The number of tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream of patients with metastatic, hormone-resistant, prostate cancer can predict how they will do with chemotherapy, according to results of an international trial. The findings, if backed by larger studies, could have important implications for designing personalized treatments for this very dangerous type of prostate cancer, the researchers say.

Chemotherapy temporarily hinders the body's immune response, creating a concern that it may interfere with the promising new cancer vaccines being used against brain tumors. But a new study led by researchers at the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University and The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center has found that the opposite is true: chemotherapy may actually enhance the effectiveness of the vaccines.

Early metabolic imaging with positron emission tomography (PET) accurately identifies patients responding to chemotherapy for esophageal cancer, noted German researchers at the 54th Annual Meeting of SNM, the world's largest society for molecular imaging and nuclear medicine professionals.

Any number of things can go wrong in the cells of the body to cause cancer -- and clinicians can't tell by just looking at a tumor what exactly triggered the once normal cells to turn cancerous.

In the June issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), researchers report their findings from the first-ever study examining the prognostic value of serum hepatitis B virus DNA levels for patients with liver cancer undergoing chemotherapy.

The doctoral thesis Potencial terapéutico de nuevos fármacos antitumorales. Estudio sobre líneas celulares epiteliales (Therapeutic Potential of New Antitumor Drugs. A Study on Epithelial Cell Lines) has made it possible to develop six new drugs to fight colon and breast cancer more effectively than other drugs currently used do.

A blood test that detects proteins commonly released by a growing tumor could one day become a useful tool for monitoring the effectiveness of chemotherapy and radiation treatment in people with advanced throat cancer, according to a study published in the June 1, 2007, issue of Clinical Cancer Research.

Skin reactions to a powerful new class of anti-cancer drugs are frequent, but manageable through a simple and rational treatment approach - usually without the need to reduce the dose or interrupt treatment with potentially life-prolonging chemotherapy, according to an article in the May issue of "The Oncologist."

A gene thought to be essential in helping chemotherapy kill cancer cells, may actually help them thrive. In a new study of chemo patients, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Ovarian Cancer Institute found that 70 percent of subjects whose tumors had mutations in the gene p53 were still alive after five years. Patients with normal p53 displayed only a 30 percent survival rate.

Giving chemotherapy to women with operable breast cancer before they have surgery -not after - helps physicians pin down the best treatment regimen and can reduce the extent of surgery, according to a new systematic review.

An earlier indication of whether chemotherapy benefits non-small cell lung cancer patients-provided by positron emission tomography (PET) imaging-can guide doctors in offering them better care, according to researchers in the May Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

A drug under study to treat various cancers selectively kills cancer cells because of its affinity for a modified version of a critical heat shock protein they contain, researchers have found.