Source: http://pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/…

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

Dr. Julia Ljubimova found something disturbing when she probed the brains of rats exposed to air pollution: The dirty air appeared to trigger changes indicating the earliest stage of brain tumors.

Ljubimova, an oncologist and researcher at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, stressed that she is not ready to say air pollution is a cause of brain cancer.

“I don’t want to scare anyone, because this is preliminary data,” she said. “But we found something very important.”

Her work suggests that fine particles like those found in diesel soot can switch on the tumor genes that many people inherit, jump-starting the disease process that results in brain tumors.

Hundreds of studies have linked air pollution to early deaths, heart attacks, reduced lung function, lung cancer and various other health problems. Ljubimova is among a handful of scientists who are focused on finding out what air pollution does to people’s brains.

The first results from the fledging research field are creating concern.

In addition to Ljubimova’s work:

A University of Southern California epidemiologist reported to air pollution regulators last year that children living in Southern California’s more polluted areas — including the Inland area — had a higher risk of developing brain tumors.

A UC Irvine toxicologist reported last month at a Society of Toxicology meeting in Seattle that mice exposed to air pollution near the Coliseum sports stadium in central Los Angeles had brain inflammation and cell injuries associated with the first stages of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Last year, Danish researchers monitored brain waves of people exposed to diesel exhaust and found that the pollution increased brain-wave activity, suggesting pollution may alter brain function. Their research was published last month in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology.

The findings so far don’t prove that air pollution causes brain disease, “but it is intriguing and worrisome,” Roberta McKean-Cowdin said. She is the USC epidemiologist who analyzed health data to find an apparent correlation between pollution and brain tumors in children from newborns to 5 years of age.

Dr. Keith Black, who is chairman of the Cedars-Sinai neurosurgery department and oversees Ljubimova’s project, hopes the work will lead to discoveries that will allow doctors to prevent or treat the disease. The research also could identify specific particles in diesel exhaust or other pollution that cause cancer, allowing development of engines that don’t emit those particles.

Brain cancer, which can destroy the mind and body simultaneously, killed an estimated 12,700 people in the United States last year.

Black, who has performed more than 7,000 brain cancer surgeries, had seen first-hand the devastation the disease inflicts on victims and their loved ones. It motivated him to pursue research.

“It is a lot easier to prevent the formation of cancer than it is to treat cancer,” he said.

Research Takes Root

The idea for air pollution research at Cedars-Sinai came out of a 2002 Christmas party conversation between Black and William Burke, a 14-year member of the governing board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates polluters in Orange County and most populated areas of San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles counties.

They talked about the rise in brain cancer cases among children and how, as studies had shown, firefighters exposed to diesel exhaust in their fire stations were more likely to develop brain cancer than people in other occupations, Black recalled.

At the time, research had shown that the microscopic particles of pollution could work their way through blood vessel walls and enter the brain, an organ normally protected from such invasions.

Burke took the conversation seriously.

“That was something we needed to we know more about right away,” he said.

In 2003, Burke persuaded his colleagues to form the Brain and Lung Tumor and Air Pollution Foundation to fund research. Using money the South Coast district collects through fines on polluters, the foundation so far has provided about $2.1 million to molecular biology work at Cedars-Sinai and $178,000 to USC to examine brain cancer incidence among people living polluted areas, including the Inland region.

Burke said he plans to ask the board this year to dedicate 5 to 10 percent of future fine revenues to such research. The amounts vary, but the air district expects to collect about $4.1 million in fines this fiscal year.

Genes and Pollution

Ljubimova, a native of Azerbaijan and daughter of a Soviet military doctor, studied medicine in Kiev, Ukraine. She treated cancer patients in Moscow, then took a research position at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1990. She joined Cedars-Sinai three years later and is now molecular oncology director for the hospital’s Department of Neurosurgery.

She has probed the biochemistry of breast and liver cancer in a quest for better treatments and cures. She now focuses on the genetic mechanisms involved in brain and breast tumors.

Thousands of genes within the DNA of a cell carry the instructions to build every component of an organism’s life. A gene contains blueprints to build the proteins, for example, that allow a red blood cell to carry oxygen and distribute it through the body. Other genes determine eye and hair color, height and whether a person will tend to be fat or thin.

