Onco Actu du 15 avril 2015

	3.1 Tabac
Gene variant linked to smoking longer, getting lung cancer sooner [Washington University in St. Louis] Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis led an analysis of 24 studies involving more than 29,000 smokers of European ancestry and found that smokers with a particular variation in a nicotine receptor gene were more likely to continue smoking for four years after those without the variant had quit.
France tells cigarette companies to use plain packs [Reuters] France, home of historic Gitanes and Gauloises cigarettes with their iconic blue-and-white packaging, will require all tobacco companies to sell their wares in plain boxes from next year in an anti-smoking crackdown.
Tobacco companies sue FDA over label approvals [Reuters] The companies said the guidelines violated First Amendment protections for commercial speech by presumptively blocking certain labeling statements until they receive FDA approval. They also accused the FDA of depriving stakeholders of the chance to weigh in on the directive by issuing it as guidance and not through formal rulemaking.
Cigarettes, damn cigarettes and statistics [The Undercover Economist] Hill and Doll showed us that correlation should not be dismissed too easily. But they also showed that we shouldn’t give up on the search for causal explanations. The pair painstakingly continued their research, and evidence of a causal association soon mounted.
	4. Dépistage, diagnostic et pronostic
Breath test shows promise in diagnosing stomach cancer [NHS Choices] Even if the test were demonstrated to be accurate, many issues would need to be considered before introducing this as a screening test for the general population, including the cost-effectiveness and other risks and benefits.
Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancers: Moving Toward More Precise Prevention [NIH Director's Blog] While the new findings represents encouraging progress towards more precise prevention of cancer among BRCA1/2 carriers, researchers caution that much follow-up work is needed before such information can be used to guide the very difficult decisions currently faced by such women.
Most patients are at below-average risk [Reuters] "Lung cancer screening isn't even recommended for all smokers, let alone nonsmokers," Vickers said. "Screening generally does more harm than good for people who are at low risk."
	5. Traitements
New drug to enter trials for drug-resistant blood cancer patients [Cancer Research UK] This exciting research has the potential to be a game-changer for people with white blood cell cancers that don’t respond, or have stopped responding, to treatments like rituximab.
Withholding results from clinical trials is unethical, says WHO [Science] WHO says that from now on the main findings of every clinical study should be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal within 12 months after data collection ends and be published—in an open-access journal unless there is a specific reason why that's impossible—within 24 months.
WHO demands disclosure of all clinical trial results [The Globe & Mail] Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director-general at the United Nations health agency, said a failure to disclose trial results led to misinformation and could result in skewed priorities for research and public health interventions.
How to Get All Trials Reported: Audit, Better Data, and Individual Accountability [PLOS Medicine] The position statement from WHO is powerful and welcome, but previous calls for registration were not enough to fix publication bias, and positive statements require practical implementation.
	5.2 Pharma
Roche hustles its PD-L1 'breakthrough' star into 11 late-stage trials [FierceBiotech] With revenue forecasts circulating in the $30 billion-plus arena for the checkpoint crowd, the pack has been growing quickly.
PI3K Inhibitor Copanlisib in Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma [Bayer] Two new Phase III trials to be initiated in patients with indolent non-Hodgkin's lymphoma / One new Phase II trial to be initiated in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma
	5.2.1 Pharma - Partenariats
Roche's Ventana to Develop CDx for Astellas Cancer Compound [GEN] Roche’s Ventana Medical Systems said today it has inked a master collaboration agreement with Astellas Pharma to develop new automated tissue diagnostics to support therapeutic compounds in development.
	5.2.2 Pharma - Fusions & Acquisitions
Where Are The ‘Five Stars’ Merck Got From Schering-Plough? [Wall Street Journal] Keytruda was barely on the radar when the Schering merger went through in 2009. Merck started testing it in humans in 2011, and accelerated the program after seeing promising results, leading to marketing approval last year. Bernstein Research predicts Keytruda sales will rise to $3.7 billion in 2020.
	5.3 Traitements - FDA, EMA,...
Preventing medication errors in the European Union [EMA] One of the two guides focuses on the prevention of medication errors. It describes the main sources and types of these errors and proposes measures to minimise the risk of medication errors throughout the life cycle of a medicine. The other guide provides guidance on how suspected adverse reactions that are caused by medication errors should be recorded, coded, reported and assessed.
	5.4 Traitements - Economie
Big Bills A Hidden Side Effect Of Cancer Treatment [NPR] University of Chicago's Dr. Jonas de Souza argues that it's time for oncologists to begin considering the financial consequences as a real side effect of cancer care.
	5.9 AACR
Behind the Scenes: Getting the Word Out About the AACR Annual Meeting [CANCER RESEARCH Catalyst] “We usually have well over 100 reporters and producers covering the meeting.”
	6. Lutte contre les cancers
Advancing Cancer Care Delivery Research in the Next Decade [National Cancer Institute] The goal of this new program is to strengthen our support and coordination of research in ways that both improve survival and enhance patient experiences with care across the full cancer control continuum, from screening through end-of-life care
California unveils 'precision-medicine' project [Nature News & Comment] The effort, announced on 14 April, will draw on vast amounts of data from basic research, medical records and other information to develop more-targeted therapies and diagnostics and inform decisions about individual patient care.
	6.10 Politiques
Canadians baulk at reforms to health-research agency [Nature News & Comment] The biggest overhaul in the 15-year history of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) was meant to rescue biomedical researchers from the endless grant applications and Byzantine peer-review processes that had become a feature of the cash-strapped agency.
	6.7 DMP, Big Data & applis
Apple Announces ResearchKit Available Today to Medical Researchers [Apple] The open source framework allows any medical researcher to take advantage of the initial modules in ResearchKit to study health and wellness and better understand disease.
Digital health records are not safe, report on breaches shows [LA Times] More than 29 million medical records were affected in large data breaches between 2010 and 2013, study reveals
Report Questions Whether Health Apps Benefit Healthy People [NY Times] An article published in The BMJ questions whether such consumer health apps provide any real health value to already-healthy consumers – and whether the apps could even cause harm by stoking unneeded anxiety among the worried well.
	6.8 Communication
Cancer Centers and Advertising Practices [Science-Based Medicine] The advertising by cancer centers is frequently misleading, but we don’t yet have any data on how those ads actually impact patients. It would be a mistake for consumers to base their decisions about where to go for treatment only on the incomplete information in the ads.
	6.9 Controverses
Offline: What is medicine's 5 sigma? [The Lancet] The good news is that science is beginning to take some of its worst failings very seriously. The bad news is that nobody is ready to take the first step to clean up the system.