Onco Actu du 19 janvier 2018

	1. Biologie
Genetic link between breast condition and invasive breast cancer uncovered [Cancer Research UK] The genetics behind how a breast condition becomes invasive breast cancer may be explained by a new study. Gene changes in invasive breast cancer cells were also found in abnormal cell growths called ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a potentially pre-cancerous breast condition, according to the study published in Cell.
	2.11 Etiologie - Alimentation
Study links inflammation-causing foods to higher risk of colorectal cancer [ACS] There has been a lot of interest in the role of diet in inflammation, and in fact several anti-inflammatory diets have begun to be promoted. This is an observational study, not interventional, so it has some limitations, but it does shed some light on the issue.
	3.1 Prévention - Tabac
Current Cigarette Smoking Among Adults — United States, 2016 [CDC] During 2005–2016, an increasing proportion of adults who ever smoked cigarettes had quit smoking. However, following consecutive significant annual declines during 2013–2014 and 2014–2015, no change in smoking prevalence was observed between 2015 and 2016.
	4.12 Biopsies liquides
A Cheap and Easy Blood Test Could Catch Cancer Early [MIT Technology Review] 50,000 healthy people will be screened in an effort to detect hidden tumors.
Cancer Diagnosis from a Blood Draw? Liquid Biopsies Are Still a Dream [Wired] The noninvasive screening tests available today—mammography for breast cancer, a protein-measuring test for prostate cancer—are rife with their own issues. Incorrect diagnoses waste time and money on treatments and burden patients with unnecessary anxiety.
Single Blood Test Screens for Eight Cancer Types [Johns Hopkins] The investigators feel that a test that will be used routinely for cancer screening must have a cost in line with or less than other currently available screening tests for single cancers, such as colonoscopy. They envision that the CancerSEEK test will eventually cost less than $500.
'Promising' blood test detects eight different kinds of cancer before they spread [The Telegraph] "This looks promising but with several caveats and a significant amount of further research is needed before we can even contemplate how this might play out in screening settings."
Cancer blood test ‘enormously exciting’ [BBC News] The CancerSEEK test looks for mutations in 16 genes that regularly arise in cancer and eight proteins that are often released.
Scientists Edge Closer To A Blood Test To Detect Cancers [NPR] For the test to be useful, "you've got to find cancer that's going to otherwise be lethal, and not cancer that would otherwise be destined to do nothing."
Simple blood test detects eight different kinds of cancer [Nature] The effectiveness of CancerSEEK varied widely depending on the cancer: it detected 98% of ovarian cancers, but only 33% of breast cancer cases.
'Liquid biopsy' promises early detection for cancer [Science] The work, reported online today in Science, could one day lead to a tool for routinely screening people and catching tumors before they cause symptoms, when chances are best for a cure. Other groups, among them startups with more than $1 billion in funding, are already pursuing that prospect.
Blood test could use DNA to spot early-stage cancers, study shows [The Guardian] “There are some major caveats. Firstly, 80% of the cancers evaluated were stage two or stage three cancers – fairly advanced. Demonstrating that a test can detect advanced cancers does not mean that the test will be useful in detecting early stage symptomatic cancer, much less pre-symptomatic cancer. The sensitivity for the stage one cancers in the study was only 40%.”
	4.9 Dép., diag. & prono. - Sein
Factor that doubles the risk of death from breast cancer identified [Karolinska Institutet] Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered that the risk of death from breast cancer is twice as high for patients with high heterogeneity of the oestrogen receptor within the same tumour as compared to patients with low heterogeneity.
	5. Traitements
RET Driven Cancers [ESMO] An article published in the Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology emphasize that that novel approaches to targeting RET-dependent tumours are necessary to improve the clinical efficacy of single-agent multikinase inhibition and, thus, hasten approvals of RET-directed targeted therapies.
	5.1 Traitements - Pré-clinique
Flying membrane protein aids cancer drug design [Karolinska Institutet] Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Uppsala University and the University of Oxford, have used a new strategy to understand how specific enzymes can be shut down to stop cells from dividing. The method, published in Cell Chemical Biology, allows scientists to better target an enzyme to fight cancer.
	5.12.2 Immunothérapies - CAR-T
China's Great Leap Into Biotech [Bloomberg] Kymriah costs $475,000 for a single treatment; Yescarta goes for $373,000. Now China reckons it can do this better and cheaper. There are currently 153 CAR-T studies in the nation, just behind 186 in the U.S., according to Bernstein Research's Laura Nelson Carney.
