients (41.7 percent) who received the combination treatment survived longer than two years, compared with one of the 12 (8.3 percent) who received the vaccine alone and one of 12 who received chemotherapy alone. Two patients in the combined therapy lived longer than three years. No patients in the other two groups lived that long. "We've very excited abut the results. Obviously they need to be confirmed in a randomized trail, but assuming these outcomes are reproducible, it would be extremely gratifying to see this kind of increase in survival for such a devastating disease," researcher Dr. Keith L. Black, director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai, said in a prepared statement.

Although he and his colleagues don't know exactly how this combination therapy works, they believe it's a one-two punch. The anti-tumor vaccine delivers the initial blow against the tumor cells, increasing their vulnerability to the chemotherapy drugs.

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Vaccine targeting cancer-related antigens in brain tumors appears to prolong survival -(Yahoo news-15/07/2004)

Researchers seeking to direct cancer-killing immune cells against the deadliest brain tumors have three new targets that show promise in laboratory studies and in a Phase I patient trial, according to two articles in the July 15 issue of the journal Cancer Research. 

The antigens, previously associated with several other types of cancer cells, were recently found to be expressed in the most common and aggressive type of malignant brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Scientists at Cedars-Sinai's Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute and the National Cancer Institute have generated cytotoxic T lymphocyte clones (cancer-killing immune cells) that recognize GBM cells expressing these antigens.

"In a Phase I clinical trial of 14 patients, we found that our dendritic cell vaccine not only generated an immune response against these antigens but it appeared to play a significant role in prolonging survival in patients with glioblastoma," said Keith L. Black, MD, director of the Institute, the Division of Neurosurgery and the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program at Cedars-Sinai.

The median length of survival of patients with recurrent glioblastoma whose treatment included the vaccine was 133 weeks – about two and a half years. A similar group of patients receiving the same level of care but not the vaccine had a median survival of only 30 weeks – seven and a half months.

John S. Yu, MD, senior author of the articles and co-director of the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program, said these findings represent a significant advance in the field of brain tumor immunotherapy.

"This is the first time that a specific response to brain tumor antigens has been demonstrated as the result of an immunotherapy strategy," he said. "These antigens give us specific targets to aim for and they give us potent tools with which to measure immune responses. Therefore, we have a better way of monitoring the progress of patients who undergo vaccination and we have a means of improving these therapies."

In recent years, scientists have identified several tumor-specific antigens that appear to play a role in the development of certain cancer cells. The body's natural defensive cells, T lymphocytes, have the capacity to attack "foreign" proteins, but cancer cells and the antigens they express typically evade recognition by the immune system. Therefore, cancer researchers search for new antigens that may serve as targets, devise new methods to make the targets "visible" and vulnerable to immune cells, and seek new ways to multiply the number of cancer-killing cells responding to the threat.

"These three antigens – HER2, gp100, and MAGE-1 – have been described since the 1980s but we have only recently found them to be expressed in glioblastoma cells," said Dr. Black.

HER-2 is expressed in a variety of normal tissues, but it is selectively overexpressed in a number of malignancies, including breast and ovarian tumors. Glycoprotein 100 (gp100) is an antigen linked to melanoma. MAGE-1, initially analyzed from melanomas and found to be expressed in a variety of tumor types, became the first identified tumor antigen recognized by the immune system's protective T cells.

In earlier studies at other centers, a cancer vaccine combining MAGE-1 cells with specially cultured immune system cells was able to produce a tumor-specific immune response among patients with melanoma. Clinical trials using gp100 as a target in melanoma and HER-2 as a target in several types of cancers also demonstrated that the antigens elicit a strong immune response that continues even after the vaccinations have ended.

Since then, researchers have worked to develop a number of therapies that may be used individually or in combination to target malignant brain tumors. Dendritic cell immunotherapy is intended to stimulate a patient's immune system to recognize and attack glioblastoma cells. Tumor cells that have been removed during surgery are cultured in the laboratory with dendritic cells, also called "antigen-presenting" cells, taken from the patient's blood. The resulting cells are injected back into the patient, where they are designed to identify brain tumor cells as invaders and stimulate a strong response from tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes.

In an earlier Phase I trial, tumor cells were grown in culture, and proteins from the cell surfaces were used in preparing the vaccine. In the Phase I trial described in the Cancer Research article, this process was refined.

"Now we take the proteins directly from the surgical specimen, which ensures that we are getting the relevant proteins and not antigens or proteins that are artifacts of the culturing process. This also avoids the technical problems of trying to grow out tumor cells that have been irradiated and undergone chemotherapy," Dr. Yu said. "In addition, instead of just drawing blood to obtain a patient's dendritic cells, we're using a process that allows us to get 25-fold more dendritic cells. This may account for the dramatic prolongation of survival that we see compared to our control patients."

Dr. Black said a larger Phase II trial of the dendritic cell vaccine is now being completed and the researchers are preparing to apply for a randomized Phase III trial.

In the lab studies described in Cancer Research, seven established GBM tumor cell lines and cells from 43 GBM tumors removed from patients at Cedars-Sinai were analyzed and compared with normal brain tissue. MAGE-1 was not detected in normal tissue. Although HER-2 and gp100 were detected in normal tissue, this does not preclude their potential usefulness. In previous studies with different tumor types, HER-2 and gp100 were overexpressed in cancer cells, while in normal cells they were expressed at levels below the "threshold" for activation by the immune system.

Furthermore, because healthy neural cells are of a histocompatibility type that does not interact with cytotoxic T cells, the immune system will not launch an attack on normal tissue expressing the antigens. In contrast, however, the surfaces of GBM tumor cells were found to express Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Class I molecules, the type that makes them vulnerable to interaction with cytotoxic T lymphocytes.

The researchers documented that HER-2, gp100 and MAGE-1 are frequently expressed in glioblastoma cells. They generated cytotoxic T lymphocyte clones specific to each antigen and cultured them with GBM cells. The brain tumor cells were able to naturally process the antigens, and the lymphocytes were able to process the antigen-derived peptides or proteins on the surfaces of the GBM cells. 

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Early Chemo Promising Vs. Brain Cancer-(ET-07/06/2004)

Early low-dose chemotherapy appears to substantially improve short-term survival in patients with the most aggressive and common form of brain cancer, offering the first significant advance against the disease in decades. Whether the treatment can help cure brain cancer remains to be seen, but the approach at least seems to slow the often rapid progression of the disease for some. The treatment, tested in a form of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme, involves the drug Temodar. Until now, the medicine has typically been used only after radiation to shrink the tumor. A major international study shows that giving low doses of the capsule at the very start - for six or seven weeks during and after radiation - doubles the chance of being alive two years later. "This is the first trial that has been clearly positive in brain cancer in 30 years," said Dr. M.J. van den Bent of the Daniel den Hoed Oncology Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. "This is a great day."

Radiation and surgery are the first-line treatments for glioblastomas, but even with them the disease usually kills within a year or less. Intravenous chemotherapy available since the 1970s improves these odds only marginally and can have serious side effects. Several doctors predicted that upfront Temodar will quickly become the new standard of care, routinely offered to all victims of this disease. "To be able to tell people they may have two or three years of survival rather than nine months is pretty major," said Dr. Adam Mamelak of City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif., who was not involved in the study. The study was conducted and financed by the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer and released in New Orleans at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. It was done at more than 80 hospitals in Europe, Canada and Australia.

The study's director, Dr. Roger Stupp of University Hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland, said patients found the drug easy to take, and fatigue was the most common ill effect. "We have started with the most malignant and devastating form" of brain cancer, he said. The next step will be to try the drug against less aggressive tumors and combine it with the newer, so-called targeted drugs designed to block cancer's internal growth signals. Unlike most cancer, which kills by spreading through the body, glioblastomas grow quickly inside the head, destroying everything in their path. They are the most aggressive of the 100 or so forms of cancer that originate in the brain, and they account for half or more of all cases. Around the world, 175,000 cases are diagnosed annually, killing 125,000.

In the new study, 573 patients were randomly given standard treatment with or without early Temodar. After two years, 26 percent receiving Temodar were still alive, compared with just 10 percent getting the usual care. Even with the treatment, most patients died quickly. Nevertheless, doctors said doubling short-term survival is an important milestone in such a grim disease. "Twenty-six percent survival is not that great in the large scheme of things. But it is still progress," said Dr. Frank Haluska of Massachusetts General Hospital.

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Ecopia Presents Preclinical Data to the AACR - on its Anticancer Agent- (BUSINESS WIRE-29/03/2004)

Ecopia BioSciences Inc. presented preclinical data to the 95th annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Orlando, Florida. The data presented in a poster session unveiled the chemical structure of ECO-04601 as well as data that further supports previously reported results showing tumour growth inhibition in a mouse model of glioma. In addition, the data revealed that the compound is well-tolerated following oral and parenteral administration, even in chronic treatment regimens. Ecopia's President and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Pierre Falardeau, stated: "The results presented at this meeting strengthen our decision to continue preclinical development of this compound. Developing ECO-04601 as an anticancer agent for the treatment of glioblastomas represents an exciting opportunity to reach the market rapidly and address an unmet medical need."

ECO-04601 is a structurally novel compound discovered using Ecopia's DECIPHER(R) technology. It has shown anti-proliferative activity against several human cancer cell lines including leukemia and melanoma cells as well as cancer cell lines derived from lung, colon, brain, ovary, kidney, prostate and breast tissues. Ecopia has built a pipeline of new anticancer, antibacterial and antifungal agents using its proprietary DECIPHER(R) technology. The Company's pipeline includes two anticancer agents, ECO-04601 and ECO-02201, an antibacterial agent, ECO-00501, and two antifungal agents, ECO-02301 and ECO-14401.

