Word: cancers
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...better that researchers know a cancer, the better their chances of defeating it. Those odds also improve if doctors have more than one way to fight it. As they fill in the details--at the molecular level--of the world in which tumors thrive, doctors are becoming convinced that a one-drug-one-cancer approach is not sufficient. Just as AIDS physicians currently use a multi-drug approach to attack HIV at different stages of its life cycle, so too are cancer doctors beginning to surround tumor cells with combinations of agents that can weaken a growing cancer by chipping...
Already it is clear that the nature of those support systems is more important than where in the body the cancer originated. "The source of the cancer becomes less of an issue over time than trying to understand the signaling pathways the cell is using," says Dr. James Abbruzzese of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. In coming years, doctors will think not of breast cancers and colon cancers but rather of growth-factor cancers and signaling cancers...
After a doctor identifies a cancer and chooses a combination of drugs to combat it, there is still no guarantee that the drugs will work. That's because no two patients are alike. Subtle differences in their genetic code often determine how well a cancer drug will be tolerated and how quickly it will be broken down in the body. Some people produce enzymes that can neutralize the more toxic side effects of anticancer drugs, while others either lack such agents or have genes that produce the opposite effect, making them more sensitive to the drug's adverse effects. Researchers...
...patients, but in those patients, tumors routinely shrink to less than half their size. The number of new drugs that have been approved is small, their cost is high (at least $20,000 per cycle), and progress is slow. The five-year survival rate for all cancers is 63%, up from 51% in 1975, according to the American Cancer Society. But most of that improvement is attributed to the effectiveness of antismoking campaigns, not to better drugs. Thanks to patients like Louise Jacobs, who is helping to make new, smarter treatments part of standard cancer care, that may soon change...
...CONSUME SOME OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS EVERY DAY ("GOOD FATS"). Only three grams a day may reduce your risk of sudden cardiac death as much as 50% to 80%, lower your triglycerides, reduce inflammation (e.g., arthritis) and may help prevent cancer. You can eat fish--including salmon, mackerel and halibut--or take fish-or flaxseed-oil capsules from which contaminants have been removed...