Molecular Marker Could Help Spot Pancreatic Cancer Early

Could QALYs help in assessing high-priced cancer treatments?

For doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in late 2012, it was an easy call. The drug Zaltrap, new on the market (Bach 2012) for treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, promised to provide an overall survival benefit of 1.4 months compared with a standard chemotherapy regimen. But so did Avastin (bevacizumab) — and the two drugs had similar mechanisms of action, pre...

Could the surgeon trust to radiotherapy help in rectal cancer?

When the surgeon analyzes the ongoing literature on the evidence of the neoadjuvant approaches to rectal cancer finds a true paradox: from one side they seem to offer a relative less relevant contribute through the time, in fact whereas in the Swedish trial preoperative radiation yielded a significant improvement of local control and survival, after the introduction of TME the contribution of p...

An endocrine marker for pancreatic cancer.

Possibly the tendency was to replace one liquid laxative with another in the belief that liquid preparations are more effective than tablets or fibre products. Thus although the use of senna tablets increased, the rise in the use of senna syrup was much greater, partly because it was given by nursing staff. Increased prescribing of lactulose may have been due to extensive promotion, the wish to...

Could interferon help treat Ebola?

In vivo diagnosis of murine pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia and early-stage pancreatic cancer by molecular imaging.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a fatal disease with poor patient outcome often resulting from late diagnosis in advanced stages. To date methods to diagnose early-stage PDAC are limited and in vivo detection of pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN), a preinvasive precursor of PDAC, is impossible. Using a cathepsin-activatable near-infrared probe in combination with flexible c...