	5.12.3 Immunothérapies-combinaisons
Gilead/Kite team up with Pfizer for CAR-T-mAb combination [FierceBiotech] This also forms yet another cancer combination between biopharma companies, adding to the ever-growing list of companies combining CAR-T, PD-1/PD-L1, cancer vaccines, oncolytic viruses and more to each other in the hope of achieving greater effect or fewer side effects.
Kite Announces Clinical Collaboration to Evaluate Investigational Combination of Yescarta™ (Axicabtagene Ciloleucel) and Pfizer’s Utomilumab in Large B-Cell Lymphoma [Gilead] Phase 1/2 Study Planned for 2018.
Beefing up its CAR-T pipeline, Gilead teams up with Pfizer on a lymphoma combo [EndPoints] The pact between Pfizer and Gilead’s new subsidiary Kite is just the latest example of the plans now underway to beef up the pipeline at the CAR-T company as it goes toe-to-toe with Novartis, which scored the first landmark FDA approval in CAR-T with the rollout of Kymriah.
	5.2.1 Pharma - Partenariats
Sandoz announces exclusive global collaboration with Biocon on next-generation biosimilars [Novartis] Sandoz, a Novartis division and the global leader in biosimilars, today announced a global partnership with Asia's premier biopharmaceuticals company, Biocon, to develop, manufacture and commercialize multiple biosimilars in immunology and oncology for patients worldwide.
	5.2.3 Pharma - économie
U.S. court invalidates J&J cancer drug patent, hitting UK's BTG [Reuters] The drug is also a money-spinner for healthcare group BTG, which earns royalties on sales of a medicine that was originally developed by cancer researchers in Britain. BTG shares fell 5 percent on Thursday on fears for this revenue stream.
	5.3.4 Traitements - AMM (FDA, EMA)
Lynparza receives approval in Japan for the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer [AstraZeneca] Lynparza tablets approved as maintenance treatment for women with platinum-sensitive relapsed ovarian cancer regardless of BRCA mutation status.
	5.5 ASCO
First-Time Data for Merck’s KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab) in Patients with Previously Treated Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) to be Presented at 2018 ASCO GI Symposium [Merck] Results showed an overall response rate (ORR) of 16.3 percent (95% CI, 9.8-24.9) (n=17/104) with KEYTRUDA as monotherapy.
	6.1 Observation
New Registry Launched to Track and Improve the Quality of Cancer Care Delivered in the U.S. [ASCO] In addition to improving the quality of care for people living with cancer, the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) Reporting Registry also makes it easier for medical and radiation oncologists to report quality-related performance metrics required by the federal government.
Incidence of Cancers of the Lower Stomach Increasing among Younger Americans [NCI] Taken together, the findings suggest that there is “a new [type of] gastric cancer among us,”—one that occurs primarily in the gastric corpus region of the stomach, especially in women younger than age 50.
	6.11 Patients
Living With Cancer: Sex After Cancer [NY Times] More informative are the sections of “Sex and Cancer” in which the authors explain what people can do to ensure that “the emperor of all maladies” will not rule and wreck their relationships.
	6.6 Publications
Indexing company praises cancer journal, then kicks it out [Retraction Watch] A company that indexes journals — which, in turn, designates their impact factors — has delisted Oncotarget, a cancer journal that was recently removed from MEDLINE. Just three months ago, on October 18, the indexing company Clarivate Analytics (formerly part of Thomson Reuters) named Oncotarget a “rising star” in the field of molecular biology and genetics.
China declared world’s largest producer of scientific articles [Nature] Report shows increasing international competition, but suggests that United States remains a scientific powerhouse.
	6.9 Controverses
Nearly 100 scientists spent 2 months on Google Docs to redefine the p-value. Here’s what they came up with [Science] But perhaps the main argument, the participants agreed, was that 0.005 is just as arbitrary as 0.05, and that the threshold depends on what is already known about a topic and the risks associated with getting a wrong answer.
Better late than never: A Catalogue of the biases affecting health research [Catalogue of Bias] To better understand the persistent presence, diversity and impact of biases, we are compiling a Catalogue of Biases, stemming from original work by David Sackett. The entries are a work in progress and describe a wide range of biases – outlining their potential impact in research studies.