Scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College have discovered the molecular switch that allows aggressive triple negative breast cancer cells to grow the amoeba-like protrusions they need to crawl away from a primary tumor and metastasize throughout the body. Their findings, published in Cancer Cell, suggest a novel approach for developing agents to treat cancer once it has spread.

Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BIPI) today announced that the New Drug Application (NDA) for its investigational oncology compound afatinib has been accepted for filing and granted Priority Review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The application for afatinib is currently under review for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation as detected by an FDA-approved test.

PHILADELPHIA, PA (January 14, 2013)—Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States. Many of these deaths occur when there is an initial diagnosis of invasive or metastatic disease. A protein called NEDD9—which regulates cell migration, division and survival—has been linked to tumor invasion and metastasis in a variety of cancers. Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have now shown that NEDD9 plays a surprising role in the early stages of breast tumor development by controlling the growth of progenitor cells that give rise to tumors.

Shutting down a specific pathway in cancer cells appears to improve the ability of common drugs to wipe those cells out, according to new research from scientists at Fox Chase Cancer Center, published in the January issue of Cancer Discovery.

"Ideally, this research will eventually enable scientists to find drugs that disrupt this pathway and boost the impact of current therapies," says Igor Astsaturov, MD, PhD, Attending Physician in the Department of Medical Oncology at Fox Chase. "That's the long-term plan."

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The idea of simply finding a mutation and then pick an appropriately targeted drug seems like a nice idea. However, not every key that looks like it will fit a lock will actually turn it. The same is likely to be the case with targeted drugs. There are numerous common mutations in various tumor types, but they don't know that all those mutations are going to turn out to be relevant, as many of them are essentially bystanders.

In what may provide new hope for young cancer patients. Spermatogonial stem cells have been harvested from rhesus macaques, frozen, and reimplanted after a typical dose of chemotherapy was administered to the primate patients. The stem cells were able to implant and generate functional sperm.

Two researchers from the Huntsman Cancer Institute have published results for a recent clinical trial using the drug ponatinib for the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia in patients that were refractory to Gleevec and other standard treatments for Philadelphia chromosome positive hematological neoplasms.

Conducted at five cancer centers, this phase one trial demonstrated that ponatinib was highly active in patients with CML and Ph++ ALL who were resistant to approved tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

A new targeted drug demonstrated its ability to control metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor, an uncommon and life-threatening form of sarcoma, after the disease had become resistant to all existing therapies, report investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who led the worldwide clinical trial.

Stem cells are responsible for tissue growth and tissue repair after injury. Therefore, the discovery that these vital cells grow better in a three-dimensional environment is important for the future treatment of disease with stem cell therapy.

According to the results of a new multi-center study published in the journal Radiology, the use of three-dimensional breast imaging, known as tomosynthesis, could improve diagnostic accuracy.

Using only FDA-approved, standard lung cancer drugs available to all oncologists, a process of laboratory selection provided a 64.5 percent response rate - more than double the national average of 30 percent (p = 0.00015), well established in medical literature. More importantly, the median overall survival of 21.3 months was nearly two-fold longer than the best results of 13.5 months reported for non-assay based standard treatments. Strikingly, among the stage IV (metastatic) patients, there are several who remain alive approaching eight years since diagnosis.