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Brain Scans Used to Monitor Effect of Cancer Drug- (Reuters-17/02/2004)

British scientists said they have used a brain-imaging technique to monitor the effectiveness of a drug on tumors. Instead of studying the size of the brain tumor over time, the researchers used nuclear magnetic resonance imaging to monitor molecular changes in cancer cells to predict at an early stage whether the drug was working. "The technique has been around for a while but it has not been used in this context for looking at the metabolism in cancer cells," Professor Martin Leach, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said in an interview. "The conventional scan is an image and you can see the extent of a tumor. What this (new application) does is look at the cells and asks how they are working. It gives information on chemicals in the cells rather than just the distribution of tissue," he added

The scientists identified changes caused by the chemotherapy drug temozolomide on patients with low-grade glioma brain tumors-one of the most difficult types of cancer to treat. A low-grade glioma tends to be slow-growing but it can quickly change into a much more aggressive and deadly tumor. In research reported in The British Journal of Cancer, they measured levels of a molecule called choline, which indicates that cells are dividing and that the tumor is growing. They also measured the size of the tumor with magnetic resonance imaging scans in 13 patients. The amount of choline gave an early indication whether the drug was halting cell division and the growth of the tumor. Leach said the results show that using nuclear magnetic resonance could give doctors an early indication of whether temozolomide is working or if a patient could benefit more by switching to another drug.

Gliomas, one of the most common types of brain tumors, can cause headaches, seizures, behavior changes and dizziness. Treatments include surgery and chemotherapy depending on the size and the location of the tumor. Leach and his colleagues believe studying the behavior of cancer cells with nuclear magnetic resonance could be useful for doctors in identifying different types of gliomas and how various drugs affect them. "They could then predict which tumor types are likely to respond to treatments before giving them to patients," Leach added

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Breast Implants Do Not Raise Risk of Brain Cancer-(Reuters Health-26/01/2004)

Contrary to study results published in 2001, women who get breast implants do not appear to be at increased risk of brain cancer, according to new research. In the latest study, U.S. investigators reviewed information on more than 10,000 women who received breast implants and were followed for up to 29 years. A total of 12 women developed brain cancer - a rate similar to that seen in the general population, the researchers found. "There is no increase in brain cancer in women with breast implants," study author Dr. Loren Lipworth told Reuters Health.

In recent years, researchers have conducted numerous studies to investigate whether breast implants increase the risk of any type of cancer, Lipworth and her colleague write in the Annals of Plastic Surgery. Although the great majority of reports showed no relationship between the cosmetic surgery and cancer, one 2001 study found that women with breast implants were more than twice as likely to die from brain cancer. The findings were based on a review of the medical records and death certificates of 13,488 women who had received breast implants between 1960 and 1988. Half of the participants received silicone-gel implants, roughly one third of the women had double-lumen implants and 12 percent had saline-filled implants.

To explain the discrepancy between the results from the previous and the latest reports, Lipworth pointed out that brain cancer is often a result of cancer that originated in other parts of the body and spread to the brain. So while a patient may die from brain cancer, their disease may have begun in the lungs, explained Lipworth, who is based at the International Epidemiology Institute in Maryland and Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. In contrast, studies that follow people over time and record new cases of cancer note where the disease began, Lipworth said. Consequently, for participants in those studies who received breast implants and developed brain cancer, "this is their first cancer," she noted. Indeed, according to a review of four studies conducted in Scandinavia and the U.S. that followed women with breast implants over time, opting for the cosmetic surgery caused no increase in a woman's risk of brain cancer. "Our results rule out any two-fold excess of brain cancer in any woman with breast implants," Lipworth said in an interview. She added that none of the studies included women who received breast implants following a mastectomy for breast cancer.

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Trial Drugs Offer Hope for Brain Cancer-(HealthDayNews-20/11/2003)

By targeting specific small proteins in cancerous brain tumors, researchers hope to develop potent new treatments. Initial results of these experimental drugs in mice and human cancer cells appear dramatically successful, according to a presentation made Nov. 19 at the Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics meeting in Boston. "We have targeted ways cancer cells stimulate tumor growth, promote their survival and create new blood vessels," says lead researcher Dr. Jeremy Rich, an assistant professor of medicine in the Brain Tumor Center at Duke University.

In his presentation, Rich discussed three approaches to treatments. "One is a drug called ZD6474, which is directed at vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which promotes blood vessel growth," Rich says. However, this drug also blocks epidermal growth factor (EGF), which is involved in new blood vessel growth, he adds. What is unusual about this drug is that it blocks both VEGF and EGF, whereas most drugs block only one or the other, Rich notes. "In clinical trials, neither single blocker has worked great," he says. "But the combination has worked fantastically well," Rich notes. "This combination has worked against gliomas, the most common type of brain tumor, but also other types of tumors. . . That's a pretty exciting finding."

SB431542, another new compound, was tested in human malignant glioma cell lines. The drug successfully blocked the receptor protein called transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta). Blocking the activity of the TGF-beta receptor also blocked the protein PAI-1. This protein, which normally communicates with TGF-beta in cancer cells, is a predictor of poor prognosis in patients. Another drug combination, AEE788 and RAD001, blocked the growth of glioblastomas. AEE788 targets epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and also VEGF. RAD001 targets mTOR. This protein is needed to regulate cell metabolism. Without it, cells cannot grow properly. Combining these drugs blocked tumor growth more effectively than either drug alone."These developments will enable us to develop a cocktail approach to treating each patient," Rich says. "We can tailor for each patient the particular needs the patient has, based on the type of tumor."Rich sees future treatment of brain cancers, and other cancers, as using a combination of these drugs, customized for each patient, plus chemotherapy and radiation. Rich believes that eventually drug therapy alone may prove effective, eliminating the serious side effects associated with chemotherapy and radiation. "There is really hope for the future, because treatments are changing rapidly. There are a lot of new treatments that are showing promise and that we hope will lessen side effects and increase our ability to control cancers," Rich says.

Dr. Mitchel Berger, a professor of neurosurgery and chairman of the Department Neurological Surgery at the University of California at San Francisco, comments, "At the UCSF Brain Tumor Research Center, we are conducting very similar trials with similar small molecule inhibitors that do basically the same thing, that is block EGFR, VEGF, mTOR, etc." "We are all optimistic, but must remain cautious, since it is a long reach from animal models to humans. Notwithstanding, many of us committed to brain tumor research and new treatment therapies believe that we are making significant progress with these small molecule inhibitors," he adds.

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Folic Acid May Help Prevent One Type of Childhood Cancer-(ET-11/11/2003)

The number of children who developed neuroblastoma dropped 60% in Canada after that country started adding the B vitamin folic acid to foods, according to researchers from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto. Their study was published in the journal Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (Vol. 74, No. 3: 288-294). The finding could have important implications for preventing this deadly form of cancer, said study co-author Gideon Koren, MD, of the University of Toronto. "It may be the first example of a pediatric cancer being prevented through nutrition, and that's very exciting," said Koren, who is also the director of the Motherisk Program at the Hospital for Sick Children. Other experts are more cautious about the finding. "I think there need to be a few more studies to really have confidence in that," said Vicky Stevens, PhD, a research scientist with the American Cancer Society. However, the evidence does favor a protective role for folic acid, she added.

Neuroblastoma is the most common cancer in infants, and the most common cause of cancer-related death in children between the ages of one and four. Very little is known about what causes this disease. Many researchers believe it begins to develop before a baby is even born, because the cancer forms when certain nerve cells do not mature beyond the fetal stage. This may be why folic acid appears to protect against neuroblastoma, Koren said. Folic acid is already known to protect against serious birth defects that develop in the earliest weeks of pregnancy, like spina bifida, in which parts of the brain or spinal cord don't develop properly. For this reason, doctors recommend that women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant take a vitamin supplement that includes folic acid. Folic acid is also found in many foods, including leafy vegetables, beans, grains and meat. But because most people don't get enough folic acid from their diets, the United States and Canada add this nutrient to flour, breads and other grains. This fortification has led to a significant drop in the number of brain and spinal birth defects in North America.

Koren and his colleagues determined that fortification also paralleled a drop in cases of neuroblastoma. The researchers compared the number of neuroblastoma cases in Ontario before Canadian food was fortified (1985-1997) and after (1998-2000). The number of neuroblastomas dropped from 1.57 cases per 10,000 births, to 0.62 cases per 10,000 births - a decline of 60%. Folic acid fortification is the most likely reason for this drop, Koren said, because it's probably the only change that was consistent across the entire population. The rates of women taking folic acid supplements during pregnancy did not change substantially during the periods studied. Stevens said the effect of folic acid on neuroblastoma may become more apparent as more countries start fortifying foods the way Canada and the US do. If neuroblastoma rates drop in those countries, as well, it will add weight to the argument that folic acid prevents this disease.

This isn't the first study to examine the role of folic acid in cancer prevention. Some research has suggested folic acid may protect against colon cancer, breast cancer, and a form of childhood leukemia called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Last year, researchers from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that women who took multivitamins during pregnancy were less likely to have a child with neuroblastoma. Although they couldn't determine which nutrient was responsible for this effect, folic acid was considered a likely candidate. Koren said more research needs to be done to determine whether adding higher levels of folic acid to food would cut the rate of neuroblastoma even more. Researchers should also study whether folic acid can be used to treat existing neuroblastomas, he said.

