Author Archives: mfcc_news

30% Boost in Survival for Head and Neck Cancer Patients with Opdivo

A recent study by Bristol-Myers reveals hopeful news for Head and Neck Cancer patients.

In patients whose head and neck cancers had returned and worsened following chemotherapy, scientists reported that the immunotherapy drug nivolumab (brand name Opdivo) doubled chances of survival for at least a year and led to a 30% reduction in the risk of death. The disease can typically kill such patients less than six months after it recurs.

“No therapy has been shown to improve survival for this patient population,” said Maura Gillison, lead investigator of Ohio State University Cancer Cancer. “New treatment options are desperately needed, this is the first randomized clinical trial to clearly demonstrate improved overall survival.”

Dr. Gillison presented the data at the American Association of Cancer Research meeting in New Orleans. “The most important thing is the difference in the proportion of patients who survived to a year,” said Gillison in an interview.  “In a disease that was uniformly rapidly fatal, we’re seeing a subset of the population clearly benefiting.”

The data likely paves the way for approval for Opdivo to be used in head and neck treatment, which is currently approved to treat advanced melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer and kidney cancer.

Merck & Co’s rival drug, Keytruda, received a priority review for head and neck cancer from U.S. regulators and could be approved for that use by August.

Both drugs belong to a class called PD-1 inhibitors that block a mechanism that tumors use to avoid detection from the immune system.

Advances in Targeting Prostate Cancer

We know that a defective BRCA gene can increase a woman’s risk of getting breast, ovarian and other cancers. These same gene changes can also increase a man’s risk of dying from prostate cancer.

A recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine says that men diagnosed with prostate cancer who test positive for BRCA gene mutations can benefit from a drug developed for BRCA-positive women with ovarian cancer. Based on this study, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will be reviewing the drug, called olaparib as a possible prostate cancer treatment as well. They are accelerating their review process because of the favorable findings in this study.

The number of tumor cells in the blood dropped significantly in 50 of the men in the study, and several had their tumors size shrink by a third or more. In addition, the drug olaparib improved pain control and quality of life, with some responses lasting more than a year.

Olaparib works by killing BRCA-positive cancer cells by interfering with PARP, which is a DNA repair protein.  Since Olaparib-treated cancer cells are unable to repair damage that happens naturally in their DNA, those cells die.

Harvard Health Blog posted that the findings of this study are promising for those men with advanced prostate cancer that have DNA defects, which is around 30% of men diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.

Not all men diagnosed with prostate cancer get symptoms, so it’s important to talk to your doctor about screening. The most common symptoms for prostate cancer are listed below as described by the CDC.

  • Difficulty starting to urinate.
  • Weak or interrupted flow of urine.
  • Frequent urination, especially at night.
  • Difficulty completely emptying the bladder.
  • Pain/burning during urination.
  • Blood in the urine or semen.
  • Pain in the back, hips, or pelvis that doesn’t go away.
  • Painful ejaculation.

If you have any questions or would like a consultation with one of our medical oncologists, please call our scheduling line at 386-774-1223.

Catching Breast Cancer early Saves Lives!

Even with better treatment options and targeted drugs for breast cancer, a recently reported Dutch study confirms catching breast cancer early through screening mammograms saves lives.

The Netherlands study, led by Sepideh Saadatmand at Erasmus University Medical Center, studied every breast cancer case registered in the country from 1999-2012, which was nearly 174,000 cases.  The findings support regular screenings so that tumors are detected at the earliest possible stage. The research also reassures that less invasive surgery saves lives as well as radical mastectomies.

The Dutch study also confirmed that consistent, high-quality care matters. Breast cancer survival rate in the Netherlands is 96 percent, and up to 100 percent for the smallest tumors. The five-year breast cancer survival rate in the United State is 90 percent.

This research reported that before 2006 the survival rate was 91 percent. After 2006, smaller tumors were detected and removed.  Less invasive lumpectomies became more common than mastectomies.

It also strongly suggests that, even after accounting for the biological variation in tumors and more enhanced treatments, tumor stage at the time of diagnosis still matters, which is a powerful though indirect argument in favor of screening mammograms.

Please encourage all the women in your life to get a mammogram screening. You could save their life.

When seeking high-quality, consistent care for cancer treatment, Mid Florida Cancer Centers offers some of the highest technology available in radiation therapy, as well as enhanced targeted chemotherapy treatment options and compassionate physicians. Call for a consultation today, 386-774-1223.

