Onco Actu du 23 août 2016

	1. Biologie
‘Surprising’ imbalance in cell growth could help oesophageal cancers form [Cancer Research UK] Dr Justine Alford, Cancer Research UK's senior science information officer, said the findings were ‘surprising’, and that further studies would be needed to see if the same imbalance in cell growth happens in people with oesophageal cancer.
	2.8 Etiologie - Contraceptifs, THS
HRT triples the risk of breast cancer, biggest ever study shows [The Telegraph] “For many women, any change in breast cancer risk is outweighed by the benefit on their quality of life, bearing in mind that there are many other factors that increase the risk of breast cancer, for example lifestyle factors."
Combined HRT could increase breast cancer risk by nearly 300% [The Guardian] Women who rely on the most commonly used form of hormone replacement therapy are roughly three times more likely to develop breast cancer than those who do not use it, according to a study whose results suggest the risk of illness has been previously understated.
	3.2 Prévention - Obésité
3 reasons why the Government’s children’s obesity plan will fail children [Cancer Research UK] Unfortunately, the 13 page plan lacks substance. You might even expect better quality from some A-Level essays. In truth, it feels like many anticipated pages of the plan have been torn out and ditched in recent weeks.
	4. Dépistage, diagnostic et pronostic
Gene scanning 'could improve screening for oesophageal cancer' [NHS Choices] This prospective cohort study aimed to see whether a test performed on patients with non-cancerous Barrett's oesophagus may be able to predict whether the condition progressed to oesophageal cancer.
	4.11 Dép., diag. & prono. - Ovaire
All women with ovarian cancer should be offered genetic testing – so why aren’t they? [Cancer Research UK] The advantages of BRCA1 and 2 genetic tests for women diagnosed with ovarian cancer are clear-cut – better treatments for patients right now, fewer cases of cancer and reduced cancer deaths in future, and even savings for the NHS.
Tests without Proven Benefit Still Used for Ovarian Cancer Surveillance [National Cancer Institute] “It’s very easy to talk about CA-125 testing on a grand scale and its lack of impact on overall survival,” added Dr. Esselen. “But when there’s an individual who has a history of ovarian cancer sitting in front of you, it’s a completely different story.”
	4.2 Dép., diag. & prono. - Génome
Genetic Testing: Does Knowing Risk of Disease Make a Difference? [Science-Based Medicine] This is only one systematic analysis of low quality studies, and it is certainly not the final word. It does, however, strongly suggest that if genetic risk predictions are effective in changing behaviors, the effects must be rather small.
	4.9 Dép., diag. & prono. - Sein
Women with dense breasts may need annual mammograms [Reuters] “The fact that there are so many different recommendations regarding when and how often women should be screened points out that there are no definitive answers – women should talk to their doctors about what regimen will be best for them, taking all of these factors into account.”
	5. Traitements
Expecting the Worst Increases Side-Effects in Breast Cancer Patients Receiving Adjuvant Hormone Therapy [ESMO] The research was carried out in 111 women who were enrolled in a clinical trial at the Breast Cancer Centre at the University of Marburg, Germany, who had had surgery for hormone receptor positive breast cancer and who were scheduled to start adjuvant hormone therapy with tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors such as exemestane.
Nanoparticle Counteracts Chemotherapy Resistance [National Cancer Institute] Working with mouse models of colon and breast cancer, Beth McCormick, Ph.D., and her colleagues demonstrated that when combined with chemotherapy, the nanoparticle reduced tumor growth substantially more than chemotherapy alone.
	5.10 Traitements - Essais
Many clinical trials’ findings never get published. Here’s why that’s bad [STAT] New research suggests that nearly half of all clinical trials involving kids go unfinished or unpublished — either because the researchers lose interest in the work or take up more pressing projects, or, in some cases, because the companies that funded the studies don’t want the results to get out.
	5.12.2 Immunothérapies - CAR-T
CAR T Cell Therapy for Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma Included in EMA’s PRIority MEdicines Scheme [ESMO] EMA’s new initiative to foster research on and development of medicines with potential to address an unmet medical need.