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Mutated Virus Obliterates Brain Cancer in Mice-(Reuters Health-06/05/2003)

By tweaking the structure of a common virus, researchers have created a stealth weapon that can destroy brain cancer in mice, a study shows. Engineered to latch onto cancer cells while leaving normal ones alone, the new virus can spread throughout a tumor and completely destroy the malignancy, according to the study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Researchers designed a mutated form of an adenovirus, called Delta-24-RGD, to attack a particularly dangerous type of brain cancer known as glioblastoma. "Glioblastoma is one of the worst cancers," Dr. Frederick F. Lang, an associate professor in the department of neurosurgery at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, said in an interview. "Typically patients die within a year. And despite all our advances, survival with this cancer is the same as it was 30 years ago."

Lang and his colleagues first tweaked the virus to target only cancer cells. In normal cells, a substance called Rb protein can prevent viruses from taking over the cell's machinery to reproduce, Lang explained. But adenoviruses get around the problem with their own countermeasure -- a protein called E1A that latches onto Rb and disables it. As it turns out, cancer cells don't have functioning copies of Rb protein. And, by engineering an adenovirus that had a non-functional version of E1A, the researches were able to create a germ that could replicate in cancer cells but not normal ones. This virus was named Delta-24. There was still one more problem -- Delta-24 didn't lock on to cancer cells all that well. Normally, to infect a cell, an adenovirus latches on to a receptor, called a coxsackie adenovirus receptor (CAR) on the cell's surface. But cancer cells don't have many CARs, making it difficult for Delta-24 to latch onto a tumor. Lang and his colleagues got around this issue by altering Delta-24 so that it could latch onto other proteins -- called integrins -- that are abundantly scattered across a cancer cell's surface.

The researchers next used the new version of the virus -- Delta-24-RGD -- to treat mice that had had been injected with human tumor cells. The modified virus was injected directly into the tumors in the brains of the mice. A comparison group of mice that received no treatment lived an average of only 19 days. Another group that was treated with Delta-24 died within about 50 days. But the ones that were treated with Delta-24-RGD survived an average of 131 days. The success with the animal model is a good sign, according to the study's lead author, Dr. Juan Fueyo, an assistant professor in the department of neuro-oncology at M.D. Anderson. "We believe this therapy has a lot of potential, but one that needs much more study," said Fueyo in a prepared statement. "We've never seen this kind of response before with any other treatment tested in animals or humans."

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Brain Cancer Treatment Can Impair Mental Function-(Reuters Health-01/11/2002)

Treatments for a certain type of brain tumor may have detrimental effects on patients' long-term mental functioning, new study findings suggest. The researchers discovered that patients who received antiepileptic drugs and high doses of radiation therapy to treat their low-grade, or relatively less serious, brain tumors appeared to have more trouble with memory and attention than cancer patients who didn't receive those treatments. Patients who had previously been diagnosed with brain tumors also showed greater mental impairments than patients with non-brain tumors.

The current study indicates that the majority of mental decline stems from the tumor, and not the treatment, according to Dr. Martin Klein of Vrije Universiteit Medical Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and his colleagues. However, Klein's team notes, patients diagnosed and treated for low-grade brain tumors called gliomas have a strong chance of surviving many years, and the long-term effects of the treatments they are given should be investigated. "Our findings suggest that the tumor itself has the most deleterious effect on cognitive function and that radiotherapy mainly results in additional long-term cognitive disability when high fraction doses are used," Klein and colleagues write in the The Lancet. "Additionally, the effects of other medical factors, especially antiepileptic drug use, on cognitive function in glioma patients deserve attention."

The investigators obtained their findings from tests of mental functioning in 195 patients with a low-grade glioma, of whom more than half had been given radiotherapy up to 22 years earlier. To compare their results to others, the research team also tested 100 patients diagnosed with low-grade blood cancers, and 195 people who had no history of cancer. All glioma patients--whether they had received radiation or not--performed worse on the tests than other cancer patients, and the discrepancy increased when glioma patients were compared with those who had never had cancer.

However, glioma patients who had never received radiation therapy outperformed those who had, the report indicates--especially those patients who were given relatively high doses. Patients who received antiepileptic drugs to control their seizures also fared less well in the mental functioning tests than those who did not receive the drugs. Based on these findings, the authors recommend that doctors avoid giving radiotherapy to younger patients in the early stages of glioma, since, at this point, the benefits of the treatment remain unclear. And if radiotherapy is needed, Klein and his team suggest that doctors stick with a relatively low dose.

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New study shows A-Bomb survivors at increased risk of nervous system tumors (ET-15/10/2002)

Survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have a 40 percent increased risk of developing a rare brain tumor and a slightly raised lifetime risk of other types of nervous system tumors, new research shows. In a study appearing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers checked the medical histories of 80,160 Japanese survivors of the attacks. The researchers found the survivors had a 6 percent greater chance than other people of developing tumors of the brain or spinal cord over a lifetime.

For schwannomas, a rare type of nonmalignant, but dangerous tumor, the risk soared to 40 percent, said Dr. Dale Preston, first author of the study. Of survivors checked, Preston said they found 55 cases of schwannomas. He said this is about 20 more cases than would be expected to occur among a typical population not linked to radiation exposures. Preston noted that even with the increased occurrence of the tumors, schwannomas are still rare among the survivors.

Preston is a researcher with the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima, a joint U.S.-Japanese agency that studies the health effects of the nuclear attacks on the Japanese survivors. The U.S. military dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. The attack was swiftly followed by the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of World War II.

Schwannomas are tumors of the nerve covering and usually occur along nerves of the spine and along the auditory nerve in the brain. "These are dangerous because of their location," said Preston. Preston said the conclusion does not suggest that current allowed exposures in routine medical procedures, such as X-ray, pose a significantly increased risk of cancer because the atomic bomb survivors were exposed to higher doses.

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Smelly Plant Could Offer Brain Cancer Treatment-(Reuters Health-01/10/2002)

A protein from a highly poisonous, foul-smelling plant known as jimson weed could one day be used to help fight a type of brain cancer called glioma, Japanese researchers reported. The protein, Datura stramonium agglutinin, or DSA, caused glioma cells with cancerous characteristics to begin developing normally, or differentiating, in lab studies, they report in the British Journal of Cancer. The differentiation DSA induced was irreversible, being sustained once the protein was removed, the researchers report. "DSA controls glioma cells as a result of glial differentiation rather than actually killing cells," said lead researcher Dr. Tasuku Sasaki, from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology. "Any drug based on this concept would help patients suffering with tumors that are difficult to remove such as gliomas."

Glioma cells were also inhibited from growing and dividing out of control, or proliferating, by the presence of DSA, Sasaki's team reports. "Taken together, these observations suggest that Datura stramonium agglutinin may be useful as a new therapy for treating glioma without side effects," they write.

Professor John Double, head of the Cancer Research UK Unit at Bradford University, said the discovery was exciting, but extremely preliminary. "More needs to be done before we have enough evidence to commit to trials. Potential treatment, based on DSA, for this form of brain cancer is still a long way off."

Cancer Research UK's chief executive, Sir Paul Nurse, agreed, noting "there is much work to be done on the journey from the laboratory bench to the patient's bedside."

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Study Links Measles, Flu to Childhood Cancer Risk (Reuters-17/09/2002)

British scientists suspect there could be a link between childhood brain cancer and exposure to the measles or influenza virus around the time of birth. In the first study suggesting that particular infections could be associated with brain cancer, Cancer Research UK found children had twice the normal risk of developing the disease if they had been born when measles was common in their area. Early exposure to the influenza virus more than tripled the normal risk of brain cancer, according to the British research charity. "There's increasing interest in the possibility that exposure to infections very early on in life might contribute to the incidence of children's brain cancer and our study is certainly consistent with that possibility," said Professor Louise Parker, the lead researcher from the University of Newcastle.

The scientists stressed that the findings are preliminary but they support the theory that cancer is caused by a complex mix of factors including genetics and environment. Viruses are also known to play a part in some cancers. "It is difficult to produce strong evidence on the causes of childhood brain cancer because the disease is rare and even when you look at large numbers of children, in our case 100,000, the number of cancers will be quite small," Parker said. "But our results do suggest that measles and flu could be associated with increased risk of the disease, and therefore that avoiding these infections might be one way of reducing cancer rates," she added in a statement.

Childhood cancers are comparatively rare and affect about one in 600 children before the age of 15. Leukemia makes up about one third of the cancer cases and brain tumors account for about a quarter. In Britain, brain tumors affect an estimated 290 children each year and cause about 100 deaths. Treatment usually involves surgery followed by radiotherapy.

Parker and her colleagues examined all birth records in the county of Cumbria, in northern England, from 1975 to 1992. Their research is published in the British Journal of Cancer. The scientists assessed the levels of infections around the time of the birth of the children who developed brain cancer. They estimated exposure levels before birth, in the three months around and after birth and in the following three months. "This is the first study to pinpoint measles and influenza as being possible culprits," Sara Hiom, a scientific adviser at Cancer Research UK, said in an interview.