Some genes contain instructions to grow cells that compose deadly tumors. If such genes become active, cancer forms.

To test how fine particles affect the brain, Ljubimova divided about 180 laboratory rats into groups and exposed them to three sizes of pollution particles for periods ranging from two weeks to 10 months. The rats were subjected to air many times more polluted than the air Southern Californians breathe.

After each exposure period, the rats were euthanized and their brain tissue examined for gene activity.

In the pollution-exposed rats, the genes associated with brain tumors were more active than in the rats that breathed purified air. The same genes are found in human tumor samples collected by the medical center.

The Cedars-Sinai research also found that the longer the rats breathed polluted air, the more active the cancer genes.

The pollution “might trigger or turn on the process or processes for several pathways that transform normal cells into malignant cells,” Ljubimova said.

Her findings will be presented at an international conference in June. The medical center plans to seek grants to continue her investigation, with longer pollution exposures and further analysis to learn why tumor genes are activated.

“We have to do more molecular biology to learn the mechanism,” she said.

Message in the Numbers

Instead of studying rats, USC’s McKean-Cowdin is looking for clues in illnesses that already have happened. She examined records from 496 brain cancer cases among Southern California infants and children between 1991 and 2002.

Her preliminary finding: People living in areas with higher levels of fine-particle pollution have a higher risk for brain cancer. That holds true in the Inland region, she said.

Northwest Riverside County and southwest San Bernardino County regularly exceed federal and state health standards for fine-particle pollution.

McKean-Cowdin said her research is undergoing further analysis and is expected to be published this year in a scientific journal. Her next step, if she can find funding, will to be examine potential links between air pollution and children as old as 19.

Cancer is caused by numerous factors, including genetics and exposure to toxic substances in the environment. Black said.

“It may be air pollution is one of those components,” he said.

Reach David Danelski at 951-368-9471 or

Source: http://usc.edu/uscnews/stories/15032.html

Fasting for two days protects healthy cells against chemotherapy, according to a study appearing online the week of Mar. 31 in PNAS Early Edition.

Mice given a high dose of chemotherapy after fasting continued to thrive. The same dose killed half the normally fed mice and caused lasting weight and energy loss in the survivors.

The chemotherapy worked as intended on cancer, extending the lifespan of mice injected with aggressive human tumors, reported a group led by Valter Longo of the University of Southern California.

Test tube experiments with human cells confirmed the differential resistance of normal and cancer cells to chemotherapy after a short period of starvation.

Making chemotherapy more selective has been a top cancer research goal for decades. Oncologists could control cancers much better, and even cure some, if chemotherapy were not so toxic to the rest of the body.

Experts described the study as one of a kind.

“This is a very important paper. It defines a novel concept in cancer biology,” said cancer researcher Pinchas Cohen, professor and chief of pediatric endocrinology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“In theory, it opens up new treatment approaches that will allow higher doses of chemotherapy. It’s a direction that’s worth pursuing in clinical trials in humans.”

Felipe Sierra, director of the Biology of Aging Program at the National Institute on Aging, said: “This is not just one more anti-cancer treatment that attacks the cancer cells. To me, that’s an important conceptual difference.”

Sierra was referring to decades of efforts by thousands of researchers working on “targeted delivery” of drugs to cancer cells. Study leader Longo focused instead on protecting all the other cells.

Sierra added that progress in cancer care has made patients more resilient and able to tolerate fasting, should clinical trials confirm its usefulness.

“We have passed the stage where patients arrive at the clinic in an emaciated state. Not eating for two days is not the end of the world,” Sierra said.

“This could have applicability in maybe a majority of patients,” said David Quinn, a practicing oncologist and medical director of USC Norris Hospital and Clinics. He predicted that many oncology groups would be eager to test the Longo group’s findings, and advised patients to look for a clinical trial near home.

Longo, an anti-aging researcher who holds joint appointments in gerontology and biological sciences at USC, said that the idea of protecting healthy cells from chemotherapy may have seemed impractical to cancer researchers, because the body has many different cells that respond differently to many drugs.

