News digest – Angelina Jolie, clinical trial transparency, testicular cancer and more

The latest cancer news

The latest cancer news

  • We spotted several excellent comment pieces in response to Ms Jolie’s news. She’d “done something extraordinary”, according to Hadley Freeman in the Guardian, a sentiment broadly echoed by Lisa Markwell in the Independent, who has had breast cancer herself.
  • The Guardian’s data blog took a look at the bigger picture of breast cancer worldwide.
  • We also published this moving article about a personal experience of being told you have the BRCA1 gene.

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Angelina Jolie, inherited breast cancer and the BRCA1 gene

Angelina Jolie

Actress Angelina Jolie has had surgery to prevent breast cancer

The news today is full of reaction to US actress Angelina Jolie’s decision to have surgery to reduce her chances of breast cancer.

She made this difficult decision because, having lost her mother to ovarian cancer, she discovered she carries a faulty copy of the BRCA1 gene – which put her at very high risk of getting both forms of the disease.

If you haven’t read her brave and thoughtful piece in the New York Times, it’s worth doing so.

But in the light of the considerable interest, and the fact that many people will undoubtedly have questions, we wanted to pull together a few quick thoughts and facts on the topic of inherited breast cancer generally, and the BRCA1 gene specifically.

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News digest – tobacco disappointment, genetic ‘fine tuners’, vaccine cost drop, and more

The latest cancer news

The latest cancer news

  • Wednesday was a sad day for public health. The worrying rumours we’d heard last week – that the government had scrapped plans to introduce plain, standardised tobacco packaging in the Queen’s speech – turned out to be true. This BBC article has more info. We wrote about why this is a blow in the fight against cancer.
  • Our scientists found that genetic ‘fine tuners’ known as microRNAs control the body’s own attack against breast cancer. Read more in our press release
  • US scientists uncovered why breast cancer patients with dense breasts are often more likely to develop aggressive tumours that spread. This NewsWise article has more info.
  • Also across the pond, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine identified a group of proteins that are faulty in about one-fifth of all human cancers. Science Daily covered the story.
  • Pharmaceutical companies agreed a substantial discount on the cost of cervical cancer vaccines for the developing world. The New York Times and the Guardian have more detail.

And finally

  • We were dismayed this week by several headlines like this: “Sun’s blood pressure benefits may outdo cancer risks”. The study in question only looked at the blood pressure of 24 volunteers who sat beneath tanning lamps. It didn’t directly look at skin cancer risk and also hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet. Overexposure to UV radiation from the sun or sunbeds is the main cause of skin cancer, so we advise everyone to enjoy the sun safely.

A sad day for public health – standard packs and the path ahead

Join our Plain Packaging Campaign

The 2010 film The King’s Speech was a national triumph. So at Cancer Research UK we’re dismayed to have to report that we’re not exactly rolling out the red carpet for yesterday’s Queen’s Speech.

In fact, quite the opposite.

The Queen’s Speech – which outlined the Government’s focus for the next year – has, shockingly, left plans to put tobacco products in plain, standardised packaging, on the cutting room floor.

The government has thus failed to deliver on a policy that would help protect children from a product that has no safe level of consumption.

So today, nine months since its consultation closed in August 2012, we’re left hanging, still waiting for the government to make a clear statement of its intentions.

In that time more than 150,000 children have started smoking – the beginning of an addiction that kills half its long-term users.

In light of this disappointing decision, we wanted to outline, clearly and simply, which organisations support this measure. Also we thought it worth exposing the vested interests of its opponents. This is all worth knowing, because this fight isn’t over; this is not “The End”.

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News digest – breast cancer rates, worrying tobacco rumours, genetic maps and more

man reading newspaper

It’s time for our round-up of the week’s headlines

  • In other breast cancer news, tamoxifen and similar oestrogen-blocking drugs have been found to reduce breast cancer rates by more than a third in women at high risk. Our press release and blog both have more detail. We also liked this Telegraph piece about tamoxifen.
  • Several papers (including the Guardian) covered research about a possible link between cosmetic breast implants and a greater chance of dying from breast cancer. The research does not suggest implants cause cancer, but they may cause a delay in diagnosis. As this excellent NHS Choices analysis says, larger studies are needed to understand this link.

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New tricks for old drugs – blocking oestrogen to prevent breast cancer

Tamoxifen tablets

Can drugs like tamoxifen be used to prevent breast cancer?

Tamoxifen is one of the mainstays of breast cancer treatment. Since the early 1980s, it’s been given to women who’ve had breast cancer to try to stop the disease returning.

As a result, it’s saved the lives of millions around the world, and some regard it as the most important cancer drug ever developed.

But today this old drug returns to the spotlight, with a new study showing that tamoxifen and other oestrogen- blocking medicines can reduce the chances of healthy women developing breast cancer.

We’ve blogged before about the discovery of tamoxifen, and Cancer Research UK’s role in its development.

But until now it’s not been clear whether tamoxifen and related drugs might have benefits for healthy women. Today’s finding, by an international team led by Cancer Research UK-funded researchers, provides the best evidence yet that these drugs could be used to help prevent breast cancer in women at average and above-average risk of the disease.

This is hugely significant. If benefits are shown to outweigh the risks, offering women at high risk of breast cancer a drug to lower their risk, could potentially prevent many thousands of breast cancer cases in the UK alone.

Let’s look at their findings, and at what happens next.

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News digest – radioactive bacteria, plain tobacco packs, gene patenting and more

The latest cancer news

Catch up on the latest cancer news

  • For those who don’t know why we want the Government to legislate for plain standardised tobacco packaging, read this excellent Lancet Oncology article.
  • We want to give children one less reason to start smoking but interestingly, our research this week showed that standardising cigarette packs also makes them less appealing to existing smokers (press release).
  • Some Welsh cancer patients aren’t starting their treatment within government target times. The BBC has more detail.
  • The Telegraph published an interesting article about using computers to choose cancer treatments. It’s not the stuff of science fiction, as doctors already use computer programmes to help identify the most suitable treatments for their patients.
  • In another sci-fi-like story, US scientists have used radioactive bacteria to treat mice with pancreatic cancer. It’s intriguing work but as this Nature article says, there are several crucial questions that need answering before this research could be harnessed for humans.
  • A small but interesting study we funded showed that women are often surprised that breast screening can lead to ‘overdiagnosis’ of cancer, but would rather go for screening than take the risk of missing a cancer that could be treated. Here’s our press release.
  • The ‘breast cancer’ drug, Herceptin, could be effective in around two per cent of lung cancers, according to preliminary research reported here.
  • An innovative drug development fund, provided in part by our commercial company Cancer Research Technology, backed its first major project this week. Here’s our press release, and we wrote in more detail about the science behind the promising compounds being developed – ‘MPS1 inhibitors’.
  • According to a new analysis, rising cancer rates are threatening to ‘overwhelm’ Latin American countries. The BBC has this take.
  • The Guardian wrote a fascinating piece about gene patenting and what they describe as “the last-ditch battle over who owns the rights to our DNA”.
  • And the New York Times had a great article about how whole genome DNA sequencing will one day become the norm across health care, and the current “arms race” between US institutions to invest in DNA sequencing technologies.

And finally

  • We recently described how a new blood test could track tumours as they grow and evolve in the body. Picking up this theme, our blogger Dr Kat Arney has looked into this exciting new area in more depth in an Opinion piece for Al Jazeera English.