By Melinda Dodd The Cleveland Clinic announced a possible breakthrough—but is a breast cancer vaccine too good to be true? It’s something generations of women could only dream about: a cancer vaccine that keeps malignant cells from taking hold in the breast, and stops tumors in their tracks. Announced earlier this week by the Cleveland Clinic, the proposed breast-cancer vaccine contains a small amount of alpha-lactalbumin, a protein that researchers say is present in the majority of breast tumors. The vaccine is intended to create an immune response in your body that should help you beat...

(Reuters) – An experimental new breast cancer drug made from sea sponges helped in a range of cancers, from breast cancer to sarcoma, researchers report. Three studies show the drug, Eisai’s eribulin, was effective and tolerated in patients with breast cancer, colon cancer and urinary cancer, according to brief data released on Thursday by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Sarcomas are cancers that grow from muscle or bone. A fourth study of patients with advanced breast cancer will be detailed in a “late-breaker” session at ASCO’s annual meeting in June. The...

Women who take multivitamin pills daily have a higher incidence of breast cancer than those that do not take vitamins supplements, according to a new Swedish study which has been unable to explain why. “Even if we do not know whether there is a causal link, our results are an alarm signal which must be taken seriously and researched further,” said Susanna Larsson at Karolinska Institutet to Uppsala Nya Tidning. 35,000 women in Uppsala and Västmanland county took part in the study which has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. None of the women had cancer when...

By Helen Briggs Health reporter, BBC News Five genetic clues to why some women have a family history of breast cancer have been identified by UK researchers. It brings to 18 the number of common genetic variations linked to a small increased risk of breast cancer. The Cambridge University-led research, published in Nature Genetics, could see targeted screening and treatment of women more likely to get breast cancer. It is thought about one in 20 of all breast cancers are down to inherited faults in known genes. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK with more than 45,500 new cases...

A new research helps explain why breast-milk cells lose their structure, causing them to clump up in strange ways and sometimes become cancer tumours. With the support of Chen Ling and Dongmei Zuo at McGill’s Goodman Cancer Centre, McGill Biochemist Dr. William Muller has discovered how one particular gene regulates epithelial cells – cells that normally form in sheets and are polarized to enable the transport of molecules in a single direction. It’s this loss of polarity that is thought to play an important role in breast tumour development. Scientists at the Ontario Cancer Institute (Princess...

Pink Glove Dance

LONDON: In what’s being claimed as a major breakthrough, scientists have developed a simple blood test to detect breast cancer in women. Normal breast screening checks, using Xray mammograms, detect a tumour only once it is three or four times bigger, by which time it may have started to spread beyond breast. But, this test can pick up a cancer the size of a small seed before a woman has developed any symptoms. Developed by the scientists, led by Norwegian company Diagenic ASA, the test looks for raised levels of chemical “markers” for cancer picked up as blood flows through...

Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer Scientists for decades have lumped Asians into one homogenous group when studying conditions like breast cancer and heart disease, leading to false conclusions that don’t take into account the health disparities among different nationalities, researchers now say. In fact, subgroups of Asians and Pacific Islanders can face dramatically different risks for developing certain diseases. One recent study found that Hmong adults in California have rates of liver and cervical cancer three to four times higher than those of other Asians and Pacific Islanders, for...

By Daniel Martin A method of destroying breast tumours by surrounding them with ice could offer hope of a safe non-surgical cure for the disease, research suggests. The technique called cryotherapy is already used to treat prostate cancer. It involves inserting several needle-like ‘cryoprobes’ into the tumour and passing super-cold gas through them. The ice ball rapidly created around each site kills off the cancerous cells. Freezing therapy has been tried before for breast cancer – but this is the first time a minimally invasive version, which requires no surgery, has been developed....

Researchers at the University Of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center released a study that shows that freezing cancerous tumors can kill the cancer, another up-side to this being that it causes an immune system response that could provide a natural barrier to this disease. Research showed that of two methods used (fast freezing in 30 seconds, and slow freezing, over a period of minutes) that not only was fast freezing more effective in killing the cancerous cells, it provided an immune system response that hindered the spread, it is believed. Read More…