“It was almost like an idea that was not even worth pursuing. In fact it had to come from the anti-aging field, because that’s what we focus on: protecting all cells at once,” Longo said.

“What really was missing was a perspective of someone from the aging field to give this field a boost,” UCLA’s Cohen said.

The idea for the study came from the Longo group’s previous research on aging in cellular systems, primarily lowly baker’s yeast.

About five years ago, Longo was thinking about the genetic pathways involved both in the starvation response and in mammalian tumors.

When the pathways are silenced, starved cells go into what Longo calls a maintenance mode characterized by extreme resistance to stresses. In essence the cells are waiting out the lean period, much like hibernating animals.

But tumors by definition disobey orders to stop growing because the same genetic pathways are stuck in an “on” mode.

That could mean, Longo realized, that the starvation response might differentiate normal and cancer cells by their stress resistance, and that healthy cells might withstand much more chemotherapy than cancer cells.

The shield for healthy cells does not need to be perfect, Longo said. What matters is the difference in stress resistance between healthy and cancerous cells.

During the study, conducted both at USC and in the laboratory of Lizzia Raffaghello at Gaslini Children’s Hospital in Genoa, Italy, the researchers found that current chemotherapy drugs kill as many healthy mammalian cells as cancer cells.

“(But) we reached a two to five-fold difference between normal and cancer cells, including human cells in culture. More importantly, we consistently showed that mice were highly protected while cancer cells remained sensitive,” Longo said.

If healthy human cells were just twice as resistant as cancer cells, oncologists could increase the dose or frequency of chemotherapy.

“We were able to reach a 1,000-fold differential resistance using a tumor model in baker’s yeast. If we get to just a 10-20 fold differential toxicity with human metastatic cancers, all of a sudden it’s a completely different game against cancer,” Longo said.

“Now we need to spend a lot of time talking to clinical oncologists to decide how to best proceed in the human studies.”

Edith Gralla, a research professor of chemistry at UCLA, said: “It is the sort of opposite of the magic bullet. It’s the magic shield.”

###
Funding from the study came from NIA (part of the National Institutes on Health), the USC Norris Cancer Center and the Associazione Italiana per la Lotta al Neuroblastoma.

USC graduate student Changhan Lee and Gaslini’s Raffaghello performed key experiments. The other authors were Fernando Safdie, Min Wei and Federica Madia of USC, and Giovanna Bianchi of Gaslini.

Longo has been studying aging at the cellular level for 15 years, and has published in the nation’s leading scientific journals. He is the Albert L. and Madelyne G. Hanson Family Trust Associate Professor in the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology with joint appointments as associate professor of biological sciences in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and in the Norris Cancer Center.

FOR CLINICIANS AND PATIENTS

Fasting before chemotherapy has unknown risks and benefits for humans, Longo cautioned. Only clinical trials can establish the effectiveness and safety of fasting before chemotherapy.

“Don’t try and do this at home. We need to do the studies,” said Quinn, the USC Norris oncologist.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/…

Brain expert warns of huge rise in tumours and calls on industry to take immediate steps to reduce radiation

By Geoffrey Lean
Sunday, 30 March 2008

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take “immediate steps” to reduce exposure to their radiation.

The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.

It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.

Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that “there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours”. He believes this will be “definitively proven” in the next decade.

Noting that malignant brain tumours represent “a life-ending diagnosis”, he adds: “We are currently experiencing a reactively unchecked and dangerous situation.” He fears that “unless the industry and governments take immediate and decisive steps”, the incidence of malignant brain tumours and associated death rate will be observed to rise globally within a decade from now, by which time it may be far too late to intervene medically.

“It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking,” says Professor Khurana, who told the IoS his assessment is partly based on the fact that three billion people now use the phones worldwide, three times as many as smoke. Smoking kills some five million worldwide each year, and exposure to asbestos is responsible for as many deaths in Britain as road accidents.

Late last week, the Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana’s study as “a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual”. It believes he “does not present a balanced analysis” of the published science, and “reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews”.

