By ROBERT BARR Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

LONDON — Two men were hospitalized in critical condition Wednesday and four others were in serious condition after suffering adverse reactions in trials of a new drug, and British regulators ordered the tests suspended.

Parexel International, which supervised the trial, identified the drug as TGN1412, a monoclonal antibody developed by TeGenero AG of Wuerzburg, Germany, for treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases and leukemia.

Ganesh Suntharalingam, clinical director of intensive care at Northwick Park Hospital, said two of the men were in critical condition and four were in serious condition but showing signs of improvement.

“The drug, which is untested and therefore unused by doctors, has caused an inflammatory response which affects some organs of the body,” Suntharalingam said.
(full story…)

Capsaicin, the pungent alkaloid in jalapeños and other chile peppers that makes them hot, drives prostate cancer cells to kill themselves off, according to studies published in the March 15 issue of Cancer Research. See:
http://www.psa-rising.com/eatingwell/peppers_hot.htm

Some commentators reacted by warning that hot peppers may cause gastric cancer. Is this true? How strong is the association?

A study conducted at a Texas Veterans Administration hospital in 1988, published in the JAMA, injected about an ounce of jalapeno pepper directly into the stomachs of volunteers. Follow-up observation showed no damage to their stomach linings. But this did not amount to chronic exposure, and anti-cancer versus cancer-causing effects of capsaicin are still controversial. A couple of years ago Mexico National Institute of Public Health found higher rates of gastric cancer in people who ate the equivalent of 9-25 jalapeno peppers a day compared to people who no more than 3 a day. They found no evidence that bacterioa known to be associated with some types of stomach were causing this increased risk.
(full story…)

Genistein, the major isoflavone from soy, has been shown to have cancer preventive activity, but the mechanisms are not clearly understood. Fang et al. demonstrate that treatment of human esophageal cancer cells with genistein (2–20 mmol/L) caused the reversal of hypermethylation and reactivation of retinoic acid receptor β, p16INK4a, and O6-methylguanine methyltransferase genes. Similar activity is also observed with human prostate cancer cells.

Greater extent of reactivation is observed when genistein is combined with low concentrations of trichostatin, sulforaphane, or 2’-deoxy-5-aza-cytidine. Reversal or prevention of the hypermethylation of key genes by genistein may contribute to its cancer prevention activity.

Source: October 1 Clinical Cancer Research Highlights | American Association for Cancer Research

Note: Sulforaphane is found in cruciferous veggies (brassica) like broccoli, broccoli sprouts, bok choy, kale, collards, cauliflower, cauliflower sprouts, arugula, kohlrabi, mustard, turnip, red radish and watercress, brussel sprouts and cabbage.

High-powered jolts of electricity, repeated many times, kill melanoma cells in mice. Scientists from Old Dominion University and Eastern Virginia Medical School say that using extremely short, high-voltage doses of electricity, they’ve never had a tumor that did not respond to the treatment.
Richard Nuccitelli, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Old Dominion, said the method might eventually turn into an effective cancer treatment.
physorg.com

Today’s New York Times is running a story by Alex Berenson in the business section about Genentech’s Avastin, A Cancer Drug Shows Promise, at a Price That Many Can’t Pay. “Doctors are excited about the prospect of Avastin, ” Berenson writes, “a drug already widely used for colon cancer, as a crucial new treatment for breast and lung cancer, too. But doctors are cringing at the price the maker, Genentech, plans to charge for it: about $100,000 a year.”
(full story…)

Drug companies stop recruiting for cancer drug test after deaths
PAUL ELIAS
AP via Miami Herald reg Tue Feb 14 200
SAN FRANCISCO - Biotechnology giant Genentech Inc. and its majority stockholder Roche Holding AG said they temporarily halted recruiting volunteers for a large human test of the blockbuster cancer drug Avastin after more patients than expected died.

The deaths occurred among colon cancer patients taking Avastin with a chemotherapy regimen called XELOX. Since the test was started in December 2004, seven patients taking that combination died, four of them suddenly, Roche said in a press release Monday.

“An occurrence of sudden deaths, especially in three younger patients, was noted,” Roche said, adding that the temporary suspension would allow “a full safety assessment.”