New Research! Drugs Disguised As Platelets Target Cancer

An article this morning in R&D Magazine online revealed that researchers have developed a technique to coat anticancer drugs in membranes made from blood platelets of the patient. Doing so allows drugs to last longer in the body and attack both primary cancer tumors as well as cells that may be circulating tumors that can cause cancer to metastasize (spread to the other parts of the body). The research was successfully tested in an animal model.

There are 2 key factors that make this important for cancer research.
One is that cancer cell surfaces have an affinity for platelets. They will “stick to” each other. Second, the patient’s own platelets are used which means the drug carriers are not identified as foreign objects in the body, and can last for up to 30 hours in the bloodstream compared to up to 6 hours for carriers with out the coating.

The researchers in North Carolina hope to get more pre-clinical testing. Quanyin Hu is lead author of the paper and a PhD student in the joint biomedical engineering program at Chapel Hill and N. Carolina State U.

Women who sit too much have increased risk of cancer says new study

A recent study was published in “Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, and Prevention” that shows there is an increased risk of cancer for  women who sit too much during their leisure time. This is the latest study showing that the so called “sitting disease” negatively impacts our health.

Though it may seem obvious that sitting too much is bad for your health, the risks are far worse than just needing exercise. This recent study conducted on 184,000 adults had participants answer a questionnaire about their work, exercise, activities, chores, TV watching habits, as well as computer, and other electronics used while sitting. The study followed the 69,260 men for around 13 years and the 77,462 women for around 16 years. Then compared their behaviors to their health.

The women who sat more than six hours a day had a 10 percent greater risk of getting any cancer compared to ladies who sat for less than three hours per day. For women sitting for more than six hours daily had a 65 percent increased risk for multiple myeloma, a 10 percent increased risk for invasive breast cancer, and a 43 percent higher risk for ovarian cancer than their peers sitting for three hours or less.

Men, in general, did not have an increased risk of cancer. However, the study did find that obese men who sat for long periods of time experienced an 11 percent higher risk of cancer.

Have you heard “sitting is the new smoking?”  That’s because sitting raises the risk of not just cancer, but disability, diabetes, heart disease and, of course, obesity.

Another study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute revealed some specific numbers on the different types of cancer that might be associated with too much sitting. This study claims for every two hours spent sitting in front of the computer or television, the average person raises his or her risk of colon cancer by 8 percent, of endometrial cancer by 10 percent and of lung cancer by 6 percent.

Stay healthy, reduce your risk of cancer, get up and get moving. Call your doctor to help you with an exercise plan or advise you on how you can specifically reduce your risk. In the mean time, get up and get moving.

Stay tuned for more news from Mid Florida Cancer Centers.

Dr Gary Graham at Mid Florida Cancer Centers

Mid Florida Cancer Centers has top radiation oncologist Dr. Gary Graham.

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Dr. Graham has practiced in West Volusia for 15 years. Patients at Mid FL are both confident and comforted knowing Dr Graham is doing their radiation therapy.

Here is a clip of what the Deland Beacon News Paper wrote in their interview with Dr Graham about him and our radiation therapy services.

“We’re really excited to be able to offer patients this excellent treatment option,” says Dr. Graham. “RapidArc technology will enable us to target multiple types of cancer more accurately while sparing healthy tissue.”

Mid Florida Cancer Center’s RapidArc technology delivers image-guided IMRT (intensity-modulated radiation therapy) very quickly, in a single rotation of the treatment machine around the patient.

“RapidArc will be much easier on the patient,” says Graham “It’s hard for people to hold still for long periods of time. By delivering doses more quickly and precisely, we can simultaneously improve the quality of care and make our patients more comfortable.”

RapidArc treatments at Mid Florida Cancer Center will be delivered using a Clinac Trilogy medical linear accelerator from Varian Medical Systems, outfitted with a system for generating and using images to guide patient placement and treatment delivery.

During a RapidArc treatment, the radiation is shaped and reshaped as it is continuously delivered from virtually every angle in a 360-degree revolution around the patient. An important device with 120 computer-controlled mechanical “leaves” or “fingers” will shape the beam by moving to create apertures of different shapes and sizes. During a RapidArc treatment, specializedsoftware will vary three parameters simultaneously: the speed of rotation around the patient, the shape of the MLC aperture, and the dose delivery rate.

By reducing the time it takes to deliver IMRT and other precise forms of radiation therapy, RapidArc has the potential to improve the quality of care and of patient comfort for many types of cancer, while making radiation oncology a more affordable treatment. That is a huge win for everybody.

DeLand Beacon article written by Joe Crews.

This post entered by Jill Jordan, Executive Director of Marketing & Public Relations. Any comments or questions can be sent to Jordan@MFHOC.com.

ARE YOU AT RISK FOR COLON CANCER?