Source: http://kolnkgin.com/home/headlines/17080656.html

Lincoln, Neb.
Posted: 6:15 AM Mar 28, 2008
Last Updated: 1:18 PM Mar 28, 2008
Reporter: 10/11 News
Email Address:

At 1:47 Friday morning, Jayci Yaeger died.

“I think Jayci was hanging on for her daddy . She just let go after she knew daddy was here to be with her. We’re glad that she got to be with him one last time,” said Ed Yaeger, Jayci’s uncle.

Jayci Yaeger lost her battle with brain cancer just one day after a surprise visit with her father.

For the last two weeks, 10/11 news has been following the story of 10-year-old Jayci Yaeger. Jayci has been fighting for her life against terminal brain cancer — a fight her family said she was finally able to give up after her wish to see her father one last time was granted.

Jayci’s father Jason is serving time in a South Dakota prison, but he was escorted on Wednesday for a brief visit with Jayci.

Jayci was a brave little girl. She fought cancer just long enough to see her dad one last time — that was her dying wish. But at 1:47 Friday morning, Jayci lost her battle roughly 36 hours after her father saw her one last time.

Wednesday, prison officials finally allowed Jason to travel with guards from Yankton, South Dakota to see Jayci one final time, but the visit was cut short after an Omaha TV station showed up at her hospice.

Jason was taken back to Yankton. At 2 a.m., Jason’s brother Ed called and told him that Jayci had passed away with her mother Vonda and grandmother Sherry by her side.

“Her breathing became different than normal. The nurse noticed and woke Sherry and Vonda up and told them that they needed to be with Jayci. Then just moments later, she passed away,” Ed Yaeger said.

“We’re happy that it was peaceful and that she is now no longer in pain, and her suffering is over,” he said. “We really wish Jason could have been there by her side to be with her in her last moments, but we’re going to continue to fight and have Jason there for the funeral.”

Source: http://blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/…

Jérôme Villeneuve; Hugo Galarneau; Marie-Josée Beaudet; Pierrot Tremblay; Ariel Chernomoretz*; Luc Vallières

Department of Oncology and Molecular Endocrinology, Laval University Hospital Research Center, Québec City, Québec, Canada.

* Current address: Departamento de Fisica, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pabellon 1 Ciudad Universitaria, 1428, Buenos Aires, Argentina

All patients with glioblastoma, the most aggressive and common form of brain cancer, develop cerebral edema. This complication is routinely treated with dexamethasone, a steroidal anti-inflammatory drug whose effects on brain tumors are not fully understood.

Here we show that dexamethasone can reduce glioma growth in mice, even though it depletes infiltrating T cells with potential antitumor activity. More precisely, T cells with helper or cytotoxic function were sensitive to dexamethasone, but not those that were negative for the CD4 and CD8 molecules, including gammadelta and natural killer (NK) T cells.

The antineoplastic effect of dexamethasone was indirect, as it did not meaningfully affect the growth and gene expression profile of glioma cells in vitro. In contrast, hundreds of dexamethasone-modulated genes, notably angiopoietin 2 (Angpt2), were identified in cultured cerebral endothelial cells by microarray analysis.

The ability of dexamethasone to attenuate Angpt2 expression was confirmed in vitro and in vivo. Selective neutralization of Angpt2 using a peptide-Fc fusion protein reduced glioma growth and vascular enlargement to a greater extent than dexamethasone, without affecting T cell infiltration.

In conclusion, this study suggests a mechanism by which dexamethasone can slow glioma growth, providing a new therapeutic target for malignant brain tumors.

Please join us for
Brain Tumor Action Week 2008
May 4 - May 10, 2008
Washington, D.C.

Meet new friends!
Advocate for increased research funding!
Act now, make a difference!
Register by April 15, 2008

Source: http://venturacountystar.com/news/2008/mar/25/…
Source: http://myfoxla.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail…

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

By Kim Lamb Gregory
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Most young women Melissa McClelland’s age are worried about looking their best — finding just the right dress, makeup, hairstyle and jewelry.

But the 22-year-old Ventura College student doesn’t have the luxury of that kind of angst. Instead, Melissa worries about the brain cancer that recurred five months ago. She wonders if the radiation treatment she had last week will work. On top of that, she has to cope with being legally blind and the fatty tumor on her upper hip that prevents her from wearing stylish clothes.