Exposure to other kinds of infection, apart from measles and flu, did not seem to have any effect on brain cancer rates. Although the number of brain cancers found in the study were small, Hiom said the scientists felt there was enough evidence and clustering to show they were not just chance. "It is yet another piece to the puzzle," Hiom added. Further studies will be needed to confirm the findings but scientists believe that recognizing the link between viruses and cancers could pave the way to prevention through the use of vaccines.

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Plant Compound Seen as Possible Brain Tumor Therapy (Reuters Health-29/08/2002)

Blocking a molecular pathway that goes awry in the most common form of childhood brain cancer may hold promise as a therapy for the disease, new research suggests. The approach, aimed at tumors called medullablastomas, has not been tested in children yet. But the new study shows that a plant-derived compound that interferes with abnormal growth signals can slow tumor growth in mice and kill medulloblastoma cells taken from human patients.

Depending on the stage of the cancer at diagnosis, 50% to 70% of children survive medulloblastoma, according to the study's lead author, Dr. Philip A. Beachy of Johns Hopkins University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. But the radiation used to destroy cancer cells that might linger afterward "can cause fairly significant brain damage," he told Reuters Health in an interview. "An agent that would specifically target the tumor would be great to have," he said.

In previous research, Beachy and his colleagues discovered that the molecular pathway involving a protein called Hedgehog behaves abnormally in children with medulloblastoma. As an embryo forms, the Hedgehog pathway is activated to send signals that guide the appropriate development of other cells. But if the pathway is activated inappropriately later in life, certain cancers may develop, Beachy explained. Both medulloblastoma and basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer, have been linked to abnormal activation of the Hedgehog pathway, according to the Johns Hopkins researcher.

In the mid-1990s, Beachy and his colleagues found that cyclopamine, a chemical derived from corn lilies that grow in mountain meadows in the western US, blocks the Hedgehog pathway. So they decided to test it as a treatment for medulloblastoma. In experiments with a mouse model of medulloblastoma, cyclopamine reduced the growth of cancer cells in the laboratory and shrank tumors implanted in mice. What's more, treatment with the plant chemical killed up to 99.9% of cancer cells in medulloblastoma tumors that had been surgically removed from human patients.

A report on the findings is published in the August 30th issue of Science. The study "shows the potential for cyclopamine and other drugs that could block the pathway," according to Beachy. The chemical did not cause any side effects in the mice, but it has never been tested in humans, he said. Still, Beachy said that there is enough evidence of the beneficial effects of cyclopamine to justify developing the chemical so that its safety and effectiveness can be tested in human trials. It is still uncertain, though, he noted, how much of the chemical can be collected by harvesting corn lilies. Due to the complexity of the chemical, it would be very difficult to make synthetically, according to Beachy.

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Allergies May Protect Against Brain Cancer: Study -(Reuters Health-13/05/2002)

Allergies and autoimmune conditions such as lupus and multiple sclerosis may reduce the risk of a particular type of brain tumor, according to the results of a new study. Researchers are not sure why allergies and autoimmune diseases may protect against brain tumors, but the results suggest that immunological factors may be involved, since both allergies and autoimmune diseases occur when immune system function goes awry. In most cases, the cause of brain cancer is a mystery. A few hereditary syndromes increase the risk, but they only account for about 5% of all brain tumors. The only proven environmental risk factor is exposure to ionizing radiation.

Recently, several studies have raised the possibility that people with overstimulated immune systems may have a reduced risk of brain cancer. Both allergies and autoimmune diseases result from inappropriate immune reactions. In the case of allergies, the immune system responds to harmless outside substances, while in autoimmune diseases, it launches an attack against the body's own tissue. To see whether autoimmune disease and allergies offer any protection against brain cancer, a team led by Dr. Alina V. Brenner of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, compared 782 people hospitalized with a brain tumor with a "control" group of 799 patients hospitalized for other causes. Having allergies or an autoimmune illness reduced the risk of some, but not all, brain tumors, Brenner and her colleagues report in the International Journal of Cancer.

The risk of a type of brain tumor called glioma was reduced 33% in people with a history of allergies and 51% in those with an autoimmune disease. The risk was lowest in people who had both allergies and autoimmune disease. The risk of another type of brain cancer, meningioma, was lower in people with an autoimmune disease, but not in those with allergies, the report indicates. The finding of a reduced risk of glioma in people with a history of allergies or autoimmune diseases is in agreement with several previous studies, according to Brenner. "Given that so little is known about factors that influence the risk of glioma, this finding is particularly exciting," she told Reuters Health. She cautioned, however, "At this point, it is premature to draw definite conclusions about the underlying basis of the association." There are several possible explanations for the apparent reduction in risk, according to Brenner. Immune factors that are involved in or predispose people to autoimmunity or allergies might play a role, she said. It is also possible that medications used to treat these conditions could offer some protection. Other factors including some that are not involved with the immune system may also affect the risk, she noted. "Clearly, this is a promising area of research that warrants further investigation," Brenner said.

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Doctor: Cell Phones May Cause Cancer-(Yahoo News-20/03/2002)

A prominent researcher, once employed by the cell phone industry, has launched a new effort to track the potential dangers of cell phone use, 10News reported. Epidemiologist Dr. George Carlo ran a seven-year study of the phones' safety, and claims radiation from the phone can penetrate four inches inside a person's head. "Medical science now shows us that cell phone users are at an increased risk of tumors -- an increased risk of cancer; brain cancer and eye cancer, that we know of so far," Carlo said.

Gibb Brower has undergone surgery three times over the last two years to remove a fatal brain tumor, which he said came from talking on a cell phone 1,200 minutes a month. "This is pretty much a fatal outlook that the doctors gave me. They told me I was going to live maybe 10 months or a year," Bower said. "(The tumor) happens to be where I held my cell phone. If there is any possibility that you can get cancer from these things, do anything you can to keep them away from your body, away from your head," he added. Brower has filed a lawsuit against the wireless industry, and said more studies are crucial, especially given that within three years, the number of cell phone users is expected to grow to more than 1 billion people worldwide, according to 10News. Bower said he no longer uses a cell phone, but 110 million Americans rely on the wireless devices, 10News reported.

To track health risks, Carlo has launched a Web site, which provides information about cell phones and registers people with symptoms. "Consumers have the right to know what the problems are and what the solutions are," Carlo said. Carlo said the registry is the first step toward independent studies. Most research to date, showing low risks, has been funded by the wireless industry. Carlo said that if you have any concerns at all about health risks associated with your cell phone, you should use a hands-free headset, and keep the phone as far away from your body possible. He said the headset eliminates radiation penetration. Children are perhaps at the greatest risk, because radiation penetrates their bodies more easily.

Cellular trade groups counter his findings, stating that there is no proof that cell phones pose a health risk.

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Infections May Cause Childhood Brain Cancers-Study (Reuters-02/04/2002)

British scientists have found what they believe is further evidence that viral or bacterial infections cause childhood brain tumors. In research reported in the British Journal of Cancer, Professor Jillian Birch and colleagues at the University of Manchester said they discovered that childhood brain tumors occur in clusters over short periods of time, suggesting they may be influenced by infections.

"Our results indicate that environmental factors are involved in causing brain tumors in children and the most likely explanation for the pattern we have seen is that one or more types of infections are responsible," Birch said.

A so-called double whammy, combining biological and genetic causes, is thought necessary for some cancers to develop. Birch and his team analyzed brain cancer in children from northwest England between 1954 and 1998, finding those born in the autumn and winter had a higher risk of developing two types of brain tumors, called astrocytoma and ependymoma. They also discovered that in certain years children living near each other were more likely to be diagnosed with a brain tumor, a pattern scientists call space-time clustering. Diseases linked to more constant environmental causes usually produce clusters over longer periods of time than those linked to space-time clustering.

"The fact that the space-time clusters and the seasonal pattern in births are restricted to particular types of childhood brain tumors adds weight to our findings and will allow us to focus our future research on these cases," Birch added in a statement.

Sir Paul Nurse, a director general of the charity Cancer Research UK, which funded the study, said the results back the theory that infections play a role in a number of cancers. "These initial findings aren't conclusive and we need more evidence to support them, but if an infection is playing a role, this might lead to new ideas for preventing and treating this important disease."

Childhood cancers are rare and survival rates have improved. About 1,500 children in Britain and 8,400 in the United States develop cancer each year. Leukemia is the most common type of childhood cancer, followed by brain and spinal tumors.

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Chemo Slightly Extends Brain Cancer Survival (Reuters Health-22/03/2002)

Adding chemotherapy to the treatment of some patients with aggressive brain tumors may make a modest difference in their survival, UK researchers report. In a review of 12 studies, the investigators found that overall, adding chemotherapy to radiation treatment prolonged survival slightly among adults with high-grade glioma. Glioma refers to cancers that arise from support cells in the brain, and high-grade gliomas contain highly abnormal cells that grow quickly. Just 5% to 10% of patients with high-grade gliomas survive for 2 years.

Whether adding chemotherapy to the standard treatment of surgery and radiation makes a dent in this dismal rate has been unclear. Individual studies have yielded conflicting results, according to the authors of the report. But in their analysis of a dozen of these studies, radiation plus chemotherapy was associated with an overall 15% decrease in death risk compared with radiation alone. While 40% of radiation-only patients lived one year, 46% of chemotherapy patients did. Overall, chemotherapy patients lived about 2 months longer than patients given radiation alone, the researchers note.

Dr. Lesley A. Stewart and colleagues at the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit in London report the findings in The Lancet. "This small but clear improvement in survival from chemotherapy encourages further study of drug treatment of these tumours," the researchers write.