March is colon cancer awareness month. In bringing awareness to Colon Cancer, we’d like you to know that everyone is at risk. Although the risk is higher for men and women over 50 years old and the risk increases with age, you don’t have to be 50 or older to get the disease.

Other risks include:

-Colon or rectum polyps

-Having an inflammatory bowel disease such as crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis

-Having previous history of colon cancer

You have a family history of:

– Colon cancer
– Colon or rectal polyps
– Familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP)
– Hereditary non-polyposis colon cancer
– Other cancers

-You have symptoms

Symptoms can include, but are not limited to:

-Rectal bleeding
-Blood in the stool or in the toilet after
having a bowel movement
-A change in your bowel habits, including
diarrhea or constipation
-Cramping or pain in the lower stomach
-Losing weight and you do not know why
-Anemia (low blood count)

What can you do? Take action! Get colorectal screening. According to The Center for Disease Control (CDC), of all the cancers that effect both men and women, colorectal cancer is the second leading cancer killer in the United States.

Screening can often prevent colon cancer if precancerous polyps are detected. These can be removed before turning into cancer. Screening also helps detect colon cancer in early stages when treatment options can be most effective.

Talk to your doctor about you and your loved one’s risks and what screening options are available for you.  We want you to be healthy and as always, we are caring for your life.

Contact us if we can be of assistance to you.

Jill Jordan, Marketing and Public Relations Executive

JJordan@MFHOC.com

www.MIDFLORIDACANCERCENTERS.COM

 

 

 

Appreciation Night A Big Success!

Mid Florida Cancer Centers hosted a night of appreciation for medical personnel in their community. Knowing that their patient’s care is guided by caring people in other offices as well as their own, MFCC  invited them over for some fun! All the primary care offices, and some specialists as well, received personalized invitations for key personnel involved in patient care to come to the event. With over 100 people in attendance, the event was a hit!

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Guests were welcomed with the smiling faces of MFCC staff at the door.  They received a menu, a tour guide and 2 tickets for gifts and prizes. Each guest was introduced to and welcome by all 8 physicians in the group before they toured the facility. During the tour, they were surprised by the size and quality of the MFCC comprehensive center. Guests reported, “I didn’t know you had all this!”

The Varian RapidArc Radiation machine is an impressive sight and is currently the latest technology available in radiation. RapicArc delivers integrated and personalized treatment with increased speed and precision that substantially shortens treatment times and minimizes damage to healthy tissue. MFCC feels it is important the community know where to find the best care for cancer patients in the area.

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Guests were led through the facility stopping periodically at a different food or drink station and also being introduced to other MFCC staff. They saw the CT and PET Scan, the Chemotherapy room, lab and other treatment rooms. Mid Florida also had live music playing by a keyboardist and saxophone player through the center.

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Towards the end of the night, there was a big drawing for great prizes such as a spa treatment, a google NEXUS electronic tablet and an iPad. Before the guests left, each one received a thank gift. The guest were grateful and happy as were the staff and doctors of Mid Florida Cancer Centers.

It is important to appreciate the people that help us in our lives, whether at home or at work. We all get too busy sometimes to remember, but a little appreciation can go a long way towards helping to create positive and healthy change in a community.

Post by Jill Jordan

Multivitamins, Blueberries Could Complicate Late-Stage Cancer Treatment

From: webpronews.com

By Sean Patterson

Noble Prize recipient James Watson this month published a proposal stating that antioxidants, such as those found in blueberries or multivitamin supplements, could actually promote late-stage cancer progression. The paper, published in the journal Open Biology, is considered by Watson to be “among my most important work since the double helix.” Watson and his colleague Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA in 1953.

Watson believes that oxidants and antioxidants could play a role in currently incurable cancers. From the paper:

For as long as I have been focused on the understanding and curing of cancer (I taught a course on Cancer at Harvard in the autumn of 1959), well-intentioned individuals have been consuming antioxidative nutritional supplements as cancer preventatives if not actual therapies. The past, most prominent scientific proponent of their value was the great Caltech chemist, Linus Pauling, who near the end of his illustrious career wrote a book with Ewan Cameron in 1979, Cancer and Vitamin C, about vitamin C’s great potential as an anti-cancer agent [52]. At the time of his death from prostate cancer in 1994, at the age of 93, Linus was taking 12 g of vitamin C every day. In light of the recent data strongly hinting that much of late-stage cancer’s untreatability may arise from its possession of too many antioxidants, the time has come to seriously ask whether antioxidant use much more likely causes than prevents cancer.