“When I want to buy tighter clothes that look better, I can’t,” said McClelland, who lives with her parents in Oxnard. “I have to buy baggy clothes that are not that appealing.”

McClelland’s dad, Jerry McClelland, couldn’t give his daughter a carefree childhood, teen or college years. He couldn’t cure the cancer or give Melissa her sight back. But there was one thing that he decided he could do.

In late February, Jerry McClelland submitted his daughter’s name to a segment on KTTV Fox 11’s “Good Day L.A.” morning show called “Knock Knock Makeover.” The segment, which has been a part of the Los Angeles morning show since September, involves surprising Southern California residents with a knock on the door, and a one-hour hair and makeup session with Beverly Hills stylist to the stars Jose Eber and his salon makeup team.

Viewers watch “Knock Knock” host Lisa Breckenridge, accompanied by Eber and a makeup artist, knock on the door and surprise the contestant during “Good Morning L.A.” Viewers then get to check in an hour later to see the results.

“I wanted her to feel good about herself on the outside as well as on the inside,” McClelland said when asked why he nominated his daughter for a makeover.

No sooner had he read Jerry’s letter than “Knock Knock” producer Steve Holzer picked up the phone.

“I opened Jerry McClelland’s letter, read it and I picked up the phone immediately because it was so touching,” said Holzer, who fields about 10 nominations a week.

The letter reads, in part: “At the age of 8 years old, this now 22-year-old girl was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. At the age of 10, Melissa was diagnosed with scoliosis, which required a 10-hour surgery where two rods were placed in her back. Because of the brain tumor, Melissa is legally blind.

“This young girl has gone through so much that this makeover would be such a pick-me-up for her. This special girl is my daughter Melissa.”

Not only was the letter moving, Holzer said, but it marked a first for the show.

“We get lots of letters from mothers nominating daughters, daughters nominating mothers and friends nominating friends, but this was the first time that I could remember that we had a father nominating a daughter,” Holzer said.

McClelland, 50, is a Los Angeles County firefighter. Fighting fires was his forte, not writing letters, so he really didn’t expect to be contacted. When he got the call from Holzer, he and his wife, Debbie, 48, were overwhelmed.

The segment airs every Monday morning, so the team would show up at their door at 9 a.m. Feb. 25. Jerry, Debbie and Melissa’s 23-year-old brother, Jason, would have to keep it a secret for about a week and make sure that Melissa was home when the camera crew arrived.

Jerry was thrilled that he could finally offer his daughter a happy surprise after years of unpleasant shocks.

The first shock occurred when Melissa was 8. It started with what appeared to be a vision problem.

“When she read a book, she would bring it closer and closer to her face,” Jerry said.

Jerry and Debbie took her to a doctor, who gave her eye exercises. When a year of the exercises failed to improve her vision, her parents took Melissa to an ophthalmologist; he, in turn, sent her to the Jules Stein Eye Institute in Los Angeles.

There, Melissa underwent a magnetic resonance imaging scan, or MRI. The McClellands were told that the results would be available in a week.

“That very same day, we got home and the phone machine is blinking,” Jerry said.

The message from the institute instructed the McClellands to bring Melissa back as soon as possible for more tests. Jerry and Debbie were scared.

They had reason to be. Brain scans in the days that followed revealed a malignant tumor the size of a quarter right where the optic nerves crossed. Melissa’s parents drove home in shock.

“It didn’t really hit me until we got home,” Jerry said. “It was a denial thing. How can it happen to someone so young?”

Melissa underwent surgery that removed 25 percent of the tumor. Then her parents drove Melissa to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles once a week for a year for chemotherapy sessions that lasted six or seven hours every time. She was now blind in her left eye, and the vision in her right eye was impaired.

Melissa struggled to grasp what was happening to her. At one point during her ordeal, her parents took her to a psychologist to try to find out why she kept falling asleep in school; there seemed to be no medical reason for her sleepiness.

With the help of the psychologist, Jerry and Debbie learned that, after her parents read her a bedtime story and turned out the lights, Melissa would force herself to stay awake all night. She knew that cancer killed people and she didn’t want to die.