But for now, they stress, the benefit of chemotherapy for any one patient must be weighed against downsides including the toxic effects of the drug treatment and the impact on their quality of life. "In decisions about treatment," they write, "the interpretation of such information is likely to be affected by many personal beliefs and preferences."

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Researcher: Report of Prozac Link to Cancer is Wrong (HealthScoutNews-26/03/2002)

An American scientist involved in an international research project expressed outrage today at London media reports that said his study potentially linked common antidepressants to brain cancer. Randy Blakely, director of the Center for Molecular Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., told HealthScout News, "There is no link to cancer for these medications."

"As one of the scientists associated with the study, let me just make an emphatic statement that the study has no bearing, as far as we know, on brain cancer, nor does it have any bearing at all on the safety of SSRI medications, which are in fact extremely valuable to people suffering from depression," Blakely said.

At issue were the antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which include well-known drugs like Prozac, Paxil and Celexa, and a study published in the online edition of Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology.

The controversy arose earlier today, after at least one London newspaper, The Independent, misinterpreted the research results in its report on the findings. The story claimed the study potentially linked drugs like Prozac to brain cancer. However, the actual research, which Blakely conducted in concert with a group of respected British scientists, including Prof. John Gordon of the University of Birmingham, made no such connections. Instead, it involved laboratory experiments on a line of cells contained in a disease known as Burkitt's lymphoma, an extremely rare type of cancer.

The study, said Blakely, found that "a special class of lymphoid cells in culture respond to serotonin through apoptosis [cell death] and that the serotonin transporter that is the target of Prozac will block that action." More simply put, the research said serotonin may play a role in helping to destroy cancer cells involved in Burkitt's lymphoma and that antidepressant medications like Prozac, may, in fact, block that action from occurring.

However, Blakely said, "There is no indication that this behavior is found anywhere in the nervous system or in the brain... So there is absolutely no reason to extend from the data on the antidepressants [these findings] to brain diseases, particularly brain cancer, which is a very different kind of disorder."

Burkitt's lymphoma is an extremely rare cancer that afflicts mostly children living in central Africa. It often begins with a lesion in the jaw that quickly progresses to the bony cavity that encloses the eye, and occasionally to other parts of the head. Sometimes, the disease may encompass the bone marrow and central nervous system, which could then worsen the outcome of the disease.

In the research conducted by Gordon and Blakely, cells containing Burkitt's lymphoma were combined, in a test tube, with the mood-elevating brain chemical serotonin. The researchers noted that the serotonin was able to get inside the cells, and cause them to die. Medications like Prozac, Paxil and Celexa, which work to keep serotonin levels from being reabsorbed by brain cells, might hamper that process.

This, however, said Blakely, is a far cry from any notion that the drugs could play any role in instigating or encouraging the growth of a brain tumor, which, in fact, is not in any way even related to Burkitt's lymphoma.

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Virus linked to brain cancer in children-(Times of India Online-24/02/2002)

A protein produced by a common virus in human brain has been found to be responsible for the most common brain cancer in children. The virus, a human neurotropic polyomavirus called JCV, is present in at least 65 per cent of humans by the time they reach the age of 14. Though JVC has been shown to cause tumors in animals, this is the first time it has been seen in human tumors.

Usually, the virus remains dormant. In certain cases, though it can cause progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a fatal neurological disease similar to multiple sclerosis and often seen in AIDS patients. Research suggests JCV may also stimulate the growth of cancerous tumors, says a report in Health Scout. Scientists aren't sure how JCV is transmitted, but believe parents may pass it to children. Researchers also don't know how the viral protein, lodged in a child, is triggered.

"I think some transient immune suppressive condition might activate the viral genome," says Kamel Khalili, lead author of the paper and director of the Center for Neurovirology and Cancer Biology at Temple University College of Science and Technology in Philadelphia. "There also may be some genetic component that makes them susceptible, and maybe a combination of genetic and environmental factors can induce the tumor in these patients."

Medulloblastomas are the second most common brain tumors in children -- and the most common malignant tumors -- and they are difficult to treat. Typically, surgery and chemotherapy are used depending on the age of the child. Currently, about half of the children who develop this malignant tumor die from it. Although some subsets of the tumour are easier to treat than others, even curable tumors carry the risk of serious long-term side effects, says Ira Dunkel, assistant attending pediatrician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

"Our understanding of the mechanisms of the tumor is still pretty primitive, and studies like this -- that give clues about how medulloblastomas are developing or progressing -- will hopefully lead us towards better and less toxic therapies," Dunkel says.

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How dangerous is you mobile?-(Times of India Online-24/01/2002)

The United Kingdom government is to spend 7 million pounds to establish the health risks of mobile phone usage. The research programme, backed jointly by government and the mobile phone manufacturing industry, is being launched amid confusion about the safety of mobile phones and aerial masts. An initial 4.5 million pounds will be provided to fifteen science projects for a wide-range of studies examining the biological effects of mobile phone radiation. Out of these, four studies will investigate whether the use of mobile phones increases the risk of brain cancer or leukaemia.

Others will look at the effect of mobile phone signals on brain function, and exposed cells in the laboratory, and examine how energy is absorbed by the body. One study will see how mobile phones affect the performance of drivers.

Two years ago, the Stewart Inquiry reported there was no evidence that mobile phones were a health hazard and could cause brain or nervous system cancers. Nevertheless, the report concluded that radiation from handsets and base station masts could cause "subtle biological changes".

A handful of scientists continue to insist that mobiles are potentially dangerous. They claim that even ignoring serious hazards such as cancer, users may suffer noises in the head, migraine, headaches and other symptoms. Sir William Stewart, who chaired the inquiry, has recommended a "precaution already been adopted by the government.

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WHO: Cell-phone cancer risk needs study-(Cancer Info-14/09/2001)

A link between mobile-phone usage and cancer cannot be dismissed without further research, an official at a World Health Organization agency said. "More research is needed," Elisabeth Cardis, chief of radiation and cancer at the WHO's International Agency for Research in Cancer, told a conference in Helsinki.

The explosive growth in mobile-phone usage, particularly in Europe and the United States, has increased the public debate over possible health risks linked to mobile phones. While a few studies claim there is a connection, most authoritative studies have not been able to conclude that regular mobile-phone usage could damage a person's brain.

"Based on current epidemiological evidence, there is no evidence of a strong association between RF (radio frequency) exposure and cancer," said Cardis, referring to radio waves emitted from devices like mobile phones. "One can't rule out that there is a risk, but if there is a risk to mobile-phone users it would be very small."

Mobile phones are tiny radio stations that send and receive. Last year, a UK government-sponsored scientific inquiry, chaired by Sir William Steward, concluded that while there was no evidence of danger to health, it would be wise to discourage children from using mobile phones excessively. It concluded that the radio frequency signals emitted by phones generated heat in the brain, but said it was not clear whether this could have other biological effects, such as triggering cancer.

European and U.S. authorities have now asked mobile-phone manufacturers, such as Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson, to label their phones with the level of radiation, or Specific Absorption Rate (SAR)--the best way of measuring radiation--they emit, partly in response to consumer demands. The SAR safety limit agreed on in Europe is 2.0, while most phones on the market are now showing values between 0.5 and 1.0.

There are more than 800 million mobile-phone users worldwide, and about 400 million handsets are expected to be sold this year. By early next year as many as 1 billion people are expected to own a handset.

New four-year study Cardis, in Helsinki attending an international conference on the biological effects of exposure to electromagnetic radiation, said research by the Interphone study group would focus on a link between cancer and phones. She said this would be more thorough than previous studies, such as the Cohort study into cellular phone users in the United States, because it would span a period of three years and would go into more detail, such as research into lower-frequency electromagnetic fields to and from phones.

Cardis said one reason previous studies, particularly on the link between brain tumors and phones, had proved inconclusive was because brain tumor cases often had not used phones much. Widespread mobile-phone usage is relatively new. The Interphone study should be ready in 2004. "At present, possible effects on cancer initiation cannot be studied due to the short follow-up times," concluded a recent Finnish study into phone use and the risk of brain cancer.

Nokia, the world's largest mobile-phone maker, addresses the issue of mobile-phone safety on its Web site. "Scientific research conducted all over the world over many years demonstrates that radio signals within established safety levels emitted from mobile telephones and their base stations present no adverse effects to human health," Nokia said.

U.S. neurologist Christopher Newman last year filed a lawsuit against leading U.S. phone companies, including Motorola, saying that the use of his mobile phone had caused a malignant brain tumor.

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Duke Researchers Identify 10 Genes Believed To Protect Oxygen-Starved Cancer Cells-(Cancer Info-12/09/2001)

Cancer researchers at Duke University Medical Center have identified 10 genes believed to have significant roles in allowing cancerous tumors to thrive under oxygen-deficient conditions. The discovery is the first step in what could eventually lead to new treatments for some of the deadliest forms of cancer. Led by Dr. Gregory J. Riggins, an assistant professor of pathology and genetics at Duke, the team sifted through 24,504 genes expressed in the oxygen-deprived (hypoxic) cells in Glioblastoma multiforme, which is a form of brain cancer.

The researchers identified 10 genes, some of which can lead to the creation of new blood vessels that will connect to oxygen-starved tumors. "This is a crucial first step in understanding the complex interactions driving hypoxia response in tumors," Riggins said. "The potential for exploiting these genes is tremendous in terms of turning off the angiogenesis (the formation of new blood cells) of cancer and it may have significant use in other types of diseases as well, such as stroke and heart disease. This is a very early, very preliminary discovery. The gene discovery is the very first step in a very long road that will lead to something that has clinical use."

