A blood test that measures the number of cells shed from prostate tumours into the bloodstream can act as an early warning sign that treatment is not working, a major new study shows. Researchers showed that measuring the numbers of circulating tumour cells in the blood predicted which men were benefiting least from a prostate cancer drug after as little as 12 weeks of treatment.

They hope their work will allow doctors to switch patients to alternative treatments earlier than is currently possible, if these results are confirmed by further studies. The research could also hasten the development of cancer treatments by speeding up clinical trials, since doctors could tell much earlier whether a treatment is working.

The study was led in the UK by researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, and also involved several leading international institutions. It was funded by a range of organisations including a Medical Research Council biomarkers grant, the companies Janssen Diagnostics, the Prostate Cancer Foundation in the US, and Prostate Cancer UK.

As tumours grow and progress, they shed cancer cells into the bloodstream, some of which can seed new secondary tumours elsewhere in the body. So the researchers wanted to see whether a high number of circulating tumours cells was an indication of a growing tumour that wasn't responding to treatment, and could predict a lower chance of survival.

A new study shows that providing women with skills to manage stress early in their breast cancer treatment can improve their mood and quality of life many years later. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings suggest that women given the opportunity to learn stress management techniques during treatment may benefit well into survivorship.

At the turn of the century, 240 women with a recent breast cancer diagnosis participated in a randomized trial that tested the effects of a stress management intervention developed by Michael Antoni, PhD, of the University of Miami. Dr. Antoni and his team found that, compared with patients who received a one-day seminar of education about breast cancer, patients who learned relaxation techniques and new coping skills in a supportive group over 10 weeks experienced improved quality of life and less depressive symptoms during the first year of treatment.

In their latest report, the researchers found that the women who received the stress management intervention had persistently less depressive symptoms and better quality of life up to 15 years later. "Women with breast cancer who participated in the study initially used stress management techniques to cope with the challenges of primary treatment to lower distress. Because these stress management techniques also give women tools to cope with fears of recurrence and disease progression, the present results indicate that these skills can be used to reduce distress and depressed mood and optimize quality of life across the survivorship period as women get on with their lives," said lead author Jamie Stagl, who is currently at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston.

Tumors that produce more stress granules are more likely to metastasize, according to a study published in The Journal of Cell Biology. The results suggest that drugs to inhibit the formation of these structures might rein in cancer metastasis.

When cells are under duress, they curtail almost all protein synthesis and stash their mRNAs in stress granules. These structures help healthy cells, but they also allow tumor cells to survive harsh conditions. A protein named YB-1, which is overexpressed in many types of tumors, accumulates in stress granules, but researchers don't know how YB-1 affects these particles.

University of British Columbia scientist Poul Sorensen and his colleagues found that stressed-out cancer cells need YB-1 to assemble stress granules. Removing YB-1 decreased levels of one stress granule protein, G3BP1. The team discovered that YB-1 attaches to the mRNA encoding G3BP1 and stimulates the protein's production.

To determine the effects of YB-1 in animals, the researchers implanted mice with cancer cells that either made or lacked the protein. A month later, cells in the control tumors carried more stress granules than did the tumor cells missing YB-1. Sorensen and colleagues then implanted mice with tumors that either produced or lacked G3BP1. The control tumors harbored more stress granules than did the G3BP1-deficient tumors, and only the control tumors metastasized.

Further research is needed to find out how the reduction in stress granules curbs metastatic spread, but the results suggest that inhibiting their formation might be a way to curb cancer metastasis.

Somasekharan et al.   YB-1 regulates stress granule formation and tumor progression by translationally activating G3BP1. J Cell Biol. 2015; doi:10.1083/jcb.201411047 [Abstract]

 Increasingly high prices for cancer drugs are affecting patient care in the U.S. and the American health care system overall, say the authors of a special article published online in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

"Americans with cancer pay 50 percent to 100 percent more for the same patented drug than patients in other countries," says S. Vincent Rajkumar, M.D., of Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, who is one of the authors. "As oncologists we have a moral obligation to advocate for affordable cancer drugs for our patients."

Dr. Rajkumar and his colleague, Hagop Kantarjian, M.D., of MD Anderson Cancer Center, say the average price of cancer drugs for about a year of therapy increased from $5,000 to $10,000 before 2000 to more than $100,000 by 2012. Over nearly the same period the average household income in the U.S. decreased by about 8 percent.

In the paper, the authors rebut the major arguments the pharmaceutical industry uses to justify the high price of cancer drugs, namely, the expense of conducting research and drug development, the comparative benefits to patients, that market forces will settle prices to reasonable levels, and that price controls on cancer drugs will stifle innovation.

"One of the facts that people do not realize is that cancer drugs for the most part are not operating under a free market economy," says Dr. Rajkumar. "The fact that there are five approved drugs to treat an incurable cancer does not mean there is competition. Typically, the standard of care is that each drug is used sequentially or in combination, so that each new drug represents a monopoly with exclusivity granted by patent protection for many years."

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that when a certain aggressive leukemia is causing havoc in the body, the solution may be to force the cancer cells to grow up and behave.

After a chance observation in the lab, the researchers found a method that can cause dangerous leukemia cells to mature into harmless immune cells known as macrophages.The findings  will be published  in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia with a mutation called the Philadelphia chromosome is a particularly aggressive cancer with poor outcomes, said Ravi Majeti, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine and senior author of the paper. So finding potential treatments is particularly exciting.

Majeti and his colleagues made the key observation after collecting leukemia cells from a patient and trying to keep the cells alive in a culture plate. "We were throwing everything at them to help them survive," said Majeti, who is also a member of the Stanford Cancer Institute and the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.