“I was afraid to go to sleep and not wake up in the morning,” Melissa remembered.

More health challenges

Finally, there was good news. It appeared as though the chemotherapy had worked on Melissa’s brain cancer, which is called neurofibromatosis.

At the age of 10, Melissa was doing well. It seemed as if the crisis had abated. It wasn’t until she began building her strength up at an Oxnard gym that she noticed another problem. Her back was not bending properly.

A trip to a specialist yielded more bad news. She had scoliosis and would be required to wear a back brace for two years.

When the brace failed to correct her curvature of the spine, Melissa had to undergo a 10-hour surgical procedure in which two rods were placed in her back. After she finally recovered from the surgery, she resumed her school schedule, but had to use a white cane that made her feel different from the other kids.

She handled her disability by getting up in front of the class at the beginning of each school year and explaining who she was and why she would need special visual aids.

“I felt really proud of her,” Jerry said.

Most of the kids were curious but understanding, although there were some who picked on Melissa.

“Kids would come up to my face and hold up their fingers and say, How many fingers am I holding up?’” Melissa said. “And they would take my cane and run off with it.”

Beads became project

Melissa knows how hard it is to be a student with disabilities, so she often serves as an advocate for other visually impaired high school students. She will show up at parent-teacher meetings and help families navigate the difficulties of being a student with disabilities in a mainstream class.

When she lost her beloved grandmother to breast cancer a few years ago, Melissa wanted to create a legacy.

She and her grandmother used to make beaded angel ornaments together, so Melissa began making bead necklaces and bracelets for cancer survivors.

“No matter if I know them or not, I give them a bracelet,” Melissa said.

She also entered Ventura College with a major in general studies and plans to become a pediatric massage therapist. That’s because massage made her feel so much better when she was in pain, she said.

Again, her life appeared to be going smoothly until a regular MRI about a year ago showed a spot on her brain in a different area. After 14 years in remission, it was a blow.

“I thought, here we go again,” Melissa said. “I had mixed emotions. I’m like, OK, another spot. It’s hard to think positive.”

Doctors decided that the spot on Melissa’s brain needed to be treated, so almost two weeks ago, she underwent radiation therapy with a new technology called the gamma knife. According to Debbie, it may take as much as a year for doctors to know whether the treatment was effective.

Once again feeling powerless to help his daughter, Jerry happened to see the “Knock Knock” segment and thought that it was the perfect way to help cheer up his daughter.

“He’s just a big softie,” Debbie said when asked her reaction to Jerry’s gift to his daughter.

Knock knock

On the morning of Feb. 25, Melissa couldn’t figure out why her parents were dragging their feet getting ready. She was told she had to go and get some blood work done, but her parents were acting strangely.

“Mom’s going up and down the stairs. Dad’s sitting at the computer,” Melissa remembered.

Just then, there was a knock at the door. With her impaired vision, she could make out a group of people but couldn’t figure out what they wanted.

“My first thought was, Who are you and what are you selling?’” Melissa said.

Breckenridge explained who they were and began reading Jerry’s letter.

“I started to cry when they read the letter my dad wrote,” Melissa said. “Lisa kept asking, Are you all right? Are you all right?’”

Melissa remained speechless as the entourage whisked her into the kitchen and Eber went to work. He asked Melissa what kind of hairstyle she would like.

She wasn’t sure, so Eber asked if she liked Breckenridge’s cut. She said she did.

“The first thing they did was take my ponytail and go snip!’” Melissa said.

Debbie ran upstairs to get Melissa one of her nicer shirts while Eber curled and sprayed and fluffed and cut. The makeup artist applied foundation, then color to her eyes, lips and cheeks.

Less than an hour later, they had Melissa stand with her back to the camera as “Good Day L.A.” came back to the live shot in Melissa’s kitchen. They had her turn around for the audience, then held a magnifying mirror up so she could see.

Melissa began to cry again as she hugged Eber, Breckenridge, Debbie and Jerry.

“I love it,” she said. “Thank you guys. All of you. My family, too. Love you.”