Those seven deaths compare to four deaths in another arm of the study that combined Avastin with a different chemotherapy called FOLFOX.

About 2,000 of the 3,450 patients planned for the test already receiving one of three combinations of Avastin and the chemotherapy regimens will continue to receive their drugs. The rest of the volunteers won’t be enrolled for at least 60 days while the companies try to find what caused the deaths.

The test is designed to see if Avastin can safely be used to prevent colon cancer from recurring in patients in remission. The Food and Drug Administration approved Avastin for patients with advanced colon cancer in 2004 and the drug accounted for $1.1 billion in sales for Genentech last year. Basel, Switzerland-based Roche owns sales rights in Europe, where it was approved last year.
Full story online:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13867271.htm

The Lowdown on Sweet?
February 12, 2006
By MELANIE WARNER

note — This New York Times article was published today, Feb 12, in the business section, not in the health section. I have edited the links so that you can get hold of Dr. Soffritti’s full text article in .pdf

WHEN Dr. Morando Soffritti, a cancer researcher in Bologna, Italy, saw the results of his team’s seven-year study on aspartame, he knew he was about to be injected into a bitter controversy over this sweetener, one of the most contentiously debated substances ever added to foods and beverages.

Aspartame is sold under the brand names Nutra-Sweet and Equal and is found in such popular products as Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Snapple and Sugar Free Kool-Aid. Hundreds of millions of people consume it worldwide. And Dr. Soffritti’s study concluded that aspartame may cause the dreaded “c” word: cancer.

The research found that the sweetener was associated with unusually high rates of lymphomas, leukemias and other cancers in rats that had been given doses of it starting at what would be equivalent to four to five 20-ounce bottles of diet soda a day for a 150-pound person. The study, which involved 1,900 laboratory rats and cost $1 million, was conducted at the European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences, a nonprofit organization that studies cancer-causing substances; Dr. Soffritti is its scientific director.

The findings, first released last July, prompted a flurry of criticism from the Calorie Control Council, a trade group for makers of artificial sweeteners that has spent the last 25 years trying to quell fears about aspartame. It said Dr. Soffritti’s study flew in the face of four earlier cancer studies that aspartame’s creator, G. D. Searle & Company, had underwritten and used to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to approve it for human consumption. “Aspartame has been safely consumed for more than a quarter of a century and is one of the most thoroughly studied food additives,” read one news release from the council.
(full story…)

2006-02-10 10:16:19 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adding arachidonic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid, to culture media causes prostate cancer cells to grow twice as fast as usual, according to a report in the February 1st issue of Cancer Research.

“Investigating the reasons for this rapid growth, we discovered that the omega-6 was turning on a dozen inflammatory genes that are known to be important in cancer,” lead author Dr. Millie Hughes-Fulford, from the San Francisco VA Medical Center, said in a statement.

Further analysis indicated that arachidonic acid was activating these genes through a PI3-kinase pathway known to play a key role in the pathogenesis of cancer.

Adding an NSAID or a PI3-kinase inhibitor to the culture media blocked the arachidonic acid-induced proliferation of prostate cancer cells, the findings indicate.

In light of the current findings, Dr. Hughes-Fulford said she now avoids cooking with corn oil, which is known to be high in omega-6 fatty acids. “I’m not a physician, and do not tell people how to eat, but I can tell you what I do in my own home. I use only canola oil and olive oil.”

Cancer Research, Feb 1, 2006.
Arachidonic Acid Activates Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase Signaling and Induces Gene Expression in Prostate Cancer
Millie Hughes-Fulford1,2,3, Chai-Fei Li, Jim Boonyaratanakornkit and Sina Sayyah
Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center; Northern California Institute for Research and Education; and University of California, San Francisco, California

News Source: Reuters Health

Starting a low-fat diet in mid-life does not, by itself, decrease a woman’s risk of heart disease or stroke or dramatically reduce her risk of breast or colorectal cancer, according to three studies published today of almost 50,000 healthy, post-menopausal women. But don’t break out the ice cream just yet. Once you get into the nitty gritty of the study, the investigators stress, the findings still support the general idea that you need to pay attention to how much fat — and particularly what kinds of fat — you eat.
(full story…)

By GINA KOLATA
Published: February 7, 2006

The largest study ever to ask whether a low-fat diet keeps women from getting cancer or heart disease has found that the diet had no effect.