Previously, scientists thought angiogenesis was primarily influenced by a small set of genes including the vascular endothelial growth factor protein (VEGF), but Riggins suspects that the number of genes involved is significantly greater. "All of these genes are turned on to a higher level than what has classically been studied as a potent inducer of angiogenesis -- VEGF. If any one of these genes turns out to be as potent or more potent than VEGF, then this is a fairly significant find. There is significant investment from the pharmaceutical industry to try and inhibit the function of this one particular gene," he said.

Other scientists had previously identified 10 genes that respond to hypoxia. The new Duke discovery adds another 10 to the mix of which three had never previously been identified, Riggins said. "These are completely novel genes that no one knows anything about," he said. "We are working now to determine what their functions are beyond being induced by hypoxia. What specifically are they trying to do? Blood vessel growth? Are they trying to maintain pH in the tumor or are they trying to protect the cell in some other way?"

One of the10 genes is similar to a gene protein called angiopoietin-1, Riggins said. It has a structure that suggests it could be an angiogenesis promoting gene. And another of the genes, carbonic anhydrase IX (CA9), is believed to be a useful marker to predict survival in some breast cancer patients.

In addition to Glioblastoma multiforme, the same genes were expressed in, and could have implications for, treating squamous cell carcinomas, breast, colon and lung cancers, the researchers said. "If we can disrupt the function of some of these protective genes, then maybe we can find ways to kill off the part of the part of the tumor that's traditionally has been very difficult to treat," Riggins said.

Tumors need a blood supply to grow, but when this blood supply and the oxygen it carries is cut, producing the oxygen-deficient known as hypoxia, the tumor shrinks. Most solid tumors develop hard-to-reach hypoxic regions as they grow, but some tumors, particularly Glioblastoma multiforme, continue to thrive under hypoxic conditions. The cells in the tumors can alter gene expression to produce new blood vessels (a process known as angiogenesis) with VEGF and other proteins. Radiation and chemotherapy are often ineffective in fighting hypoxic regions of tumors.

Because cancers are so complex, Riggins said targeting one gene isn't enough. Instead, the entire pattern of gene expression should be examined, and treatments formulated based on more than one gene.

"Cancers can adapt rapidly to environmental challenges, which partially explains why single modality cancer therapy had not been successful as a multi-agent therapy. This work documents a more complete set of genes whose function may be to allow the tumor to adopt to hypoxia. More importantly, the products from such genes may be tumor-specific targets for therapy. Based on the observation that many angiogenesis-related genes are hypoxia-induced, it is possible that successful targeting of the right combination of hypoxia over-expressed genes (HOGs) could result in the disruption of growth of blood vessels in tumors," the authors wrote in the article. "The next step is to gather more documentation as to precisely what the molecular function of these genes are in the tumor. We are currently synthesizing (replicating) the proteins of these genes and testing to see if alterations of these genes cause tumors to grow differently in mouse experimental models," Riggins said.

Riggins is the director of the Duke Brain Cancer Genomics Laboratory. The laboratory specializes in locating genes useful for the diagnosis and treatment of brain cancer, as well as understanding how these cancers develop.

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Stem cells give hope for brain disease treatment –(Times of India Online-12/08/2001)

With research in stem cells - undifferentiated cells that can evolve into blood, liver, muscle and other cells - picking up, scientists world over are hoping to come out with treatments for head injuries, stroke, and progressive neurological diseases like multiple sclerosis and brain cancer, according to a report in a science journal. Stem cells obtained from embryos have been successfully used in many experiments. However, due to ethical issues involved in their use, researchers are now trying to use non-embryonal stem cells, which reside in every tissue in the body and replace old cells when they die, a report in New Scientist said. But, without the knowledge that might be gained from studying embryonic stem cells, many of these efforts might be wasted, the report warns.

Embryonic stem cells have also led to advances in treating the animal equivalent of motor neuron disease, which leaves humans unable to move. Jeffrey Rothstein at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, found that paralysed rats, injected with embryonal stem cells into the spinal fluid, dramatically regained partial leg movement.

Evan Snyder of Harvard Medical School in Boston has reported progress in using stem cells to kill cancerous brain cells. He is also working with non-embryonal stem cells and has claimed success in treating strokes in mice.

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Cancer treatment shows promise-(Cancer Info-03/07/2001)

A genetically altered virus kills cancer cells in tests in the laboratory. A research group at Keio University School of Medicine is investigating a new cancer treatment using a genetically altered virus to destroy cancer cells. The group will seek approval this week from the university's ethics committee to test the procedure on human patients with malignant brain tumors. It is hoped the procedure will offer the possibility of treatment to patients for whom surgery is difficult or impossible. Takahito Yazaki, an assistant professor of the university’s Department of Neurosurgery, leads the research.

In the treatment, a herpes simplex virus is used. In ordinary circumstances, a person infected with the virus would develop encephalitis or inflammation of the brain. The group, however, has manipulated the genes of the virus so that it will only attack cancer cells. Though the modified virus multiplies using enzymes produced by cancer cells, it will not do so in normal cells. Also, the neurotoxicity of the virus has been removed, making it harmless to patients. To increase its effectiveness, the virus is injected with a gene that checks the production of enzymes that promotes the spread of cancer cells.

In an experiment using cultivated cancer cells of a human brain tumor, the viral therapy killed 50 percent of the cancer cells after two days and by the fifth day, destroyed all the cancer cells. In another experiment the same type of cancer cells were implanted in the brain of a laboratory mouse. Researchers were successful in confirming a greatly increased survival rate for the mouse.

The team views the research as a form of gene therapy. If they get the approval of their university's ethics committee, they say the next step would be to seek government approval. ``We hope to apply this to the treatment of cancer of the bladder, liver cancer and prostate cancer in the future,'' one of the researchers said.

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Common virus may fight brain tumours –(Times of India Online-21/06/2001)

In research that may offer new hope for treating an aggressive and lethal cancer, doctors say an injection of a common virus into the brains of mice caused tumours to shrink without causing other disease. Although the study was conducted in laboratory mice, the virus injection therapy may be ready for human clinical trials in about six months. The study extends earlier work that proved the concept of treating cancer using what is called a reovirus. This is a virus that is common in the lungs and gut of humans, but which is thought to be harmless except to cancer cells.

Normal cells have a block to infection and death from reovirus so the virus can get into the normal cell but cannot infect it further. But the reovirus can invade cancer cells and go wild. The cancer cell become a bloated bag of viral particles, explodes, and the viruses are released to go on and infect and kill other cancer cells.

In the study, laboratory cells of glioblastoma, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer, were implanted into the brains of two dozen mice. Once the cancer cells were established and growing, half of the mice received injections of live reovirus and half got injections dead reovirus. The mice with the inactive virus died within a short time from their tumours, while at 90 days eight of the 12 mice that received live virus were still living.

Other researchers noted that although the reovirus does not produce any recognised disease in humans, there are many unknowns about the effect the virus might have if it were injected into the brain of a human.

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Tobacco Litigator Targets Mobile Phone Industry in Safety Suits-(Yahoo News-13/06/2001)

Having had success suing the tobacco industry, Peter G. Angelos now has his sights set on wireless phone manufacturers. The Baltimore, Maryland, attorney is filing class-action suits in four states, claiming phone makers are selling products that have been linked to brain cancer and other health-related problems, according to published reports. The Washington Post and other media outlets have reported that Angelos, who won a US$4 billion class-action settlement from tobacco companies, has filed suits in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York alleging conspiracy, fraud and negligence by major phone manufacturers. Angelos reportedly is seeking a judgment that includes requiring all manufacturers to supply headsets at no cost to all purchasers or lessees, or to reimburse any consumer who has purchased a headset. The suits also ask for punitive damages and costs, the reports said.

Among the 25 defendants are wireless industry leaders Motorola, Sprint, Audiovox, Nextel, Matsushita, Philips, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sanyo, Sony, AT&T, Verizon, Cingular, SBC, Cellular One and Voicestream, published reports said. The suits are the latest in a series of legal actions taken on behalf of consumers, despite industry claims, backed by research reports, that there is no definitive link between cell phone use and brain cancer or other illnesses. Health concerns have been raised regarding the radiation from handheld cellular phones based on the close proximity of the antenna to the head of the user.

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Mobile Phone Makers Patent 'Radiation Shields' To Combat Cancer Risk-(Yahoo News-13/06/2001)

Mobile phone manufacturers have patented "radiation shields" to reduce the risk of brain tumors among consumers, despite their claims that phone use presents no serious health hazards. Although the companies dismissed the report, it could be used as ammunition in lawsuits recently filed by consumers against manufacturers.

According to The Times of London, leading phone makers Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola have created components to protect users from the radio frequency radiation emitted by handsets. Manufacturers have been developing such components for at least eight years, the newspaper said, citing an application filed by Nokia with the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., that states "it has been suggested that" extended exposure to radio frequency radiation could lead "to a development of malignant tumor." The U.S.-based Wireless Consumer Alliance discovered 25 such patents, the Times said.

Phone makers rejected the claim that the patents indicate that they accept the existence of health hazards. "Patenting new innovations is a standard practice," Nokia spokesperson Keith Nowak told Wireless NewsFactor. "Patents are often filed before inventions are ready for commercial use, and others turn out not to be technically viable at all. Therefore, Nokia, like many large technology companies, has an extensive patent portfolio which includes designs and devices which are not currently used in production models."