Asked a few days later how she felt about a dad who would go to the trouble of getting her a live makeover, she grinned and said, “Gotta keep him.”

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) March 24, 2008 — University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Neuro-Oncology Program to host 8th Annual Brain Tumor Conference, April 18th & 19th, 2008.

This years conference aims to connect brain cancer patients, survivors and family members with leading experts in the fields of Neuro-Oncology, Neurosurgery, Neurology, Radiation Oncology, Nutrition, Genetics, Psychiatry, Psychology, Radiology, Neuropathology and Medical Informatics.

The free two day conference will offer participants the opportunity to hear leading healthcare professionals speak about the latest treatments for brain tumors, how brain tumors work and issues related to quality of life, nutrition and mental health. Through this conference, the Neuro-Oncology Programs will promote the sharing of information and experiences between brain tumor survivors, their families, friends and health care professionals.

The meeting will be held April 18th & 19th, 2008 on the UCLA campus at Bradley International Hall.

The conference is free and pre-registration is required. Early registration is encouraged as conference space and materials are limited. Conference Participants may register securely online and view updated conference schedule and events by visiting http://neurooncology.ucla.edu

Professionals scheduled to speak include:

• Timothy Cloughesy, M.D. Director of UCLA Neuro-Oncology Program
• Richard Green, M.D. Director of Kaiser Permanente (Los Angeles) Neuro-Oncology
• Antonio DeSalles , M.D. UCLA Neuro-Surgery
• Linda Liau, M.D., UCLA Neuro-Surgery
• Albert Lai, M.D., Ph.D UCLA Neuro-Oncology Program
• Leia Nghiemphu, M.D. UCLA Neuro-Oncology Program
• Pablo Villablanca M.D UCLA Department of Radiological Science
• Pam Hoff, LCSW UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
• Tom Kaleita, Ph.D. UCLA Psychiatry
• Carolyn Katzin, MS, CNS
• Paul Mischel, M.D. UCLA Pathology & Laboratory Medicine
• Sheila Stinnett UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
• Susan Bookheimer M.D., Professor - UCLA Psych & Biobehavioral Science
• Joanna Morales, Esq., Director - Cancer Legal Resource Center
• MSN NP - Nurse Practioner - UCLA Neuro-Oncology Program
• David Wallenstein M.D., Asst Professor - UCLA Family Medicine
• Malcolm Schultz, The Wellness Community of West Los Angeles
• Carrie Graham MSN NP - UCLA Neuro-Oncology Clinical Trials
• Joanna Morales, Esq.

Visit http://neurooncology.ucla.edu for updated conference schedule, events and online registration.

Event to be held at:

UCLA Campus at Bradley International Hall
417 Charles E. Young Dr. West
Los Angeles CA 90095
(Located near the corner of Gayley Avenue & Strathmore Drive.)
Click here for a map

Parking is available at lot 8 for $8. For more information, inquire at the parking kiosk on Westwood Plaza (south of Strathmore Drive).

Source: http://technologyreview.com/Biotech/20462/
MRI scans could be used to determine which drug will work best against a brain tumor.

By Katherine Bourzac

When patients are diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most common form of brain cancer, they often have only months to live. Even though researchers’ knowledge about this tumor’s biology and genomics has expanded in recent years, no significant treatment strategies have been developed during the past 25 years. Now there is preliminary but strong evidence that the appearance of these tumors in magnetic resonance images (MRIs) can be used to predict their genomic profiles. Researchers hope that MRI will soon be used for dividing glioblastomas into genomic subtypes, in turn allowing doctors to put patients on the best drug before a biopsy is even taken.

At the genetic level, two patients with glioblastoma (or any particular cancer type) may have very different tumors. For example, one patient might respond well to a therapy targeting tumor blood-vessel growth, while the other patient’s tumor might have activated a genetic program that allows it to resist such a therapy. Right now, it’s difficult for doctors to tell these patients apart and to predict responses to many other targeted therapies, so all glioblastoma patients are given the same treatments. Pathologists can perform gene-expression studies on biopsies, but these tests are expensive and not in wide use; MRI scans are standard.

