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Fri, Oct

Cancer

An experimental treatment for cancer patients uses a vaccine made from a patient’s own tumor. CNN's Sanjay Gupta reports.

- the approach that we take is that we actually do the surgery, we take the tumor out, and then we make the vaccine directly from that individual patient tumor, and then give that vaccine back to the patient.
- the vaccine triggers the body's immune system to attack multiple spots on the tumor cells.

17 networks, 100 celebrities, and 12 million cancer survivers came out for an event "Stand Up to Cancer 2010" http://www.standup2cancer.org

Some names Brian Williams NBC, Katie Couric CBS, Diane Sawyer ABC, Gwyneth Paltrow, Renee Zellweger, Adam Sandler, Denzel Washington, Neil Diamond, kareem abdul jabbar, Apolo Ohno, Bill Hader SNL, Christina Applegate, and Michael Douglas

(Reuters Health) - Patients with advanced head and neck cancer survived just as well on experimental drugs as they did on FDA-approved standard therapies in a new study.

- The findings suggest that doctors should consider referring their terminally ill patients to such trials.
- Patients survived an average of 12 weeks on FDA-approved treatments and 10.7 weeks on experimental drugs.
- 4 patients had some improvement in their cancer in response to the experimental drugs and 34 of them had no changes -- 1 patient died from a cause related to the treatment.

"There are worries about whether people who are vulnerable in this way are able to give informed consent" -- "you have to be very careful," -- "They've exhausted all the (treatments) that are available and standard," -- "there really isn't any better option for them. I think this is genuinely what many people want to do."

University of Minnesota researchers found that drugs used to treat one deadly disease might actually help to fight off another.

- Gemcitabine and Decitabine used to treat cancer, when combined used to treat HIV.
- force the virus to mutate at a much higher rate and kill its self off.
- the drugs are already approved by FDA, optimistic about discovery, hope to apply in a therapy.

Earlier research in animals had suggested that disturbances in the light-dark cycle could knock certain chemicals in the body, melatonin and estrogen off balance, and as a result increase cancer risk.
- The WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer had concluded that night-shift work was a probable cause of cancer.
- U.K. Health and Safety Executive issued a report estimating that almost 2,000 British women get breast cancer every year due to shift work.
- A Chinese study however showed no sign of a connection between night-shift work and breast cancer.

- Garlic contains heart-protecting compounds.
- Garlic contains more than 70 active phytochemicals, including allicin, which studies show may decrease high blood pressure by as much as 30 points.
- High consumption of garlic lowered rates of ovarian, colorectal, and other cancers, according to a research review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

- The researchers found that isolation and stress result in a 3.3-fold increase in the risk of developing cancer among rats with naturally occurring mammary tumors.
- The researchers further found that rats living in isolation experienced a 135 percent increase in the number of tumors and a more than 8,000 percent increase in their size.
- The research establishes, for the first time, that isolation and stress could be a factor in human breast cancer risk

Cancer    Tips to Boost Immune System

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