Meeting Report: AACR-IASLC Joint Conference on Molecular Origins of Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death, accounting for one-third of all cancer deaths.  Lung cancer is also the second most common cancer in men (after prostate cancer) and women (after breast cancer).  Over 200,000 people are diagnosed with and about 150,000 people die from lung cancer every year in the United States [a, b].  While surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are routine treatment choices, in the recent years, patients have benefited from the introduction of targeted therapies based on the discovery of mutations in the EGFR and KRAS genes, and EML/ALK translocations.   EGFR mutations are more commonly found in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tumors in Asian population (30-40%) than Caucasians (10-15%).   About 4% of the patients carry EML/ALK translocation.


The ongoing 2012 AACR-IASLC Joint Conference on Molecular Origins of Lung Cancer: Biology, Therapy and Personalized Medicine in San Diego highlights some of the recent advances in lung cancer biology, diagnosis and treatment (see below)

San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2011: Clinical Trials Report

San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is one of the largest gatherings of breast cancer clinicians, scientists and those with a stake in breast cancer treatment. There are over 8,000

A glass of CABERNET or MERLOT for a leaky case of AMD

Extract of my guest post at maiBlog, a radiology-focused blog.

"Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of vision loss and blindness in adults over 50 years age. While 90% of AMD patients have the dry-type AMD (atrophic), it is the wet AMD (exudative), driven by choroidal neovascularization (CNV), which is responsible for severe and acute vision loss in over 90% of the patients. Famous people, like the artist Georgia O’Keefe, entertainer Bob Hope and the author Henry Grunwald have coped with AMD. There are over 1.6 million people with AMD in the United States and about 200,000 people are diagnosed with wet AMD every year. 


One promising approach in late-stage clinical development is the use of beta-radiation to selectively target the proliferating cells in the macular lesion. A small company 40-miles south of San Francisco called NeoVista in Newark, Calif., is at the forefront of testing an epimacular brachytherapy device in the pivotal CABERNET (CNV Secondary AMD Treated with BEta RadiatioN Epiretinal Therapy) Study. ..."

Click here to read full post at maiBlog.

(Find this post at InternetArchive here.)


Related Post:

Mining aminoacyl tRNA synthases (aaRSs) for anti-angiogenic factors.  November 22, 2010

Helping Win Steve Jobs' Pancreatic Cancer Fight For All of US Because iPads Are Not the Only Things That Matter

Yesterday, Steve Jobs once again returned to the world stage to introduce Apple's new iPad2 and once again the spotlight was also put on his ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer. 

Friday Grand Rounds: Russ Altman Introduces Pharmacogenomics Database PharmGKB

Every human cell, with two sets of 23 chromosomes, contains six-billion basepairs of DNA (or three-billion per haploid genome).  Of these three-billion genomic basepairs, each individual shares 99.7% with the rest of the humanity.  It is the three-tenths of a percent that determines the differences between all of us.  This tiny percent, nevertheless, comprises of about a million positions that not only make us unique individuals, but also determine how we respond to environment, succumb to certain diseases, or respond (or not) to certain drugs.  These single nucleotide changes, scattered all over the genome, are called single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP, pronounced snip) - for example, I may have Adenine at position X, you may have C and my friend may have G at the same position.  Since the complete sequencing of human genome in 2003, the post-genomic goal has been, to answer how this 0.3% of genome determines phenotype.  Pharmacogenomics/Pharmacogenetics (PGx) is the study of how genetic makeup correlates to responses to various drugs.  

Oncology Focused Pharmacogenomic "predictive" Biomarkers

Pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics (abbreviated together as PGx) are key to the future of personalized medicine.  Pharmacogenomic biomarkers provide tools to predict (a) drug response or (b) adverse drug reactions.  Such biomarkers help to maximize efficacy and minimize toxicity.