The Canadian Cancer Society - Quebec Division before the Committee on Health and Social Services: strengthening of the Tobacco Act demanded

QUEBEC, Aug. 20, 2013 /CNW Telbec/ - The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) - Quebec Division will appear today before the Parliamentary Committee on Health and Social Services as part of the examination of the report on the implementation of the Tobacco Act 2005-2010. "Currently, smoking causes a third of cancer deaths, which are all preventable. For the CCS, it is clear that the fight against cancer will have to involve the fight against smoking," explains Rob Cunningham, lawyer and Senior Policy Analyst, CCS. Quebec has 1.5 million smokers and urgent action is needed because tens of thousands of youths start smoking every year. This is why the CCS wants the government to include the following in the Tobacco Act:

• A ban on flavours for all tobacco products covered by the Tobacco Act.
• The regulation of electronic cigarettes.
• Plain and standardized packaging for all tobacco products.
• A moratorium on the market for new tobacco products.

The CCS's demands resonate with the public. In fact, nine in 10 Quebecers want the government to make tobacco products less attractive to youths. In addition, 82% of Quebecers support a ban on the marketing of new tobacco products and more than three quarters of Quebecers support a ban on flavoured cigarettes.

"Public support for the CCS's demands is obvious. Now, it's the government's responsibility to implement adequate measures to get it done. Dr Hébert, will you be the one who will stop the tobacco epidemic?", asks Mélanie Champagne, Director, Public Issues, CCS - Quebec Division.

For 75 years, the Canadian Cancer Society has been with Canadians in the fight for life. All these years, we have been relentless in our commitment to prevent cancer, fund research and support people touched by the disease. From this foundation, we will work with Canadians to change cancer forever so fewer Canadians are diagnosed with the disease and more survive. To know more about cancer, visit our website at cancer.ca or call our Cancer Information Service at 1 888 939-3333.

SOURCE Canadian Cancer Society, Quebec Division

Perception of Fertility Affects Quality of Life in Young, Female Cancer Survivors

Newswise — A new study led by a University of Colorado Cancer Center member recently published in the journal Quality of Life Research shows that in young, female cancer survivors, quality of life is significantly impaired long after treatment. The study compared 59 cancer survivors to 66 healthy controls and found that, as expected, cancer survivors showed higher stress and anxiety than the general population. Of note, survivors reported particular stress around the issues of sexual problems, physical pain and fatigue. The study also measured hormone levels reflecting woman’s number of eggs, and showed that among young, female cancer survivors, those with reassuring fertility status were likely to report higher quality of life once treatment ends.

“What it came down to was a woman’s opinion of her own fertility status after cancer treatment,” says Laxmi Kondapalli, MD, MSCE, director of the CU Cancer Center Oncofertility Program.

See, there was one intervening step between normal ovarian reserve and quality of life: the regularity of a woman’s menstrual cycle after undergoing chemotherapy and/or radiation treatment for cancer. All women lose a certain number of eggs during these treatments, but those with higher baseline reserve are more likely to withstand the treatment with their overall fertility unaffected. Women with lower ovarian reserve at baseline are more likely to have impaired fertility after treatment.

“But it wasn’t the lab and ultrasound markers of ovarian reserve alone that affected quality of life,” Kondapalli says. “It was a woman’s opinion of her fertility status based on her menstrual cycle that had the most impact on quality of life.”

Following cancer treatment, many women think that if they maintain regular menstrual cycles, their fertility is preserved, and that if their menstrual cycles become irregular, then they are likely infertile due to treatment.

“This isn’t necessarily the case, because we are finding that menstrual cyclicity is a poor predictor of fertility status in these young, female cancer survivors,” Kondapalli says. “Survivors may be falsely reassured if they resume normal periods, or they may be unnecessarily stressed if they don’t get regular periods after cancer treatment.”

According to Kondapalli, women with high ovarian reserve are less likely to experience symptoms of early menopause after cancer treatment. And it is these symptoms that go on to influence young patients’ quality of life.

“I think what our study demonstrates is that clearly there are many components that impact a survivor’s quality of life after cancer treatment. Although objective markers of ovarian reserve play an important role, a woman’s perception of her own fertility status was more influential in her overall quality of life,” Kondapalli says.

Understanding the factors that influence quality of life in this population may help identify ways to manage late effects of treatment and improve comprehensive survivorship care.

Poverty the Greatest Barrier to Good Health, Canadians tell CMA Consultation

OTTAWA, July 30, 2013 /CNW/ - Poverty kills. That's the key message in What Makes us Sick, a report released today by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) based on what Canadians said during a series of town hall meetings and an online consultation held earlier this year. The national dialogue with Canadians asked them about their experiences with the social determinants of health - the factors that cause people to suffer poor health in the first place.

"Many factors outside the health care system affect a person's health, from inadequate housing to a lack of healthy food to sub-optimal early childhood experiences," said Dr. Anna Reid, CMA president. "What Canadians told us is that poverty is the recurring theme that underpins most of these social determinants of health."

The CMA report included recommendations for action, again, based on what Canadians said. However, Dr. Reid stressed that the report does not lay blame.

"We aren't pointing fingers," she said. "We listened to Canadians and what we heard was that they want sincere, legitimate and real action. As a country we can do better in tackling issues around poverty, housing, early childhood development, food security and culture that can hinder a person's chances to be healthy. There is no one sector responsible for making this happen. It has to be a joint effort, involving health care providers, governments, patients and Canadians from all backgrounds."

The Winnipeg town hall, and many comments across the country, focused on Aboriginal health. Dr. Reid noted that poverty and education for Aboriginal peoples, whose health outcomes fall far short compared to the rest of the Canadian population, were among the issues discussed by Canada's premiers at their summer meeting last week in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

"As one of the panelists said, we talk about success in life in terms of working hard and going up the ladder. With Aboriginal children, many won't even reach the bottom rung."

Dr. Reid also said physicians have a responsibility to be proactive. "Some people have asked me what poverty, housing and so on have to do with physicians. While we certainly are not the experts on these areas, we are experts in caring for our patients and we see every day how the social determinants of health affect them."

The national dialogue was part of the CMA's ongoing efforts in advocating for Health Care Transformation, a broad-ranging initiative to modernize and improve Canada's health care system. The town halls took place in Calgary, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Montreal, