Onco Actu du 24 août 2015 (3/3)

	6. Lutte contre les cancers
Types of translational research [The Incidental Economist] “The first roadblock (T1) was described by the roundtable as ‘the transfer of new understandings of disease mechanisms gained in the laboratory into the development of new methods for diagnosis, therapy, and prevention and their first testing in humans.’ The roundtable described the second roadblock (T2) as ‘the translation of results from clinical studies into everyday clinical practice and health decision making.'”
NCI-MATCH Trial Opens [CANCER RESEARCH Catalyst] Another important aspect of this signal finding trial is the ability to accept any solid tumor or lymphoma, rather than confining eligibility to a single tumor type.
New molecular pathology network for precision medicine [PHG Foundation] “This £16 million investment will enhance our UK-wide capability to deliver 21st Century diagnostics and complement initiatives such as the Precision Medicine Catapult Centre to make sure that ground-breaking medicines and technologies are adopted by the NHS and delivered to patients as quickly as possible”.
How Can Precision Medicine Help Children With Cancer? [CANCER RESEARCH Catalyst] What efforts are being made to integrate technological advancements in treating children’s cancers? What progress has been made so far and what challenges lay ahead?
NCI-Designated Cancer Centers Expand [National Cancer Institute] With the addition of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, NCI’s cancer centers program now has 69 cancer centers in 35 states.
Cancer Core Europe [Cancer World] Can deep and close-knit collaboration between a handful of elite centres achieve what broader European research platforms and projects cannot?
	6.1 Observation
NHS England must act as patients miss out on cancer drug tests [Cancer Research UK] Our report suggests that, in 2014, around 16,000 patients with lung and bowel cancer in England missed out on these tests completely. Given what we know about how often patients’ tests indicate they’re eligible for targeted treatments, that means around 3,500 of these patients could have been eligible for a targeted drug that may have helped them.
Cancer survival in England is improving – but still lagging behind similar countries [Cancer Research UK] So, why is England lagging behind? We’ve already blogged about some of the reasons why this might be – principally the fact that the UK fares badly at detecting cancers early – and how initiatives like the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative and the ICBP are aiming to change the situation.
Prostate cancer twice as likely to kill black men as white men, study finds [The Guardian] It estimates the lifetime risk for black men of dying of prostate cancer in England at approximately one in 12. The risk for white men is estimated to be about one in 24 and one in 44 for Asian men.
News Analysis: Decades of Data Fail to Resolve Debate on Treating Tiny Breast Lesions [NY Times] In an era when there has been so much study of how to treat more advanced cancer, it might seem odd that there is so much uncertainty about these minute sprinklings of abnormal cells, often called Stage 0 cancer, which some say are not cancers at all.
Effective Ovarian Cancer Treatment Is Underused, Study Finds [NY Times] The treatment, known as IP, in which chemotherapy is pumped directly into the abdomen, could add 16 months or more to women’s lives, researchers say.
	6.10 Politiques
The 21st Century Cures Act: Old vinegary wine in a new bottle [Respectful Insolence] The bill in its current form is a danger to patients and should not be passed.
21st Century Cures Act: A huge step backward for FDA standards [HealthNewsReview] Lack of good coverage in large part reflects our collective love affair with new drugs and treatments and the infinite belief that anything new, no matter its safety profile, is worth its potential to cure.
Guest Editorial: Kids v Cancer: Laws Need to Catch up to the Science [The Cancer Letter] It’s a great victory that the EMA will now require companies to study cancer drugs in kids, but now, more than ever, we need the United States Congress to pass the KIDS Initiative.
Congress passes a colossally bad idea for science funding [Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience] We could certainly do a better job allocating scarce funds to biomedical research in the U.S., but setting aside a large sum to be awarded by a politically-appointed Prize Committee at NIH is a staggeringly bad idea. Let’s stop this train before it leaves the station.
England’s new cancer strategy – what happens next? [Cancer Research UK] There are a lot of challenges ahead, but there are two crucial things that need to happen. First, the organisations that lead the health service need to develop clear, detailed plans for putting the Taskforce’s recommendations into practice. And second, the Government needs to invest the money to make it happen.