The $415 million federal study involved nearly 49,000 women aged 50 to 79 who were followed for eight years. In the end, those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, and heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today.

Those who ate the higher-fat diets also had no more diabetes, no higher blood glucose or insulin levels, no higher blood pressure. And the different diets did not make much difference in anyone’s weight. By the end of the study, women in the two groups weighed about the same. But women in the low-fat group had slightly lower levels of low density lipoprotein cholesterol, or LDL, which increases heart disease risk.

The results should put an end to more than two decades of speculating that a low-fat diet is protective, said Dr. Michael Thun, who directs epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society. The new study, he said, “was the Rolls Royce of studies that would answer this question.”

Considering the time, effort, and money it takes to do such a study, Dr. Thun and others added, it is unlikely that anything like it will ever be attempted again. “We usually have only one shot at a very large-scale trial on a particular issue,” Dr. Thun said.
Study Finds Low-Fat Diet Won’t Stop Cancer or Heart Disease - New York Times

Thalidomide is making a subsidized comeback in Australia to treat multiple myeloma. In the USA thalidomide is already available to treat prostate cancer. It has not been too effective on its own. Giving it in combination with other chemotherapy may increase side effects. But a team of oncologists has found that giving a blood-thinner to prevent clots from thalidomide plus taxane chemotherapy “could provide a therapeutic and survival advantage for patients….”
(full story…)

LAURAN NEERGAARD
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The dog hopped on three legs, pain from bone cancer so bad that he wouldn’t let his afflicted fourth paw touch the floor. His owner was bracing for euthanasia when scientists offered a novel experiment: They injected a fiery sap from a Moroccan plant into Scooter’s spinal column - and the dog frolicked on all fours again for several months.

The chemical destroyed nerve cells that sensed pain from Scooter’s cancer, not helping the tumor but apparently making him no longer really feel it.

The dramatic effect in dogs has researchers from the National Institutes of Health preparing to test the chemical in people whose pain from advanced cancer is unrelieved by even the strongest narcotics.

The first human study could begin by next year, at the NIH’s Bethesda, Md., hospital. A second study in pain-ridden dogs is slated for this summer at the University of Pennsylvania.
Full story available from these sources:
Plant could hold secret for new pain medication Seattle Times

Sap from `hot’ plant treats pain, Good results on dogs with cancer
Researchers eye future use on humans Toronto Star, Jan. 17,

Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Suicide Law
Brocktown News, Nevada
17 January, 2006
By GINA HOLLAND

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court, with Chief Justice John Roberts dissenting, upheld Oregon‘s one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law Tuesday, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.

That means the administration improperly tried to use a federal drug law to prosecute Oregon doctors who prescribe overdoses. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft vowed to do that in 2001, saying that doctor-assisted suicide is not a “legitimate medical purpose.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy , writing for the majority, said the federal government does, indeed, have the authority to go after drug dealers and pass rules for health and safety.

Tuesday‘s decision is a reprimand of sorts for Ashcroft. Kennedy said the “authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design.”

“The authority desired by the government is inconsistent with the design of the statute in other fundamental respects. The attorney general does not have the sole delegated authority under the (law),” Kennedy wrote for himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O‘Connor Sandra Day O‘Connor and Justices John Paul Stevens , David Souter , and Ruth Bader Ginsburg , and Stephen Breyer .

Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented.

“If the term

legitimate medical purpose‘ has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death,” he wrote.

Ashcroft had brought the case to the Supreme Court on the day his resignation was announced by the White House in 2004. The Justice Department has continued the case, under the leadership of his successor, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

More reports:
(full story…)

Follow up to the Oslo fabrication. Dr. Sudbø is not in hiding, but he is “on sick leave” and cannot be reached. His wife and his twin brother, who are both scientists, worked with him on the The Lancet study, according to the Guardian, but were unaware of his fraud.

