Health - Cancer latest news

Cancer Research UK launches an online chat forum for cancer patients to swap stories and share experiences on how to cope with such a devastating disease. But Cancer Chat is a forum with a difference: it has an information safety net.

When the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 was passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, there were still several concerns that it would have a substantially negative effect on chemotherapy patients because of the stipulated reductions in reimbursements to physicians for drugs given during outpatient chemotherapy care.

The effective treatment of many forms of cancer continues to pose a major problem for medicine. Many tumours fail to respond to standard forms of chemotherapy or become resistant to the medication. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, the Hannover Medical School (MHH) and Leibniz-Universität (LUH) in Hanover have now discovered a chemical mechanism with which a natural substance - argyrin - destroys tumours.

Epeius Biotechnologies Corporation announced that Rexin-G has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of osteosarcoma.

Brightly colored beetles or butterfly larvae nibbling on a plant may signal the presence of chemical compounds active against cancer cell lines and tropical parasitic diseases, according to researchers at Smithsonian's Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Such clues could speed drug discovery and provide insight into the ecological relationships between tropical-forest plants and insects that feed on them.

Provectus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTC BB: PVCT), a development-stage oncology and dermatology biopharmaceutical company, announced today that the first twenty-five percent (20 of 80) of melanoma subjects have been treated in Provectus Pharmaceuticals' Phase 2 clinical trial of PV-10. Additional subjects are being evaluated for eligibility for entrance into the trial or are awaiting treatment at the two active centers in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia.

pSivida Corp. (NASDAQ:PSDV)(ASX:PVA)(FF:PSI), a global drug delivery company announced that a Phase IIb clinical trial has commenced with BrachySilT (P32 BioSiliconT) as a potential new brachytherapy treatment for inoperable pancreatic cancer. The first patient has received treatment at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in London.

Deaths due to the four most common cancers - lung, colorectal, prostate, and breast - have dropped substantially in the United States from 1993 to 2001 in working-aged individuals. However, not all Americans are equally likely to benefit from those gains.

Even though cigarette smoking accounts for up to half of all bladder cancer cases, few people are aware of the connection - including more than three-quarters of patients who have bladder cancer, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. This knowledge vacuum suggests that urologists and other physicians need to do a much better job of telling patients about the risk of smoking and encourage them to quit, the study authors say.

(University of Pittsburgh Schools of the health Sciences) A key enzyme may explain how hepatitis C infection leads to serious liver diseases, reports the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public health. The study, to be published in the July 9 online issue of Hepatology, shows that fatty acid synthase is highly elevated in human liver cells exposed to the hepatitis C virus, suggesting that testing enzyme levels could help predict more serious, long-lasting health consequences from hepatitis C.