Research Briefs

Nursing Gets NCI Breast Cancer Grant
UAB nursing professor Karen Meneses, Ph.D., has received a five-year, $2.6-million grant from the National Cancer Institute to determine the effectiveness of interventions to improve quality of life for women living in rural areas who are recovering from breast cancer.

The study will target rural women because that population is often noted for its lack of access to health care providers and survivorship services. Dr. Meneses says the study is designed to provide rural breast cancer survivors with the structure and content they need to maintain contact with health care providers and other support services during the transition from treatment to survivorship.

The United States has approximately 2.3 million breast cancer survivors. Forty percent of all female cancer survivors are breast cancer survivors, making them the largest single group of survivors.  

Drinking May Raise Breast Cancer Risk
Findings released at the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting show that alcohol, consumed even in small amounts, increases the risk of breast cancer, particularly estrogen receptor- and progesterone receptor-positive cases.  

In the study, a team led by the National Cancer Institute followed more than 184,000 postmenopausal women for seven years and found that those who had less than one drink a day had a 7 percent increased risk of breast cancer compared to those who never drank. Women who drank one to two alcoholic drinks a day had a 32 percent increased risk, while those who consumed three or more drinks per day had as much as a 51 percent increased risk.

However, the risk was mostly seen in the 70 percent of tumors classified as estrogen receptor- and progesterone receptor-positive. Researchers caution that the studies are still in the early stages and that further investigation to define a possible cause-and-effect mechanism is needed.  

Cancer Center Named to Consortium
The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center was recently selected to join the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC), a collaborative group formed in 2005 to conduct innovative, high-impact clinical trials for breast cancer. UAB is one of only 14 research centers in the group, with member personnel representing clinicians, basic scientists, statisticians and patient advocates.

TBCRC trials not only test novel, laboratory-based strategies, but also attempt to understand the underlying cause and biology of breast cancer. The principal investigator at UAB is Cancer Center scientist Andres Forero, M.D.  

UAB First to Offer Speedier Therapy
In May, the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center became the first medical center in the country to offer RapidArc, a new radiation therapy technique that can reduce a 20-minute treatment session to just 90 seconds in some cases.

The new therapy also saves healthy human tissue from unwanted radiation exposure at rates that are the same or better than other radiotherapy techniques.

RapidArc can deliver radiation up to eight times faster than earlier forms of intensity-modulated radiation therapy. Faster radiation delivery reduces the chances that a slight movement will affect the accuracy of the radiation beam, and it also means that patients feel less discomfort.

The new system, installed and managed by the medical physicists in UAB’s Department of Radiation Oncology, has already been used for one patient—an Alabama man with early stage prostate cancer who is the first in the United States to be treated with RapidArc.  

Vaccine Doubles Brain Cancer Survival
A cancer vaccine more than doubled the survival time of people with glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and deadly type of brain tumor.

Researchers at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology reported that the 23 patients treated with the vaccine in combination with chemotherapy have lived, on average, 33 months. Patients given standard therapy alone lived an average of 14 months.

Among patients receiving the vaccine, it also took 16.6 months for tumors to grow back after surgery—more than double the six months seen in usual cases. A larger randomized study is currently enrolling patients at 24 sites across the United States.

About 22,000 malignant tumors of the brain or spinal cord will be diagnosed in the United States this year, with about 13,000 people dying from them. Half of glioma victims die within a year, and patients rarely survive more than three years.

NCI and ASCO Develop Wallet Cards
The National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Information Service (CIS) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) have teamed up to create a wallet card for cancer patients to use in the event of a natural or manmade disaster.

The Disaster Response Wallet Card helps guide displaced cancer patients to various cancer resources for “real-time” urgent services during a disaster. The CIS will distribute important messages and facilitate the sharing of information among physicians, health care personnel and patients and families searching for each other.

The Disaster Response Wallet Card will be distributed as part of a pilot program in the Gulf Coast states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas during the 2008 hurricane season. You can order a card by calling 1-800-4-CANCER. Only individuals and oncology practices in the Gulf Coast states are eligible to receive the card, and quantities may be limited.