“By tying imaging features to specific biology, we hope to give insights into treatment targets and patient prognosis,” says Michael Kuo, a radiologist at the University of California, San Diego, who led the study connecting MRI scans with glioblastoma genetics. In work described in today’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Kuo’s group identified five visually discernable kinds of tumors strongly associated with particular gene-expression profiles that are tied to targeted therapies. The paper also describes for the first time a particularly aggressive subtype of the disease.

According to the paper, Kuo and his collaborators defined a set of traits present in MRI scans of 22 glioblastoma tumors. “Normally, when a radiologist looks at a tumor, he’s focused on diagnosis: is this a primary tumor, a metastasis, or an infection?” explains Kuo. The San Diego researchers defined a longer list of characteristics, including morphology and the interaction of the tumors with the surrounding tissues. “The premise here is, there is a lot more information in the images than is currently accounted for,” says Kuo.

Then the researchers looked for connections between the ten types of tumors shown in the MRIs and the activity of seven genetic programs by studying the patients’ biopsies using microarrays. These genetic programs included groups of genes associated with blood-vessel growth, cell proliferation, and other characteristic aspects of cancer biology, all of which are targeted by existing drugs. The team also looked for associations between tumor appearance and overexpression of one gene in particular, coding for epidermal growth factor receptor, a cell receptor that’s overactive in many glioblastomas.

Radiologists have seen some of these connections anecdotally but haven’t had the data to back them up, says Patrick Wen, a neuro-oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston. For example, Wen says, oncologists have suspected the connection between tumor appearance and response to therapies targeting tumor blood vessels demonstrated in Kuo’s study. If further data back up this result, it is one of many that would prove therapeutically useful. Wen says that the results are a very important first step “towards using imaging to tailor treatment without having to take tissue.”

“Gene-expression patterns result in anatomical changes you can see in these images,” says Webster Cavanee, director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of California, San Diego. Cavanee, who was not involved in Kuo’s research, believes that the connection between imaging and genetics will hold in other cancers, and perhaps other diseases. Last year, Kuo published a paper connecting characteristics of liver tumors in CT scans with gene-expression patterns. This suggests that the connection between anatomical changes and gene expression will hold up across imaging and tumor types alike.

Cavanee and Wen agree that if Kuo’s work holds up in larger studies, it could have a major clinical impact. “An imaging protocol could be powerful,” says Cavanee, because medical imaging is already part of standard cancer care. “The images are already there. It’s a matter of layering information on something that already exists without adding cost–you’re just adding precision.”

Another advantage of using images for molecular profiling rather than biopsies and microarrays is the global view that this affords. “In general, a biopsy does represent the whole tumor,” says Kuo. But some tumors, particularly glioblastomas, may be heterogeneous–part of a tumor might be more vulnerable or resistant to particular drugs than others–and a biopsy only gives information about one region. Microarrays do give much more specific information, but this level of detail might not be needed: MRI scans might be good enough to rapidly get patients on a drug that’s likely to work. And to get a biopsy, “you need to go in physically and get tissue,” which carries risks, says Kuo.

Kuo’s group also identified a particularly malignant version of glioblastoma and connected its MRI scans and genetic profile with poor patient outcomes. “Instead of saying all patients with [glioblastoma] tumors are the same, we can sort them into two subtypes based on outcome,” says Kuo. His work suggests that these patients should be identified and treated more aggressively, while patients with less malignant cancers can be spared the side effects of aggressive treatment.

Wen describes Kuo’s work as an important first step, but a small one. Kuo’s team is currently working to validate its results in a larger group of glioblastoma patients. “Our data suggest we’re going in the right direction,” he says.

More information:

• Non-Invasive Imaging Provides Window Into Genetic Properties of Brain Tumors
• PNAS: Identification of noninvasive imaging surrogates for brain tumor gene-expression modules

Source: http://thestar.com/sickkids

Last August, Caiden Steinhoff was diagnosed with medulla blastoma, the most common brain tumor in children. Following brain surgery, the Thunder Bay boy has undergone four chemotherapies, each of which wipes out his immune system.

After treatment, Caiden receives a stem cell transplant and remains in isolation to help his immune system recover. These photos were taken after his third round of chemotherapy last month.