Bill Bradley in Aug 29 NY Times makes a pitch for combining health care reform with tort reform. From contacts with Republican prostate cancer patients I know tort reform constantly comes up. Bradley argues:

Since the days of Harry Truman, Democrats have wanted universal health coverage, believing that if other industrialized countries can achieve it, surely the United States can. For Democrats, universal coverage speaks to America’s sense of decency and compassion. Democrats also believe that it will lead to a healthier and more productive country.

ZD4054 is a potential anti-cancer agent now in a clinical trials around the world for men with metastatic hormone refractory prostate cancer (HRPC) and for men with non-metastatic hormone refractory prostate cancer.

The trials are run by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which makes ZD4054. These two distinct trials differ significantly in the level of therapy offered to men who do not receive the novel (new and not yet proven) trial drug.

The novel drug is a selective endothelin-A receptor antagonist (SERA) from the same family as atrasentan (brand name Xinlay) and YM598. Xinlay, which for a while looked quite promising, failed to prove effective in clinical trials for prostate cancer in 2005 and did not win FDA approval.

A study published in Clinical Cancer Research August 18 2009 reports that an extract of the Chinese herb Wedelia (a member of the Asteraceae, or sunflower family of plants) shrinks the androgen receptor and prostate cancer in male mice.

“Wedelia chinensis,” the authors write, “is a common ingredient of anti-inflammatory herbal medicines in Taiwan and southern China. Inflammation is involved in promoting tumor growth, invasion, and metastasis. This study aims to test the biological effects in vivo of W. chinensis extract on prostate cancer.”

Patients who experience fatigue during radiotherapy for breast or prostate cancer may be reacting to activation of the proinflammatory cytokine network, a known inflammatory pathway, according to a report in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

• Fatigue is a major side effect of radiotherapy
• Inflammation mechanism suggests possible treatment option
• Test done in breast and prostate cancer

The Ride to Conquer Cancer and raise funds for Louisville, Kentucky’s Norton Cancer Institute is open for online check-ins.

“Over the course of two days, September 26-27, you will cycle on a monumental journey from Louisville to Lexington and back. The Ride will be challenging, but so is cancer. With your help, we can spread awareness and raise funds for cancer care — and one day a cure.”

Colin Powell, tennis champ John McEnroe and L.A. Dodger’s manager Joe Torre come together to save lives! They speak out on one of the deadliest cancers for men! Powell, McEnroe and Torre on surviving and preventing prostate cancer!

Herbert Klein MD, a nuclear medicine specialist, writes:

As the following item indicates, there is a shortage of technetium-99m, the basic radioisotope for bone scans, as well as heart scans,
kidney scans, etc: Isotope Crisis Threatens Medical Care

So far, in the nuclear medicine department where I practice, there have been no problems, but there might be in the days to come.

Ought doctors to take drug costs into account when they advice advanced cancer patients? Peter Bach at Memorial Sloan Kettering reacts in this phone interview to a cost-conscious commentary “How Much is Life Worth?” in JNCI (Journal of the National Institute).

Scientists have made a discovery about antibiotics that may advance cancer therapy. By studying the mechanisms at work in protein production, a Princeton-led team has discovered why certain kinds of antibiotics are so effective.

The new discovery exposes how a specific protein protects against cell death. This may also shed light on the cancer-fighting process, because cancer involves inability of defective cells to die off.

In particular, the new discovery is relevant to study of a human protein known as Bax Inhibitor-1 (BI-1) that has been found to affect metastatic spread of prostate and other cancers.

If you are a cancer patient, whatever your race — whether you are African American, Hispanic or white — in the USA you would be well advised to seek treatment at a hospital that treats mostly white patients.

So finds a newly published study by researchers at University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. At hospitals that treat more black patients than white, all cancer patients are liable to receive less than optimum care.

Hospitals that treat more black cancer patients, these researchers found, have worse survival rates on average for patients with breast and colon cancer, regardless of race,

The research helps explain, the authors say, why African-Americans with breast or colon cancer are less likely than white patients to survive the disease. The study appears in the Aug. 20 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.