Cancer can be wily, and those who treat the disease have amassed a wide array of weapons with which to fight it and kill tumors. Radiation therapy and various forms of chemotherapy were all thought to be separate but equal treatments.

A new computer-based technique could eliminate hours of manual adjustment associated with a popular cancer treatment. In a paper published in the Feb. 7 issue of Physics in Medicine and Biology, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center describe an approach that has the potential to automatically determine acceptable radiation plans in a matter of minutes, without compromising the quality of treatment.

Radiation therapy after lumpectomy and five years of treatment with the drug tamoxifen can dramatically reduce the risk of both cancer recurrence and new tumors in older women with early breast cancer, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.

Giving patients with head and neck cancer a combination of chemotherapy and radiation therapy controls the cancer and allows many patients to avoid additional surgery to the neck, according to a study presented at the plenary session today at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium in Rancho Mirage, Calif., co-sponsored by the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Head and Neck Society.

Preliminary findings show adding the chemotherapy drug cetuximab (brand name Erbitux) to radiation therapy and chemotherapy may help some patients with head and neck cancer live longer, according to a study presented today at the plenary session of the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium, co-sponsored by the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, the American Society for Clinical Oncology and the American Head and Neck Society.

A new analysis shows that it may be possible to accurately predict a cancer patient's risk of developing leukemia as a result of receiving radiation therapy for a primary tumor. Understanding these risks may help doctors optimize radiation treatment to minimize the side effects of this therapy, the authors say.

Giving radiation therapy and chemotherapy at the same time after a lumpectomy helps keep breast cancer from returning locally, according to a study published in the December 1 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, the official journal of ASTRO.