Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center have identified the enzyme sphingosine kinase 2 as a possible new therapeutic target to improve the efficacy of chemotherapy for colon and breast cancer.

Over four times as many patients with a rapidly fatal type of brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), who are treated with the chemotherapy drug temozolomide (TMZ) and radiation therapy, can live for four years after diagnosis, compared to those who receive only radiation treatment.

Researchers have found they can potentially target chemotherapy for breast cancer to only those women most likely to benefit, sparing the majority of patients from unnecessary side effects.

Women under the age of forty with breast cancer who are given drugs in addition to lumpectomies or radiotherapy, known as adjuvant chemotherapy, may not be benefiting from these drugs.

Cancer patients receiving chemotherapy have not noticed a restriction in their access to treatment following the enactment of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA), despite the act's significant reduction in government reimbursement to oncologists, according to a new study led by researchers in the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI).

Anti-cancer treatments often effectively shrink the size of tumors, but some might have an opposite effect, actually expanding the small population of cancer stem cells believed to drive the disease, according to findings presented today in Atlanta, Georgia at the American Association for Cancer Research’s second International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development.

A new study finds that, compared to healthy women, breast cancer survivors reported more days of fatigue and more severe fatigue symptoms. The study, published in the October 15, 2007 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, found women who received both chemotherapy and radiotherapy reported the most severe and prolonged fatigue.

Three genomic tests separately predict the likelihood that a patient's breast cancer will reoccur after surgery without additional treatment, and the cancer's vulnerability to chemotherapy or hormone therapy, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report at the first American Society of Clinical Oncology ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium Sept. 7-8 in San Francisco.

A common molecular pathway could help physicians predict which lung cancer patients will benefit from chemotherapy drugs, according to new research from a multidisciplinary team at the University of Cincinnati (UC).

Angiogenesis inhibitors that block a tumor’s development of an independent blood supply have been touted as effective cancer fighters that result in fewer side effects than traditional chemotherapy. However, a new study by researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center showed that one method of blocking blood supply development could result in serious and potentially deadly side effects.

A key challenge facing doctors as they treat patients suffering from cancer or other diseases resulting from genetic mutations is that the drugs at their disposal often don’t discriminate between healthy cells and dangerous ones -- think of the brute-force approach of chemotherapy, for instance.

Treatment with chemotherapy and bevacizumab, an anticancer drug, is associated with a greater risk of blood clots in patients’ arteries compared with treatment with chemotherapy only, according to a study published online August 7 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.