December 27, 2005 -Taking 1,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D3 daily appears to lower an individual’s risk of developing certain cancers – including colon, breast, and ovarian cancer – by up to 50 percent, according to cancer prevention specialists at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Medical Center. The researchers call for prompt public health action to increase intake of vitamin D3 as an inexpensive tool for prevention of diseases that claim millions of lives each year. Full story

$50m pledge will help Therion develop drug

By Stephen Heuser, Globe Staff | December 26, 2005

In an unusual effort by a single wealthy investor to keep a medical idea alive, a German billionaire is promising $50 million to Therion Biologics Corp., a small Cambridge company trying to develop the first-ever therapeutic vaccine for cancer. ….

ts lead product, Panvac-VF, is a series of injections designed to fight pancreatic cancer, which strikes 30,000 Americans each year and is almost always fatal.

Early tests of Panvac showed it extended the lives of patients with late-stage pancreatic cancer, and the company expects results from a larger trial on 250 patients early next year. If it shows significant benefits, the company will apply for FDA approval.

”We’re all figuratively holding our breath waiting for the results of this trial,” said Leuchtenberger.

Like shots for flu or measles, cancer vaccines are designed to train the body’s immune system to fight a specific disease.

Unlike a traditional vaccine, however, the drug being tested by Therion is not preventive. Rather, it is given to people who already have cancer, in the hopes that their immune cells can learn to recognize and attack the cancer as it tries to grow and spread in the body.

A success in the trial would let Therion enter the lucrative niche of last-chance cancer therapies, among the most expensive drugs in modern medicine.

Full story at the Boston Globe’s boston.com business section

John Isaacs in an overview this month in BJU of “New strategies for the medical treatment of prostate cancer” brings up:

novel treatments that target prostate-specific antigen (PSA), human glandular kallikrein-2, or prostate-specific membrane antigen. An inactive prodrug with a thapsigargin analogue, a sesquiterpene lactone from the plant Thapsia garganica, is currently under investigation specifically for the targeted therapy of HRPC. Preclinical data suggest the PSA-targeting abilities of this novel therapy are associated with a nearly complete cessation of tumour growth with minimal toxicity.

When a researcher offers this kind of review you can guess it is a pet project. In this case Isaacs ostensibly talks about all available strategies for treating HRPC, but then he zones in on one rather obscure-sounding novel therapy.
(full story…)

PSAD is determined by dividing the PSA number by the prostate volume (its size as measured by transrectal ultrasound). Johns Hopkins doctors recommend this measurement “to help differentiate between cancer and BPH in men with moderately high PSA levels (4 to 10 ng/mL) and normal DRE results.”

The theory is that cancer causes a greater elevation in PSA per prostate volume than BPH. If so, PSA density should be higher in men with cancer. To find PSA density, doctors divide the PSA results by prostate volume (as estimated by transrectal ultrasound). This method is imperfect, according to the Hopkins experts; but, they add, “studies showing that PSA density levels over 0.15 indicate a high risk of cancer have led doctors to use PSA density tests for men with PSA levels between 4 and 10 ng/mL.”

Some recent studies have shown however that PSA density is not a very useful measurement.
A Spanish teams a couple of years ago said: “We conclude that PSAD and PSADTZ are not excessively useful for adequately discriminating between patients with prostate cancer and those with non-malignant disease, particularly when digital rectal examination is normal.” (Garcia Sisamon F, et al, 2003). Now a study in Kuwait, published this month, has found similarly:
(full story…)