Evolving Field of CAR-T-Cell Therapy [ESMO] Strategies and challenging aspects in the treatment of haematological malignancies and solid tumours.
	5.2 Pharma
Janssen Submits Application to U.S. FDA to Expand Indication for Daratumumab (DARZALEX®) [Johnson & Johnson] Supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) seeks second indication for daratumumab in combination with standard of care regimens for patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior therapy.
A biotech firm, on the brink of ruin, resurrects itself via man — and microbe [STAT] In the past few weeks, the company has earned two big wins — its cancer drug has been fast-tracked for approval to treat cervical cancer by US Food and Drug Administration and the company has inked a valuable partnership with Amgen for another tumor-killing technology.
	5.2.2 Pharma - Fusions & Acquisitions
Sanofi's Hostility Backfires [Bloomberg] The five-month takeover saga has cost Sanofi dearly in lost credibility and management time -- and only highlighted its strategic weakness.
Pfizer boosts cancer drug roster with $14 billion Medivation deal [Reuters] The offer is a 55-percent premium to Sanofi SA's initial bid to buy Medivation for $52.50 per share in April, which pushed the San Francisco-based company to put itself up for sale.
Pfizer Buys Medivation [In the Pipeline] So the whole area has been a festival of “Oh crap, turn around, turn around, why did we ever think. . .”, a dust-clouded field full of brake lights, waving fists, honking horns, and those back-up beepers you hear on garbage trucks. It hasn’t been dull, though. Biotech rarely is.
Pfizer to buy cancer drug company Medivation in $14bn deal [The Guardian] There has been a push from Wall Street for the drugmaker to break itself up into smaller companies so that it can grow faster. While hesitant, Pfizer has promised to decide the issue by the end of this year.
	5.2.3 Pharma - économie
With New Name and $86M, Tioma To Explore Anti-CD47 Cancer Therapy [Xconomy] The Brisbane, CA-based biotech plans to use the $86 million Series A to fund a trial that could start as soon as 2017 for its lead candidate, a checkpoint inhibitor that targets a protein called CD47.
	5.3 Traitements - FDA, EMA,...
Addressing challenges of innovative cancer immunotherapy medicines [EMA] EMA workshop to discuss treatments based on genetically modified T-cells.
	5.4 Traitements - Economie
NICE rejects Bayer’s Nexavar for liver cancer [PharmaTimes] The price of the drug is now lower than what it was at the time. However, the committee ruled that there was still considerable uncertainty about the overall survival benefit, and it was unclear how long patients would take the medicine.
NICE recommends crizotinib for lung cancer [NICE] The pill usually costs £51,000 per patient for a course of treatment. When crizotinib was initially reviewed, the company had offered a discount but the NICE committee concluded that it was not cost-effective at that price. In response to this decision the company offered a further discount.
With $14 Billion Purchase, Pfizer Signals That Cancer Drug Prices Will Remain High [Forbes] Neither of these deals would make much sense if pharma executives saw any reckoning on the horizon for the high prices of cancer drugs, which now routinely cost a hundred thousand dollars or more per patient per year.
	6. Lutte contre les cancers
Survey shows broad support for national precision medicine study [NIH] After reading a short description of the PMI Cohort Program, 79 percent of the respondents expressed support for the program, and 54 percent said they would definitely or probably participate if asked. This level of support was fairly constant across racial and ethnic groups as well as other demographic categories.
Sometimes Bold Predictions Do Come True: The Lesson Of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia [Dr. Len's Blog] For me, the enduring message is that perhaps that audacious, oft-ridiculed prediction that we could cure cancer by 2015 had more validity that we recognize. With CML and for some other cancers, we are indeed turning cancer into a chronic disease for some patients.
	6.1 Observation
Cancer survivors’ sex lives as good as others their age [Cancer Research UK] The survey compared the sex lives and worries of more than 6,500 over-50s, including 560 cancer patients.
9/11 and Cancer: Behind the Headlines [ACS] The headlines could easily be interpreted as saying that the cancer risk among people exposed to the WTC disaster has tripled in the past few years, or even that those exposed to the disaster have three times the risk of developing cancer. It doesn’t say either of those.