No way of knowing as yet if any statements about the effect of NSAIDs on oral cancer in his article are true. It’s plain though that Dr. Sudbø assembled no genuine evidence for anything that he claimed in this study. He created a simulated reality, a database of pretend patients.
(full story…)

Last week in the ATM machine in the Chase Bank I chatted with an older gentleman who had a trike parked outside. A home made, unmotorized non-recumbant trike with a wire shopping basket on the back. A simple means of self-transporation for someone without an automobile in a town with no bus service.

He was tall and slim and at first glance looked like an athlete. You must be pretty healthy, I said, with all that triking.

No he said, heading for the glass doors with a white-faced glare. Won’t be triking much no more.
(full story…)

Last April PSA Rising ran a brief report of a Norwegian study that claimed that “Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) prevent some cancers but . . . the advantage from NSAID protection against oral cancer was wiped out by double the rate of heart attack or stroke.”

This weekend it was evident that this study of the effects of ibuprofen and naproxen on oral cancer was fabricated from A to Z.

Norwegian hospital officials stated last week that the study was faked. Today, according to Reuters, the hospital in Oslo said: “A Norwegian cancer expert made up fictitious patients for an article about treatment of oral cancer published in a leading medical journal. . . .”

“The material was fabricated,” said Trine Lind, spokeswoman of the Norwegian Radium Hospital where Jon Sudbo has worked as a doctor and a researcher. “We are shocked. This is the worst thing that could happen in a research institution like ours.”

The hospital spokeswoman said Sudbo, 44, “invented patients and case histories for a study of oral cancer that was published in the British medical journal the Lancet in October 2005.”

The Lancet is Britain’s leading medical journal.

ANNE MARTE BLINDHEIM in the Norwegian daily Dagbladet reported Friday Frykter norsk lege har jukset før that “250 of his sample of 908 people in the study all shared the same birthday,” Reuters said.

Stein Vaaler [photographed below], strategy director for the Oslo cancer center, said: “A colleague raised questions about the article when it was published,” and (according to reports by Canadian CTV and Associated Press ( Cancer researcher admits to fabricating data) “when the researcher was confronted this week about the data, he acknowledged the fabrication, Vaaler said.”

Norwegian media are calling the situation “a personal tragedy.”

“All of it was fabricated,” Vaaler said. “It was not manipulation of real data — it was just complete fabrication.”
(full story…)

Russian scientist Anna Prokhorchuck working with UK and US scientists has found that mice lacking a protein called Kaiso show resistance to intestinal cancer. Kaiso, which this study showed is upregulated in intestinal tumors in mice and is expressed in human colon cancers, seems to play “an essential role in mammalian synapse-specific transcription.” they say in a study published this month in Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Mice bred to lack the Kaiso protein were healthy and fertile, with no detectable abnormalities of development or gene expression. “However, when crossed with mice bred to develop intestinal tumors, Kaiso-null mice showed a delayed onset of intestinal tumorigenesis,” the researchers say. “Our data suggest that Kaiso plays a role in intestinal cancer and may therefore represent a potential target for therapeutic intervention.”
(full story…)

Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) — Cancer patients in the U.K. risk relapses and even death because they do not have enough access to radiation therapy, according to an article published in tomorrow’s issue of the British Medical Journal.

“Radiotherapy services in the U.K. are inferior to those in most developed countries and indeed in many poorer countries,'’ researcher David Dodwell from the Cookridge Hospital in Leeds wrote in the paper.
(full story…)

Company stays away from forum
Posted by the Asbury Park Press [New Jersey] on 01/13/06
BY JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU

TOMS RIVER — Angered that a representative of Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp. did not attend the Jan. 9 meeting of the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, Dover Township Council members said Tuesday that they will adopt a resolution demanding that the company send someone to future citizens committee meetings.
(full story…)

BBC NEWS | Health : Prostate cancer action plan urged

The [UK] government has been urged to draw up an action plan to improve prostate cancer services across the NHS.

Patients with the disease, which kills 10,000 men in England annually, are a low priority and treated unfairly, the Commons Public Accounts Committee said.

MPs also said that while there had been improvements, many patients in England with suspected cancer were still waiting too long to see a specialist……

Committee chairman Edward Leigh said: “Prostate cancer… is regarded as a lower priority than other common cancer when it comes to the provision of specialist care.

“The inequitable treatment of this group of NHS patients is entirely unacceptable.”
(full story…)