Abstract
A collection of recently published news items.
Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania unveiled its new $27 million Novartis–Penn Center for Advanced Cellular Therapeutics, which will focus on chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy and other personalized cancer treatments.
A recent report outlines progress in reducing the overall mortality gap between blacks and whites but notes that the gap widened or remained constant for some specific cancers (CA Cancer J Clin 2016 Feb 22 [Epub ahead of print]). For example, the overall cancer death rate in males was 47% higher in blacks than in whites in 1990, but was reduced to 24% higher in 2012. However, since 1990, breast cancer death rates dropped 23% in black women and 37% in white women, increasing racial disparity.
The prevalence of human papillomavirus (HPV) was significantly reduced in the 6 years after the introduction of a vaccine targeting four common types of the virus: HPV-6, -11, -16, and -18. Data show that the prevalence of these types decreased by 64% among females ages 14 to 19 and 34% among those ages 20 to 24 (Pediatrics 2016;137:e20151968). HPV causes most cervical cancers.
Researchers proposed a new staging system for patients with oropharyngeal cancer (OPC) that more accurately predicts outcomes—and helps identify the most appropriate treatments—than the current TMN Staging System (J Clin Oncol 2016 Feb 16 [Epub ahead of print]). The proposed system accounts for biological and clinical differences between HPV-positive OPC and HPV-negative OPC. Patients with HPV-positive disease typically have better survival rates.
AstraZeneca announced that tremelimumab did not demonstrate an overall survival benefit in the second- or third-line treatment of inoperable malignant mesothelioma in an international phase IIb randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that included 571 patients. Tremelimumab is a selective human antibody directed against CTLA-4.
For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/content/early/by/section.