Nowak added that Nokia's products meet emissions safety standards set by government and administrative agencies, so "the fact that Nokia may have alternative means of meeting these standards which have not been incorporated into current complying products is not relevant."

Ericsson spokesperson Robert Elston said that all Ericsson phones are designed and tested to comply with existing safety standards for radio frequency exposure, which leave wide margins of safety. Elston cited the World Health Organization (WHO), which said, "Scientific evidence does not indicate any need for RF absorbing covers or other shields on mobile phones."

"Extensive research over the course of many years has not established any conclusive evidence of a link between adverse health effects and the use of mobile phones meeting those standards and regulations," Elston said.

Ericsson spokesperson Michael Westmark told Reuters that the patents were designed to improve the performance of mobile phones by reducing the radio waves they use, not specifically to prevent brain tumors, and denied the inventions were an admission that using the company's phones presented a health hazard.

Although studies by the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine, as well as the National Cancer Institute and a number of international health authorities that have studied the issue, have found no definitive link between cell phone use and health problems such as cancer, scientists acknowledge that more research is needed. Others are not convinced and have taken legal action against phone manufacturers, stating the companies knowingly are selling hazardous devices. The report that phone makers have developed radiation-shield technology could be a powerful tool for high-profile attorney Peter G. Angelos, who has filed class-action suits in four states, claiming phone makers are selling products that have been linked to brain cancer and other health-related problems.

Angelos is seeking a judgment that includes requiring all manufacturers to supply headsets at no cost to all purchasers or lessees, or to reimburse any consumer who has purchased a headset, as well as punitive damages. His is one of several lawsuits filed against phone manufacturers in the United States.

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A re-engineered polio virus is used as a weapon against deadly brain tumours-(Cancer Info-23/05/2001)

While health workers race to eradicate poliomyelitis, a re-engineered poliovirus has been used as a weapon against deadly brain tumours by researchers in North Carolina. They have found by chance a genetic trick that makes the wild poliovirus attack and destroy tumour cells instead of the neurons that are its normal target.

Matthis Gromeier, a microbiologist now at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues were working to understand the poliovirus better by examining the effect of swapping an instruction on its RNA for an analogous snippet from a rhinovirus. The latter is responsible for the common cold. Normal polio viral cells attach to neurons at a receptor protein known as cd155 and destroy them. Glial cells form the support structure for neurons and can mutate to form glioma brain tumours. They also have cd155 but polio does not normally affect them. But with the rhinovirus RNA instruction, the team found that the poliovirus killed glial cells instead of neurons.

The effect is not fully understood yet, but the team has now exploited it to create a potential treatment for gliomas. These are the most common brain tumours and are nearly always fatal as no effective treatment is currently available. They have found that injecting the re-engineered poliovirus into gliomas in mice causes them to shrink dramatically within a week and almost disappear within two. Equally important, all their results have shown the altered virus to be incapable of causing poliomyelitis, though Gromeier says that possibility can never be completely eliminated.

The Duke team is currently working toward human trials of the technique with the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, though Glomeier says they are probably a few years off.

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Pharmacyclics pins hopes on cancer-treatment drug –(Cancer Info-08/05/2001)

While a graduate student in chemistry at Stanford, Jonathan Sessler suffered a relapse of Hodgkin's disease-a cancer of the lymph nodes-and was treated by a young university oncologist, Dr. Richard Miller. "I'd do chemotherapy in the day, go home and vomit a bit, and go back and do lab work at night,'' recalls Sessler, who recovered and remains healthy two decades later. He also remembers that Miller issued him a challenge: to use his knowledge of chemistry to develop new compounds for fighting cancer.

And that's just what Sessler has been doing as a professor of chemistry at the University of Texas. There he and his colleagues invented a family of chemicals dubbed "texaphyrins" that accumulate in tumors but not in healthy tissue. They are Texas-size versions of natural compounds called porphyrins, a class that includes a key component of the hemoglobin in red blood cells and the chlorophyll in green plants.

In 1991, Sessler and Miller launched Pharmacyclics in Sunnyvale to apply these colorful compounds to the treatment of cancer and other diseases. In March, medical researchers treated the last of 428 patients in a test of one of these compounds, Xcytrin. Half the patients were given radiation plus Xcytrin for tumors that had spread to their brains; the other half got radiation alone.

Sessler and Miller, a co-founder of Idec Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, are optimistic that the study conducted at 60 medical centers will show that Xcytrin improves the effectiveness of radiation, extending lives and reducing the debilitating impact of multiple tumors in the brain. They should know if they're right when the data is fully analyzed by the end of the year.

That would be good for the patients with brain metastases, whose life spans are typically measured not in years but in months. And it will be good for a company that sees a possible billion-dollar-a-year market for a drug that can enhance the benefit of radiation in cancer treatment without contributing much in the way of ill effects of its own.

In the case of Xcytrin, there is a side effect that sets it apart, one that lasts only a few days: It turns patients slightly green. "It has no clinical consequence, is the way I'd describe it," Miller said. "But you do tell patients about it."

"In the clinic, it's a source of humorous conversation," said Dr. Minesh Mehta, the University of Wisconsin radiation oncologist who heads the large-scale clinical trial of the drug now in its final stages. It comes up a lot around St. Patrick's Day, he said.

While not all patients pay much attention to the color, their doctors can see it, making it impossible to do what is called a blinded trial, where neither patients nor doctors know whether an individual patient is getting an injection of the drug or an inert salt solution.

There's a reason for the tint. Porphyrins are by nature colorful compounds -- the word comes from the Greek word for purple. The porphyrin in blood cells gives them a red or bluish hue. And as they break down in a bruise, they change from purple to green to yellow. Xcytrin just happened to be a dark-green.

Sessler said he began looking at these compounds because it has long been known that they accumulate in tumors. Moreover, an expanded version of a porphyrin could carry a sizable metal atom. The metal in Xcytrin is gadolinium, which can be detected in an MRI, providing a sharp image and an easy way to measure any changes in tumor size. Other compounds in the family can be equipped with radioactive metals that could carry destruction to the cancer cells. "I realized that the texaphyrins target tumors better than antibodies," Miller said.

Other texaphyrins being developed by Pharmacyclics can be energized by light from lasers for the treatment of cancer, hardening of the arteries and macular degeneration, an overgrowth of small blood vessels in the eye. But Xcytrin remains the Sunnyvale company's lead product. It could win relatively speedy approval by the Food and Drug Administration if the current tests of the drug are a success, in part because the plight of patients whose cancer has spread to the brain is so grim.

An estimated 170,000 patients are treated each year for cancer that has spread to the brain. The median survival is only four months, even with radiation treatments. "I cannot imagine anything worse happening to a patient," Miller said. "Multiple tumors in the brain have unpredictable effects on the ability to speak and to think."

Earlier results in a small, preliminary trial in 22 patients were promising: 72 percent of those treated with Xcytrin plus radiation showed a marked reduction in their tumors. But that study did not directly compare these patients with those getting radiation alone. Those are the results expected later this year. Still, said Mehta, "I have been working with radiosensitizers for quite a long time and I have not seen responses as dramatic as those with this agent."

There are other drugs that sensitize cancer cells to radiation, including some standard chemotherapy agents. But most have significant side effects. Other promising drugs are in development, including one called RSR13 from Allos Therapeutics in Denver. But Thomas J. Dietz, an analyst with Pacific Growth Equities, gives the edge to Pharmacyclics' Xcytrin.

He notes the National Cancer Institute is sponsoring several different trials of the drug in tumors that originate in the brain, as well as lung and pancreatic cancer. "The drug takes the standard practice of radiation therapy to a new level," Dietz said.

The path to FDA approval, however, is not always a smooth one for any drug. And there was at least one worrisome moment for Pharmacyclics a year ago, when researchers from several major centers reported they saw no evidence that Xcytrin increased the effects of radiation in killing tumor cells in petri dishes or in mice. Last summer, when an article in Barron's picked up on those findings, Pharmacyclics shares took a beating- losing almost of third of their value over the next several days. Company officials point to several recent studies that support the effectiveness of Xcytrin in animals and in people. But Martin Brown, a Stanford professor and one of the authors of the critical scientific paper, sticks by the findings, adding, "The bottom line, however, is that we will have to see what happens in the clinical trial."

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Therapy on horizon for rare brain tumor in young –(Times of India Online)

Researchers have discovered that a rare pediatric brain cancer is actually not one, but two types of tumor. One of the tumor types appears to be caused by two different genetic mutations, and the discovery should help pave the way for a targeted drug therapy to eradicate that type.

By analyzing both recently removed and stored tissue from brain tumors, the scientists found that medulloblastoma, a brain cancer that affects 400 to 500 American children each year, has two different subtypes. A quarter of medulloblastomas, which they called desmoplastic, seem to be caused by mutations in two genes that are important to normal development and the brain and other organs. The mutations likely cause the genes to be overactive, which could lead to uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.

At the same time other researchers found a substance that seems to block the uncontrolled cell growth from the mutations. The discovery could lead to a drug targeted to stop this over-activation. The genetic mutations were not found in so-called ``classic'' medulloblastomas, which account for 75 per cent of cases.