	6.11 Patients
Jimmy Carter has announced that he has cancer and it has spread. What does that mean? [Respectful Insolence] I must admit that, as a cancer surgeon and divorced from the knowledge of who was the subject of all the news stories, when I read stories that describe a 90 year old man with cancer in the liver and elsewhere, I cringed. It’s not a good scenario, no matter how you slice it. The Carter family has my sympathy—and my hope.
Quarter of cancer patients losing faith in NHS because of late diagnosis [The Telegraph] Late diagnosis makes cancer patients less likely to trust doctors and nurses to look after them properly through their treatment, research shows.
	6.4 Médico-éco
A for effort, C for impact from U.S. biomedical research, study concludes [Science] Dramatic growth in funding and knowledge has not been matched by a similar impact on U.S. public health.
	6.5 Médecines alternatives
Is there a role for homeopathy in cancer care? I think you know the answer to that question… [Respectful Insolence] His commentary appears in Current Oncology Reports, which, while by no means top tier, is a relatively decent journal (Impact Factor 2.891) not generally known for woo. Yet, here Frenkel publishes an article entitled Is There a Role for Homeopathy in Cancer Care? Questions and Challenges.
Another unnecessary death in the making, thanks to cancer quackery [Respectful Insolence] “Alex Wynn has shunned traditional cancer cures of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy in favour of a strict diet, Vitamin C drip and sessions of pure oxygen.” Yes, a young woman is throwing away her one best shot at survival.
	6.6 Publications
Analysis of pilots with prostate cancer retracted for “inappropriate data” [Retraction Watch] In case any pilots out there are worrying about their risk of prostate cancer based on a recent meta-analysis that found they are at least twice as likely to develop the disease, they should relax — the paper has been retracted.
1.5 Million ORCID iDs Served! [ORCID] Our technical team has been busy, launching peer review acknowledgements and an updated API and, coming later this year, support for federated login. We are also pleased to see the community using our record update API, and are looking forward to launches soon by CrossRef and DataCite that will automatically update ORCID records with published papers and datasets for which the author included their ORCID iD.
A Single User Account [The Scholarly Kitchen] In recent years, a number of services have been developed or expanded to help scholarly identity, and user accounts, become more portable and powerful.
	6.8 Communication
Registered clinical trials make positive findings vanish [Nature News & Comment] A study showing a fall in positive trial results after the roll-out of clinicaltrials.gov attracted much attention on social media.
	6.9 Controverses
An Irresponsible Statement About Curing Cancer [In the Pipeline] Look at the case of Oliver Sacks: here is an extremely competent and acute physician, but the first diagnosis he had of liver cancer was when it was already metastatic. Not much we can do about that. Without better diagnostics, it's hard to see how we're going to achieve really impressive cure rates.
Another health care fail, in ovarian cancer treatment. Best in the world, my ass. [The Incidental Economist] There are simply no ways to incentivize the right behavior. The system just isn’t build that way. No commercials will ever be run for this therapy. No company reps will ever push it. There will be no fancy meetings about it. No paid monographs. No lobbying by industry groups. And it costs docs financially to do it.
Fred Hutch president predicts cancer cure in 10 years; critics have heard it all before [HealthNewsReview] The work driving this advancement, according to Gilliland, comes from – not surprisingly – Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and one of its spin-offs, Juno Therapeutics, which is heavily invested in immunotherapies.
Worth The Money? Paying To Ensure A Representative Cohort In The Precision Medicine Initiative [Health Affairs] Some will be opposed to compensating research participation because of cost. Providing any financial reward for participation in the Precision Medicine Initiative will require more money for cohort creation, leaving less for the actual research. But without a fairly created cohort, there will be a resource that helps only the few.
Delay in NHS patients' access to cancer drug labelled a 'disgrace' [The Guardian] Chief executive of lung cancer charity bemoans likely nine-month wait for immunotherapy drug nivolumab to be approved for NHS use.
Should We Charge Patients for Medical Research? [NY Times] We must avoid compromising the integrity of the entire research enterprise and the likelihood of exploitation that will inevitably accompany pay-to-play trials.
Trailblazing cancer–physics project accused of losing ambition [Nature News & Comment] An ambitious initiative that has deployed physics in the fight against cancer since 2009 has awarded a second round of grants. But some pioneers of the field, known as physical oncology, protest that the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) has lost sight of the programme’s original vision.