Word: tumor
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...happened, Bradfield's tumor cells had a characteristic present in about 30% of breast-cancer cells: too many copies of a gene known as HER-2/neu. This gene makes a protein that helps relay the signal telling cells to divide. Having too much of it is associated with an especially rampaging, hard-to-treat cancer. Once this form of breast cancer metastasizes, a patient typically has just six to 12 months to live...
Other researchers are zeroing in on different targets. Some are looking at a specialized growth factor called VEGF (for vascular endothelial growth factor) that so far has been found only in the blood vessels that feed tumors. One synthetic molecule being tested at UCLA prevents VEGF from stimulating new growth by elbowing it aside and taking its place in the cell's receptors. Safety studies in more than 30 patients have so far not revealed any major side effects, although their tumors' growth was only slowed, not halted. Dr. Joseph Sparano, at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City...
...much of one protein, too little of another, or a misshapen protein that doesn't function properly. The new generation of cancer drugs takes aim at these defective proteins, blocking them, disrupting them in myriad ways. Unlike old-fashioned chemotherapy drugs, the new substances don't poison the tumor--an approach that usually causes collateral damage to healthy cells. Instead, they aim to halt the processes that make a cancer cell act like a cancer cell in the first place...
...lymph nodes. Bradfield got the works: a double mastectomy and six months of chemotherapy, followed by radiation and then more chemo. It bought her 18 months of symptom-free life. Then one hot August night, she recalls, "I went to rub my neck, and there was a tumor about the size of a marshmallow." Bradfield was already depressed--her daughter had just died in a car accident--and she never wanted to face chemo again. "I thought I was probably going to die, and I didn't want to die bald and throwing...
Other drug companies are targeting another common cancer gene: one that codes for a protein called the EGF (epidermal growth factor) receptor. This receptor, which takes in growth signals and relays them to the RAS protein, is found in abnormally high numbers on the surface of about 40% of tumor cells, including about 90% of lung-cancer tumors, some prostate tumors and other malignancies. Researchers at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston are testing an antibody to EGF receptors in patients with advanced head and neck cancers. But most other groups, including teams at drug makers Pfizer, Novartis and Zeneca...