cancer drugs

(University of Michigan Health System) University of Michigan scientists have identified key steps in breast-tissue cell division that go awry when CHFR's action is low or absent.

The gene's expression is missing in more than a third of breast cancers. The findings could make it possible to identify which patients are more likely to benefit from taxanes, a class of widely used cancer drugs which includes paclitaxel and docetaxel.

(UT Southwestern Medical Center) The gene that allows fireflies to flash is helping researchers track the effectiveness of anti-cancer drugs over time.

A combination of two new-generation cancer drugs modestly delayed the time it took for cancer to worsen in a study of 300 women with very advanced disease who had stopped responding to other treatments....

As potential cancer therapies proliferate, researchers and clinicians are striving to measure their effectiveness and to more accurately predict which patients will receive the most benefit.

At the American Association for Cancer Research 2008 Annual Meeting, April 12-16, 2008, researchers present data on a new role for MRI in brain cancer, how doctors can more effectively measure response to commonly used cancer drugs, and a unique method for predicting the risk of breast cancer spread.

The benefits of some cancer drugs may be exaggerated as a rising number of trials are stopped early, experts say.

Targeted cancer drugs can have such disfiguring dermatologic side effects, some patients are embarrassed to be seen in public and hide at home.

Others toss their pills. The pioneering Cancer Skin Care Program at Northwestern University -- the first in the nation -- treats patients to parry those effects and conducts research to find the most effective dermatological treatments.