Miracle Double-Lung Transplant Cures German Woman's Cancer (5 minutes reading) 

Cornelia Tischmacher, a 40-year-old art dealer from Berlin, was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer in 2018. Despite surgery and chemotherapy, her cancer returned, and by 2024, she relied on an oxygen tank to breathe. Facing a grim prognosis, Tischmacher discovered a groundbreaking clinical trial in Chicago.

The DREAM program at Northwestern Medicine developed a new double-lung transplant method for patients with advanced lung cancer. Instead of transplanting lungs one at a time, both cancerous lungs are removed simultaneously, the chest cavity is cleaned, and new lungs are implanted. This meticulous approach prevents cancer cells from spreading during the procedure.

In December, Tischmacher underwent the surgery and woke up able to breathe without assistance. Five months later, she shows no signs of cancer. Her case highlights a promising new option for patients with lung-limited malignancies. Since the program's launch, about 70 patients have received this surgery, with only five experiencing cancer recurrence.

Tischmacher's successful surgery offers hope to late-stage cancer patients worldwide, demonstrating the potential of innovative medical procedures to extend lives and improve quality of life.

Source: LINK

 

Prevention and Screening Save Lives in Five Major Cancer Types

From 1975 to 2020, efforts in prevention and screening helped avoid 4.75 million deaths from breast, cervical, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancers. This study by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) shows that these efforts have saved more lives than treatment advances.

Key findings include that smoking cessation prevented 3.45 million deaths from lung cancer. In breast cancer, treatment advances saved most lives, with mammography screening also contributing. Screening and removal of precancerous lesions prevented 160,000 deaths from cervical cancer. Screening and removal of polyps averted 79% of 940,000 deaths from colorectal cancer. PSA testing and treatment advances saved 360,000 lives from prostate cancer.

The study emphasizes the importance of combining prevention, screening, and treatment to reduce cancer death rates. The Biden Cancer Moonshot aims to cut the cancer death rate by 50% by 2047, highlighting the crucial role of prevention and screening efforts.

source: LINK

RESEARCHERS DISCOVER NEW GENETIC ANOMALIES IN LUNG CANCER

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Developing effective treatments for lung cancer has been challenging, in part because so many genetic mutations play a role in the disease.

By analyzing the DNA and RNA of lung cancers, researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found that patients whose tumors contained a large number of gene fusions had worse outcomes than patients with fewer gene fusions. Gene fusions are a type of genetic anomaly found in cancers that occurs when genes get rearranged and fuse together.

In addition, the researchers identified several new genetic anomalies that occur in lung cancer, including in patients with a history of smoking.

"Lung cancer is quite a complex disease with many causes. Our deep sequencing analysis found new gene fusions in lung cancers that were negative for the most commonly known fusions. These new anomalies could potentially be targets for developing new treatments," says study author Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology and S.P. Hicks Professor of Pathology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

The study looked at 753 lung cancer samples that represented both smokers and non-smokers. The first 153 samples came from the University of Michigan and were combined with 521 samples from a report published by The Cancer Genome Atlas.

The researchers found 6,348 unique fusions with an average of 13 fusions per tumor sample. Anomalies in two gene pathways were most prevalent: the Hippo pathway, which has previously been linked to some rare cancers, and NRG1, which has not previously been seen in cancer.

The study appears in Nature Communications.

Researchers know that three common gene fusions - involving ALK, RET and ROS - play a role in about 5 percent of lung cancers, but primarily in non-smokers. The new anomalies were found only in patients who did not have ALK, RET or ROS fusions.

"Our results indicate that in the more genomically complex smoking-related lung cancers, gene fusion events appear to be frequent," says study author David G. Beer, Ph.D., John and Carla Klein Professor of Thoracic Surgery and professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School and co-director of Cancer Genetics at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Drug companies are already investigating drugs that could target the Hippo pathway and NRG1. The research team suggests exploring these inhibitors as potential therapeutics in lung cancer.

In addition, the finding that the number of gene fusions was tied to prognosis suggests that a screen could be developed to help doctors determine how aggressive a patient's tumor is likely to be - and to tailor treatment accordingly.

The study identified many different gene fusions that comprise the landscape of lung cancer, with most occurring in only a small number of individual tumor samples. The Hippo pathway fusions were present in 3 percent of patients and NRG1 fusions in 4 percent. The researchers suggest expanding lung cancer subtypes based on these molecular characteristics.

"We've previously had success in targeting therapies against low-recurrence gene fusions. Large-scale genome analyses like this allow us to identify more of the key drivers of each patient's tumor so that we can match the most appropriate therapies," Chinnaiyan says.

Source: EurekAlert

MAJOR DECLINE IN LUNG CANCER REPORTED

“Eliminating tobacco use is the most important thing we can do to prevent lung and other cancers, as well as the many other diseases its use causes. Today’s news confirms that we are making progress. However, the global health challenges from tobacco are still growing.

“This new CDC report shows how far we’ve come in the U.S. as we approach the 50th anniversaries of both the Surgeon General’s first report on tobacco and ASCO’s founding. Having shown that we can make substantial progress, we must continue to do everything possible to expand tobacco control programs in the United States and especially overseas, where tobacco use is taking an even greater toll.

“ASCO believes it is our responsibility as cancer doctors to help our patients quit and oppose tobacco use in all its forms. We are deeply committed to proactive tobacco control globally and have set an aggressive agenda for slashing tobacco use, deploying every public health, policy, and legal approach available.”

—Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP

Source: ASCO post 

SOY CONSUMPTION LINKED TO BETTER LUNG CANCER SURVIVAL IN WOMEN

On its website, NBC News (3/25, Fox) reports, "Soy foods, long shown to help lower the risk of cancer, may also help people survive at least some forms of cancer better," according to research published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. This finding, "lends support to the idea that adding soy foods to the diet can help people in multiple ways, says Dr. Jyoti Patel, a lung cancer specialist at Northwestern University in Chicago, who was not involved in the study." According to Patel, "Although the risks are probably different for American women for developing lung cancer, I do think it is a call to action for more research about how we develop lung cancer." NBC News adds, "For the study, Gong Yang and colleagues at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Shanghai Cancer Institute, and the National Cancer Institute looked at data from a large study of Chinese women called the Shanghai Women's Health Study."

        The Tennessean (3/25, Wilemon, 120K) reports that, among those in the study diagnosed with lung cancer, women "who had a history of eating soy-rich diets were 20 percent more likely to be alive a year after diagnosis than those who had not." The Tennessean points out that the "study received federal funding from the National Cancer Institute."

        Medscape (3/26, Mulcahy) reports, "'This is the first scientific evidence that soy has a favorable effect on lung cancer survival,' said Dr. Patel, who is a spokesperson for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and provided independent comment on the study." Dr. Patel told Medscape Medical News that "soy may have a mechanism of action similar to drugs like tamoxifen."

Source: ASCO news