Epidemic or Thyroid Cancer Over-diagnosis? [American Thyroid Association] The AMERICAN THYROID ASSOCIATION recognizes that the recent increase in incidence of thyroid cancer in the United States and other countries is, in large part, due to the diagnosis of indolent papillary microcarcinomas that will never result in symptoms or death, and which only rarely will enlarge or spread beyond the thyroid gland.
Got a Thyroid Tumor? Most Should Be Left Alone. [NY Times] How would we know if there’s an overdiagnosis problem? Simple, medical experts say. In a real cancer epidemic, deaths would increase in lock step with increasing incidence. But a rise in cancer cases while the death rate does not budge points to overdiagnosis. And that, sadly enough, is what has happened.
Social class may influence multiple myeloma survival [Reuters] “The authors conclude that race does not play a role in survival once you take into account other socioeconomic factors such as insurance status and neighborhood income.”
	6.10.1 Politiques (USA)
Clinton endorses Biden’s cancer program, says she’ll ‘take up the charge’ [STAT] In her statement, the Democratic nominee urged Congress to approve the White House’s billion-dollar funding request for the moonshot and promised to continue the work to encourage cooperation among cancer researchers, another centerpiece of the initiative.
	6.11 Patients
Jimmy Carter thought he had just weeks to live during cancer fight [STAT] “A year ago, I didn’t think I was going to live but two or three weeks because they had already removed part of my liver because I had cancer there,” Carter said. “After that, when they did an MRI, they found four cancer places in my brain so I thought I just had a few weeks to live.”
	6.6 Publications
ORCID: We won't be sold [ORCID] By design, we are also independent and cannot be sold. ORCID Inc. is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization registered in the United States. As such, we are subject to laws of the US Internal Revenue Service that specify that we cannot be purchased or otherwise managed by a commercial entity.
Five more retractions for researcher who sued PubPeer commenters brings tally to 18 [Retraction Watch] All of the new retractions for Fazlul Sarkar, formerly based at Wayne State University in Michigan, appear in the International Journal of Cancer.
	6.7.1 Bioinformatique
Watson goes to Asia: Hospitals use supercomputer for cancer treatment [STAT] Because Watson for Oncology is a machine learning system, its outputs are only as good as its inputs. If it can’t read the doctor’s handwriting, it doesn’t know what the doctor tried to do. So a key next step is making sure that the data feeding into Watson is really good, which may prove a challenge.
	6.7.2 Applis
Apple's Latest Acquisition Could Give Its Health Platform an Edge on Alphabet's [The Street] "We've built a magical machine. It takes incomprehensible electronic medical records and turns them into understandable, standardized, coded elements," says Gliimpse on its web site.
	6.8 Communication
New American Cancer Society Breast Cancer Book Offers Newly Diagnosed Hope [ACS] The American Cancer Society today announced the publication of Breast Cancer Clear & Simple, Second Edition: All Your Questions Answered, an engaging, question-and-answer book written to help newly diagnosed patients quickly digest the crucial information needed to navigate through their breast cancer experience.
	6.9 Controverses
Too many treatment guidelines are written by experts with financial conflicts, study finds [STAT] The study authors recommend that medical societies implement tougher disclosure rules to avoid undermining clinical decisions.
What Is Precision Medicine? [NeuroLogica Blog] Precision medicine and personalized medicine (which as far as I can tell are the same thing) are not different in any meaningful way from regular medicine. They do not represent a new approach, nor do they represent a discontinuity in the slow and steady progress of medicine.
In CRISPR Fight, Co-Inventor Says Broad Institute Misled Patent Office [MIT Technology Review] New evidence in the battle to control a gene-editing technology that is worth billions.
Clinical trials doctors claim they own patients' data, want others to pay for access [Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience] The International Consortium of Investigators for Fairness in Trial Data Sharing, put forward the breathtakingly arrogant claim that doctors who collect data from patients should control it essentially forever. I wonder what their patients would think if they knew.