Older women may be missing out on improvements in breast cancer treatment and detection. Data from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry show [J Clin Oncol 2011 Nov 7 (Epub ahead of print)] that from 1995 to 1997, the risk for women ages 75 and older—the fastest-growing segment of the breast cancer population—was 17.3% while risks for younger women ranged from 15.4% to 16.6% depending on age.
The American Society of Clinical Oncology has released a Blueprint for Transforming Clinical and Translational Cancer Research with recommendations aimed to help speed development of therapeutics, design smarter clinical trials, and harness advances in health information technology to seamlessly integrate research and patient care.
Guidelines designed to provide an easy-to-use checklist for the accurate and ethical reporting of epidemiologic studies involving molecular markers have been proposed by a group of international researchers (PLoS Med 2011 Oct 25).
The National Cancer Institute's Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer is kicking off the TONIC (Translation of Nanotechnology in Cancer) consortium, a public–private partnership to promote translational research and development of nanotechnology-based cancer solutions.
The X Prize Foundation will give a $10-million prize to the first team that accurately sequences the whole genome of 100 subjects within 30 days for $1,000 or less per genome, with an error rate no greater than one per million base pairs.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved MELA Sciences's MelaFind device, which analyzes digital images of skin growth for signs of cancer, for use by dermatologists seeking additional information for a decision to biopsy.
Scans of a wrapped Egyptian mummy from Lisbon's National Museum of Archeology may provide the oldest evidence of prostate cancer (International Journal of Paleopathology 2011 Oct 2).
For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at www.AACR.org/CDnews.
