Surviving-Cancers.com

Dr Ou of the UCI Medical Center

Last night I attended a meeting near the UCI Medical Center. The speaker, Doctor Ou, is an Associate Clinical Professor at the school. He brought up some interesting facts.

• There are more deaths among women from lung cancer (70,490) than from breast cancer, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, uterine cancer, vulva cancer, and vaginal cancer combined (68,290).

• There are tests for early detection of many forms of cancer (i.e. mamograms for breast cancer and PAP smears for cervical cancer), but there is no test for early detection of lung cancer.

• Because of the difficulty in detecting lung cancer at an early stage, it generally takes 25 years to manifest itself. Almost half of all new patients diagnosed are in the late stage (IIIB and IV) of the disease, making treatment unlikely to be successful.

• Those who smoke but quit at the age of 30 have more than double the chance of dying from lung cancer than those who have never smoked. Those who quit at age 50 have more than a six-fold lung cancer mortality rate.

• Women who never smoke are much more likely than men who have never smoked to develop lung cancer. This is more pronounced in the Asian countries than in Europe and the US, although it holds true in all geographic areas studied.

• Radon gas is the second leading cause of lung cancer. Produced by decaying uranium-238 in the soil, it is estimated that 8 million homes in the US have elevated levels of radon, primarily in Northern states.

• As with most diseases, genetic mutations have been identified as being involved with the development of lung cancer. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), when mutated, can cause the uncontrolled cell division known as cancer.

• A drug under study, Gefitinib, shows great promise in stopping some forms of lung cancer, but while it works extremely well in some patients, it does not work at all in others. Its effectiveness depends on the specific mutations in the EFGR gene. I will write more about Gefitinib in a future post.

Early detection and treatment has provided the US with the best cancer survival rate in the world, including other Western nations.  This survival rate may soon be getting even better.

For non-small cell lung cancer, specific genetic factors have been determined to be the cause in about 5% of cases.  Recent advances in genetic research, combined with a new treatment, may turn a virtual death sentence into a manageable condition for those with this genetic characteristic.

A gene called Anaplastic Lymphoma kinase, more commonly known as the ALK gene, can combine with another gene or form a duplicate copy of itself.  When this happens, a relatively rare type of tumor can appear.

Presence of the ALK gene is determined by FISH testing which is also sometimes used to detect copies of the HER2 gene in breast cancer patients.

By administering a new oral drug called an “ALK inhibitor”, this type of lung cancer is not only stopped from growing, but appears to melt away.  The drug does not rid the body of the gene, so tumors can reappear, requiring additional future treatments… but the disease becomes manageable.

Five cancer centers worldwide participated in the first two trials of the drug, including the University of Colorado Cancer Center, one of the few places where the related FISH test can be performed.

23 people were treated in the initial studies and almost all of them had dramatic responses within short periods of time.

Ila Hegland, diagnosed nine years ago with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer, was told she only had two years to live. After six weeks of treatment with the ALK inhibiting drug, no signs of the cancer could be found.

Third stage trials are now being performed and it is hoped that the treatment will be generally available in the near future.

Other forms of cancer are also tied to the ALK gene, including 10 to 15 percent of childhood non-hodgekin lymphomas and myofibroblastic tumors (sarcoma).  With further studies, perhaps the drug can be applied to these types of conditions as well.

A diet high in inorganic phosphates, commonly added to processed foods such as meats, cheeses, bakery products and beverages may contribute to the development of lung cancer in individuals predisposed to disease.

Lung cancer is a disease of uncontrolled cell proliferation in lung tissue and the most lethal of all cancers, being the number one cause of cancer death in the world.

In a study conducted at Seoul National University and led by Dr. Myung-Haing Cho, lung cancer mice were given  a four week diet of either .5 or 1.0 percent phosphate, simulating modern human diets.  When the two levels of dietary phosphates were analyzed, the diet higher in phosphates caused an increase in the size and growth rate of the tumors.

While phosphate is an essential nutrient to living organisms, in high doses it may alter the signaling pathways by which normal cell growth is maintained.  A small alteration in these signaling pathways can cause a normal cell to become malignant.

Rapidly increasing use of phosphates in an increasing number of processed foods may be leading to an increased consumption by as much as 1000mg per day since the 1990s, a three-fold increase.

Due to some smokers higher propensity for developing lung cancer, further studies may be done to correlate the intake of phosphates in these individuals.

The study appeared in the first January issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.  It concludes that careful regulation of dietary inorganic phosphate may be critical for lung cancer prevention as well as treatment.