Cancer Research Lab

Elderly patients with metastatic colon cancer, those between 76 and 80 years of age, have response and survival rates similar to their younger counterparts when given a treatment approach that includes stop-and-go oxaliplatin.

Elderly patients with metastatic colon cancer are generally excluded from randomized clinical trials, but were included in the OPTIMOX1 trial, led by Dr. Arie Figer of Beth Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv, Israel. OPTIMOX1 was an evaluation of FOLFOX7, a simplified leucovorin (LV) and 5-fluorouracil (5FU) regimen (sLV5FU2) with high-dose oxaliplatin, in a new oxaliplatin stop-and-go strategy.

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Altered patterns of microRNA expression in colon adenocarcinomas are associated with treatment response and prognosis, scientists report in the Journal of the American Medical Association for January 30. Dr. Aaron J. Schetter and Dr. Curtis C. Harris and colleagues identified one particular microRNA - miR-21 - that appears to actively promote tumor progression.

“Our findings show a systematic change in microRNA expression in colon tumors, suggesting a role for microRNAs in this process,” Drs. Schetter and Harris, at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, said. “High miR-21 expression has also been found in 11 other cancer types, indicating that these findings may be relevant to other cancers.”

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Following surgery for colon cancer, colonoscopy is useful in detecting recurrence and other cancer and adenomas, and is tied to improved survival, researchers report in the March issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

“The results of our study provide additional evidence that colorectal cancer survivors benefit from surveillance with colonoscopy,” lead investigator Dr. Stephen J. Rulyak said.

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The chemokine fractalkine has powerful anti-tumor activity in a mouse model of metastatic colon cancer, French researchers report in the March issue of Gut.

Senior investigator Dr. Heidy Schmid-Alliana said that “our preliminary experiments performed in models of subcutaneous implantation of several tumor cell types, with intra-tumoral injections of fractalkine-coding plasmids, produced highly promising results with a marked reduction in tumor size.”

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Evaluating a greater number of lymph nodes is associated with increased patient survival after surgical resection of stage II or III colon cancer, according to a report in the March 21st Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

“No minimum [number of nodes] can be determined based on this review, and that number may be elusive and may depend on other factors which are patient- and tumor-related,” Dr. George J. Chang from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas “Twelve as proposed, however, seems very achievable in nearly all cases.”

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Although Medicare coverage for colorectal cancer screening has increased in recent years, there are still significant gender and racial gaps in screening uptake, new research shows.

In 2001, Medicare coverage for colon cancer screening expanded to include colonoscopy every 10 years for people at average risk. While prior studies have documented disparities in screening rates between different groups, very few have examined these disparities since the expanded coverage began.

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In a study of polypectomized and colon cancer patients, consumption of a synbiotic preparation containing one prebiotic and two probiotics significantly reduced several colorectal cancer biomarkers.

The authors of the report, in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition for February, note that prebiotics are nondigestable food ingredients that promote the growth of beneficial resident bacteria. Probiotics are living organisms thought to have a beneficial effect on health. Findings from animal studies have supported an anti-tumor effect for both types of agents, but confirmatory data from human studies is lacking.

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A married couple who sailed to America from England around 1630 are the reason why thousands of people in the United States are at higher risk of a hereditary form of colon cancer, researchers said on Wednesday.

Using a genetic fingerprint, a U.S. team traced back a so-called founder genetic mutation to the couple found among two large families currently living in Utah and New York.

Cancer researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Utah did not name the families but said thousands of people across the country may have the mutation that spread widely as the couple’s descendants branched apart over many generations.

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