All in all, the by now vast number of nutritional intervention trials using the antioxidants β-carotene, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E and selenium have shown no obvious effectiveness in preventing gastrointestinal cancer nor in lengthening mortality [53]. In fact, they seem to slightly shorten the lives of those who take them. Future data may, in fact, show that antioxidant use, particularly that of vitamin E, leads to a small number of cancers that would not have come into existence but for antioxidant supplementation. Blueberries best be eaten because they taste good, not because their consumption will lead to less cancer.

Watson proposes that the cell-killing ability of some anti-cancer treatments is due to the action of a group of molecules called reactive oxygen species (ROS). If ROS induce cell death, Watson claims, it could explain why chemotherapy-resistant cancers also become resistant to radiation treatments.

Pitt researchers report cancer vaccine success

From: www.post-gazette.com

By David Templeton

The University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute has announced initial success of a vaccine that triggers the immune response against colon cancer.

The study, involving 39 patients at the highest risk for colon cancer, helps to switch the focus of cancer-vaccine research from treatment to prevention. The Pitt trial also advances efforts to use the same vaccine against 80 percent of all cancers, including pancreatic, lung, prostate and breast cancers.

Among major cancers not expected to respond to the vaccine are melanomas, lymphomas, leukemia and brain cancers.

The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health, is published in the January edition of Cancer Prevention Research and is available online.

The National Cancer Institute says colorectal cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer death in the United States, with expectations of 103,170 new cases in 2012 and 40,280 new cases of rectal cancer. The overall lifetime risk of developing colorectal cancer is 1 in 20, with about 51,700 deaths in 2012.

“Most [vaccine] treatments for cancer are not useful once the cancer has grown and spread,” said vaccine inventor Olivera Finn, who holds a doctoral degree in immunology and heads the department of immunology at Pitt’s School of Medicine. “We will do a lot better on all fronts if we learn more about how cancer starts and progresses.”

That is the approach the Pitt team took with colon cancer. The vaccine trial, following two decades of research, boosts the immune system to destroy cancer cells carrying the abnormal variant of the MUC1 (pronounced “muck one”) protein on the cell surface. The MUC1 protein is necessary for the cancer to survive and progress.

In the beginning stages of colon cancer, a polyp, a benign but abnormal cell growth, becomes malignant. The MUC1 protein, normally serving a protective function against pathogens, undergoes changes without stirring the immune system to respond to the pending danger. Only when the cancer takes hold does the immune system react to the threat. But by then, the cancer already has begun suppressing the immune response.

In the study, the vaccine was tested on 39 patients, each 40 to 70 years old with a history of advanced adenomas, polyps that have become precancerous. The Pitt clinical trial shows the vaccine is safe and produced the expected immune response by producing antibodies against abnormal variants of the MUC1 protein.

The trial proved successful in 17 of the 39 patients by showing the vaccine stimulated the production of antibodies. The study showed only the expected immune response and has yet to show long-term effects. The vaccine also doesn’t attack normal MUC1 proteins necessary for healthy cell function.

Explaining why 22 patients showed no response to the vaccine, the study said those people already had the expression of precancerous cells that blocked the immune response.

That confirmed the strategy to inoculate people at an earlier stage before a patient has polyps that have become precancerous. A Pitt news release says polyps initially are benign but turn cancerous 30 percent to 40 percent of the time.

The vaccine, if proved successful in more advanced trials, could reduce or eliminate the need for people at high risk for colon cancer to undergo repeated colonoscopies.

The Pitt team now is seeking a grant for the next stage of human clinical trials that could involve 10 medical centers nationwide and as many as 200 patients at highest risk for developing colon cancer.

The study’s clinical leader, Robert E. Schoen, a professor of medicine and epidemiology with Pitt’s division of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition, said subsequent trials “need to evaluate the vaccine for its ability to lower or prevent polyp recurrence and thus progression to colon cancer.”

The American Cancer Society Inc., which was not involved in the study, praised its potential.

“Colon cancer has a lot of genetic cancers and links,” said Lynne Ayres, director of research communications for the society’s east-central division, noting that Pitt’s approach, if successful, “would be the best of all worlds.” “Pitt and its cancer institute is tops and well-respected. They are outstanding and doing great work. I think they are right on track. This is what you want to do — see more vaccines of the preventative nature.”

The National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project also sees potential with the Pitt research.

“These findings are an important step in making colon cancer a preventable disease,” said Larry Wickerham, the project’s associate chairman and chief of cancer genetics and prevention at Allegheny General Hospital. “There is a substantial amount of work needed to establish both the safety and the effectiveness of the vaccine.

“However, the history of medicine has shown us repeatedly that often the biggest advances in care have been from prevention of disease rather than treatment.”