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Study Shows No Connection Between Cell Phone Usage And Brain Cancer-(Cancer Info-21/12/2000)

With more than 86 million American cellular phone users reported in 1999 and the number still increasing, there has been growing concern about the risk of developing brain cancer from radiofrequency signals given off by handheld cellular phones. A case-control study of 891 people who regularly used a cellular phone showed no statistical association between the amount of cell phone usage and the likelihood of developing brain cancer. Researchers from the American Health Foundation and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and four United States medical centers reported their findings in the December 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In a retrospective, case-control study, 469 men and women diagnosed with primary brain cancer and 422 people without brain cancer were interviewed between 1994 and 1998 using a structured questionnaire. They were asked which type of cell phone (manufacturer) they used, the usage per month in minutes and hours, the year of first use, and the number of years of usage. In addition, an estimated monthly phone bill was ascertained. The patients, aged 18 to 80, were scrupulously matched to the control group by age, sex, race, years of education, and occupation.

The usage reported for cancer patients and the control group was not statistically significant. The median monthly use was 2.5 hours for cases with cancer and 2.2 hours for the control. The mean duration of use was 2.8 years for brain cancer patients and 2.7 years for the controls. Because 85 percent of people in the study reported extending the antenna during calls, a disproportionate cluster of tumors might have been expected behind the eye and the ear on the side the cell phone was used since radiation emission is highest at the antenna. In fact no link was found between cell phone usage and temporal lobe tumors, nor was there any association between handedness and tumor location.

Based on all available data including studies by other groups, the researchers believe that extended use of cellular phones does not appear to cause brain cancer. However, further research is indicated as this study covers people who have mostly used analog cellular phones for a relatively short period of time (two to three years). As people continue to use cell phones for extended durations, the long-term health effects, if any, need to be monitored.

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Neuroblastoma Imaging Compound Now Used To Kill It-(Cancer Info-6/12/2000)

A radioactive compound used for the past two decades to find certain types of cancer is now showing surprising promise in helping to kill those tumors too. All 11 children treated for neuroblastoma in the drug's first clinical test initially had a positive response with no significant side effects.

The compound, called MIBG, was originally developed and patented in the 1970s and is now used around the world in medical imaging to find and classify certain forms of cancer -- including neuroblastoma, the second most common solid childhood cancer. New results indicate that higher doses of MIBG can also help shrink the same tumors. MIBG acts as a tumor bullet, specifically targeting the neuroblastoma itself, sparing other parts of the body from complications or side effects. MIBG was incorporated into a neuroblastoma treatment regimen, combining it with chemotherapy and a transplant of the child's own bone marrow.

In the Phase I trial, the therapy produced partial remission in three children and complete remission in eight others. All were aged 2 to 14 years and had a history of advanced, or persistent, neuroblastoma. The MIBG regimen caused many of the patients' tumors to shrink or disappear entirely for at least 100 days, and up to one year, with few side effects. However, some have since relapsed and died, while others continue to be stable.

More than 60 percent of all neuroblastoma patients have an advanced stage, high-risk form of the disease that is often resistant to treatment. Advanced-stage patients usually have a life expectancy of one to two years; many of the patients in the trial had a worse prognosis because they had failed prior treatment. Advanced neuroblastoma patients often undergo surgery along with radiation therapy and chemotherapy, and may even have a transplant of their own bone marrow. Despite all the modern advances in medical science, still only 25 to 30 percent of children with advanced neuroblastoma are able to be cured at this point in time. One thought is optimal delivery of the therapy to the tumor itself is not being achieved. That is why the idea of using MIBG is so promising. The compound combines a substance called meta-iodobenzylguanadine -similar to norepinephrine -with a radioactive form of iodine called iodine-131. It was originally developed to treat high blood pressure, but researchers discovered another effect: the MIBG was found to bind to tumor cells that produced chemicals called catecholamines, like neuroblastomas.

MIBG will go through the body looking for neuroblastomas and once it finds it, it will bind to it. That finding led the U-M to pioneer the use of MIBG in the 1970s and 80s to diagnose neuroblastomas. The MIBG is given as an infusion into a patient's IV, and attaches to any neuroblastoma that's in the body so that we can see it on an X-ray type image. Ninety percent of neuroblastomas will take up the MIBG. If, however, the MIBG can't successfully attach to a patient's tumor, it can't be used to find or treat it.

Prior trials attempted to use MIBG alone. Through the present study, it was determined that if bone marrow transplant was combined with MIBG therapy as two knock-out punches back to back, there was better chance of success in treating patients with extensive neuroblastomas.

The protocol used to produce the new results was developed through cooperation among nuclear medicine specialists, oncologists, radiologists and bone marrow transplant specialists. The MIBG is made at the Phoenix Memorial Laboratory. The regimen starts with a regular low-dose MIBG imaging scan, to make sure the patient's tumors will take up the compound and to pinpoint where the tumors are found. Then, the patient's bone marrow is harvested and frozen, before starting a 21-day attack.

The assault on the cancer starts with an infusion of the MIBG solution in the patient's IV. The MIBG is administered over 90 minutes to the patient in a special lead-lined hospital room. The shielding around the patient keeps parents and other healthy people from exposure to radiation. During the three to five days in the special room, the children can watch TV and play with video games or toys while the radioactivity in the MIBG does its silent work attacking the tumors. Though the dose is high, the only side effects reported during administration of the MIBG were mild nausea and vomiting.

Three to four days after receiving the MIBG, patients are discharged from the hospital. They are then re-admitted in two weeks for four days of high-dose chemotherapy followed by an infusion of their stored bone marrow. The patients are then required to stay in the hospital for several weeks to recover from the transplant.

The promising results from the initial trial have led to the research being performed in several other pediatric transplant centers in the U.S. The University of Michigan has joined forces with several other medical centers, including the University of California at San Francisco, Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, to treat patients with MIBG using a common protocol.

Meanwhile, research designed to help predict which patients may benefit most from MIBG earlier in their treatment course, rather than waiting until they have failed conventional treatment continues.

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Cell transplants safe for stroke patients-(Times of India-23/08/2000)

Cells taken from a deadly tumour and retrained to become brain cells have been safely used to treat stroke patients. While only half the patients improved, the study shows that the method is safe and strengthens the idea that brain cell transplants can be used to help stroke patients recover.

The cells came from a 22-year-old cancer patient who died of a tumour called teratocarcinoma. These cells have properties similar to tem cells, the master cell from which all other cells are produced. The cells were kept alive in a laboratory and a way was found to coax them into becoming what appear to be normal neurons.

The stroke patients got injections of the cells and in just under 6 months, six of the 12 patients had improved scores on standard measures of stroke effects. They showed a better ability to use arms, legs, walked without braces, had improved strength in terms of being able to hold something better.

Positron Emission Tomography scans showed the cells seemed to be functioning in about half the patients.

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Gene therapy for brain tumours, leukemia-(Times of India-17/08/2000)

Researchers have succeeded in cloning genes that result in brain tumours, paving the way for possible gene therapy against the disease. Called the low oxygen-inducing factor, the gene was recently cloned from a galotinous tumour sample from a human brain. Existing inside the human body, the gene could induce various diseases and cause nerve system damage and brain tumours.

A whole set of genes which play a key role in treating an acute form of leukaemia has also been discovered. The 169 genes can be adjusted by Atra, a chemical element derived from Vitamin A, to form a genetic system which controls the division of WBCs and helps cure Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia.

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Institute To Create New Therapies For Brain Cancer-(Cancer Info-26/05/2000)

Continuing its leading-edge research into treatments for malignant diseases, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is launching a new, comprehensive neuro-oncology center to focus on the genetics of brain development-with the goal of creating new clinical therapies for brain cancers and other neurological malignancies.

The Charles A. Dana Foundation, whose support of the Institute spans nearly four decades, has awarded it $7.4 million for the establishment of the David Mahoney Center for Neuro-Oncology. The center will enable Dana-Farber and other Harvard Medical School-affiliated researchers to gain valuable insight into the process of both normal and abnormal brain development.

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Neural stem cells and brain cancer: a mission to seek and destroy-(Nature Medicine April, 2000)

A study in the April, 2000 issue of Nature Medicine offers hope for treating malignant tumors of the central nervous system by making use of the ability of genetically modified neural stem cells to engraft into the brain and produce cancer-fighting molecules. Human brain tumors such as glioblastomas are among the most difficult cancers to treat. Their tendency to spread throughout the central nervous system often makes surgical removal impossible, and chemotherapy cannot usually penetrate the blood-brain-barrier effectively. As for many cancers, there has long been hope that harnessing the power of the immune system would enable the effective treatment of these tumors.
The difficulty is delivering the therapeutic agents to the right locations within the brain for extended periods of time. Now, Gaetano Finocchiaro and his colleagues at the Instituto Nazionale Neurologico Besta in Milan, Italy describe immunotherapy of glioblastoma using stem cells of the central nervous system as vehicles for the delivery of the immunomodulator, interleukin (IL)-4.

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Medical revolution is under way on the net (TOI-17/12/99)

The singer Carnie Wilson was not alone during her gastrointestinal bypass operation. As well as half a dozen doctors and nurses, there were 52,000 people watching the two-hour procedure live on the net. Cybersurgery is the latest health craze on the net and its promoters are predicting eventual audiences of more than a million.

Other health sites are already offering virtual check-ups, heart monitoring and cancer risk assessments.

The net is spearheading a technological revolution in the delivery of health care and a survey by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh shows health surfers, including doctors, to be the biggest measurable group of net users.

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