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ASH Daily News

2 November 2004

[View html version: http://www.globalink.org/nbuk]

HEADLINES

£12m budget for health prevention projects
Lung cancer vaccine increases life expectancy
Friends quit smoking together


FULL TEXT

£12m budget for health prevention projects

A new multi-million pound initiative has been established to fund research to cut the number of people contracting cancer, heart disease and diabetes. The National Prevention Research Initiative, which receives funds from organisations such as the British Heart Foundation and the World Cancer Research Fund, will focus on projects such as ways to reduce smoking and drinking, tackling obesity and increasing the uptake of exercise.

The initiative is being supported by the Department of Health, the Economic and Social Research Council and Food Standards Agency. Awards will mainly be made to projects that would have trouble finding funding on their own.

The length of projects could be up to five years, and a number of different scientific disciplines could be involved, such as psychology or statistics. Proposals could consider the effects of the environment or an individual's life course on their health. Or they could look at the differences and inequalities experienced by different social, cultural, socioeconomic, ethnic and gender groups in society.

A group of prevention research experts will assess the quality of proposals. It is hoped that this will stave off problems faced in the past. A consultation in the field of cancer prevention revealed that often, peer-review panels did not have the right expertise to be impressed by such projects. Researchers also found it difficult to publish their work in high-impact journals.

The Guardian (Education) 2/11/04
http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,1340829,00.html




Lung cancer vaccine increases life expectancy

A VACCINE for treating lung cancer has shown very promising results in a trial, according to results presented yesterday.
The trial adds to optimism that vaccines against cancer will work and that one day they will be used alongside surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy as standard tools in the cancer clinic.

In the new trial, more than half the patients with advanced disease that had not spread to other organs were alive two years after treatment with a vaccine designed to enhance the body's own ability to fight cancer.

On average, such patients would be expected to survive for just over a year, so the results, announced yesterday at the European Society for Medical Oncology meeting in Vienna, are a big advance.

"Breakthrough is not a word I use, but this comes close," said Håkan Mellstedt, from the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, commenting on the trial. "I have been involved in cancer vaccines for 20 years, and scientists are always cautious. But these are very exciting results."

This year three teams reported good results from trials of vaccines to treat prostate cancer. Success has also been reported recently with a more conventional vaccine, developed by GlaxoSmithKline to prevent cervical cancer by combating the sexually transmitted virus that triggers most cases of the disease.

The new study, carried out in Canada and four centres in the UK - Guy's Hospital and St George's Hospital in London, Western General Hospital in Edinburgh and Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology in the Wirral - involved 171 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, the commonest form of the disease.

Half were given standard treatment, while the other half were also given the new vaccine.

Overall survival was 13 months in the normally treated group, and 17.4 months in those given the vaccine, a slightly disappointing result as the team had been hoping for better.

But in a subset of the patients - those with tumours too advanced for surgery, but that had not spread to any other organs - 60 per cent of those given the vaccine were still alive after two years, compared with 36.7 per cent of the unvaccinated group. One survivor has been taking the vaccine for 3½ years.

Charles Butts from the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton said that these results had been good enough to take the vaccine, developed by Biomira Inc, a Canadian company, and the drug company Merck, into larger trials. These will involve 1,000 patients from across the world, he said yesterday, and would last at least two years. The US Food and Drug Administration has granted the drug "fast-track" status and the new trial should start next year.

The vaccine works by stimulating the body's immune system to attack the tumours more vigorously. A sugar- protein molecule that is found on the surface of many cells in the body is slightly altered in cancer cells, making it more visible to the immune system.

The vaccine, given weekly by injection for eight weeks and then at six-weekly intervals, is designed to alert the immune system to the target protein and increase the intensity of attacks, while leaving normal cells unaffected.

Professor Mellstedt said that several cancer vaccines were showing signs of progress. "We are seeing encouraging results in colorectal and kidney cancer and in malignant melanoma (skin cancer)," he said.

"This trial in lung cancer is very promising, and an attractive feature is that the vaccine may also work for a lot of other tumours, including pancreatic and colorectal tumours."

The Times, 2/11/04
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1340601,00.html


Friends quit smoking together

Five young friends, all in their '20s, describe their success at quitting smoking using the Allen Carr method. One year after their commitment to stopping they are all still nicotine-free. The article is prefaced by comments from stop-smoking experts at QUIT and the Maudsley smoking cessation clinic who point out the difficulties many smokers face in quitting.

Daily Express, 2/11/04



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Amanda Sandford
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