Edith P. Mitchell, M.D., clinical professor, Department of Medical Oncology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and associate director of Diversity Programs for the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson, was recently honored with a ‘Tree of Life’ award from The Wellness of You, a local nonprofit health education and resource organization.

The Tree of Life award recognizes health professionals who are committed to making a difference in community health. Recipients of this coveted award have made extraordinary contributions to health management in both the local and global community. Recipients include educators, physicians, authors, community activists, and masters of various disciplines such as martial arts and feng shui.

“I am honored to accept this award from The Wellness of You organization whose purpose is to help individuals in medically underserved areas realize that simple changes in lifestyle can have a dramatic impact on one’s health,” said Dr. Mitchell. “Their mission matches my own in regards to the importance of community outreach especially to those individuals who may not have the means to seek out more conventional medical advice.”

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Pink is all the rage in October as money and awareness are raised for the most common cancer for women (other than skin cancer) during Breast Cancer Awareness month. But what about some attention for one of the most common cancers in men? Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men, according to the American Cancer Society.

Men in Plano have a new way to share their concerns and raise awareness, through the Us TOO prostate cancer patient support group at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano. The group, which is the first Us TOO chapter in Plano, helps men and their families learn more about prostate cancer so they can make better decisions on treatment options. The group also provides support as men deal with quality of life issues as a survivor.

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Health Literacy Month, recognized in October, promotes the importance of ensuring access to understandable health information. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, only 12 percent of adults have proficient health literacy - skills needed to manage their health. Improving health literacy for at-risk populations is the focus of an ongoing study at the University of Missouri Health Communication Research Center (HCRC). Recently, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded an $8.6 million grant to HCRC, in partnership with Washington University in St. Louis, to advance health communication that will improve health literacy and health outcomes for at-risk populations.

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Inflammation, a frontline defense against infection or disease, can help nurture skin cancer, researchers have found.

IDO, an enzyme that works like a firefighter to keep inflammation under control, can be commandeered to protect early malignant cells, say Medical College of Georgia researchers studying an animal model of chronic inflammation and skin cancer.

“Inflammation should really help prevent a tumor,” says Dr. Andrew Mellor, director of the MCG Immunotherapy Center and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Molecular Immunogenetics. In fact, there is strong evidence that inflammation triggers the immune response. “You want a good immune response; this is what protects you from pathogens,” he says. “In this case, it’s an unfortunate exploitation by malignant cells.”

In a study with Drs. George C. Prendergast and Alexander J. Muller at the Lankenau Institute of Medical Research in Philadelphia, researchers gave mice a single dose of a carcinogen at the same time they began painting a tiny portion of skin with a poison ivy derivative twice weekly for 20 weeks.

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Neotropix®, Inc., a clinical-stage development company focused on neuroendocrine cancer treatments, announced today exciting data from an extensive pediatric preclinical study performed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) funded Pediatric Preclinical Testing Program on the use of NTX-010 (Seneca Valley Virus-001), a tumor-selective naturally-occurring oncolytic virus. The results support the initiation of clinical development of Neotropix’s lead candidate, NTX-010 for the treatment of pediatric cancers. NTX-010 has been developed as a cancer therapeutic to treat some of the most aggressive cancers known which occur in adults including small cell lung cancer, large cell non-small cell lung cancer, as well as other adult cancers such as carcinoid and various neuroendocrine cancers.

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There is some evidence to suggest that peptide segments that are found rarely or never in the host proteome play a role in the immune response to disease-related proteins, both those derived from microbes and those derived from the host itself.

We conjecture that this pattern may extend to human proto-oncoproteins. Our hypothesis in this study is that the frequency of rare peptide segments in sets of human proto-oncoproteins is significantly higher than the frequency in sets of control proteins, and we show that this is the case.

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Argos Therapeutics today announced the publication of a paper in the October 15th issue of the Journal of Immunonology demonstrating that the Company’s proprietary RNA-electroporated dendritic cells generate high-avidity cytotoxic T cells (CTL) in vitro that are able to destroy cells expressing their target antigens. This advance may potentially improve the clinical benefit of dendritic cell-based immunotherapies for the treatment of infectious disease and cancer. This approach is part of the Company’s Arcelis™ technology, a proprietary platform for creating personalized immunotherapies for HIV, other infectious diseases, and cancer.

The publication describes how Argos’ process of electroporating dendritic cells (DCs) with antigen-encoding RNA post-maturation, as well as co-electroporating those DCs with messenger RNA for the T cell protein CD40L (PME-CD40L process), generates CTL with the ability to rapidly proliferate, secrete pro-inflammatory mediators, and kill antigen-expressing target cells.

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Medivation, Inc. (Nasdaq: MDVN) today announced the presentation of new data from an ongoing Phase 1-2 clinical trial demonstrating that the Company’s novel androgen receptor antagonist MDV3100 continues to show promising safety and efficacy results. The data showed encouraging and durable anti-tumor activity in the three expanded dose groups tested thus far, as measured by prostate specific antigen (PSA) declines, radiographic findings, circulating tumor cell (CTC) changes, and time on treatment. MDV3100 has been generally well tolerated, with no reports of serious adverse events deemed related to MDV3100. Dose escalation in the trial is continuing.

“The tolerability and the anti-tumor activity seen with MDV3100 after six months of treatment remains encouraging,” said Howard Scher, M.D., principal investigator of the trial and chief of the Genitourinary Oncology Service and the D. Wayne Calloway Chair in Urologic Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. “The trial continues to enroll rapidly and additional data will further clarify the potential of MDV3100 as a treatment option for patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer, who have a poor prognosis and for whom treatment options are limited.”

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US scientists working on the largest study ever to map the genetic changes involved in lung adenocarcinoma have identified 26 genes that are frequently mutated in this most common form of lung cancer, further increasing opportunities for individualized diagnosis and treatment of the country’s leading cause of cancer deaths.

The Tumor Sequencing Project (TSP) consortium study was funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was the work of investigators from many research centres throughout the US and two in Germany. It is published in the 23 October print issue of the journal Nature.

Acting Director of the NHGRI, Dr Alan E Guttmacher said:

“By harnessing the power of genomic research, this pioneering work has painted the clearest and most complete portrait yet of lung cancer’s molecular complexities.”

“This big picture perspective will help to focus our research vision and speed our efforts to develop new strategies for disarming this common and devastating disease,” he added.

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The leading cause of death in all cancer patients continues to be the resistance of tumor cells to chemotherapy, a form of treatment in which chemicals are used to kill cells.

Now a study by UC Riverside biochemists that focuses on cancer cells reports that ingesting apigenin - a naturally occurring dietary agent found in vegetables and fruit - improves cancer cells’ response to chemotherapy.

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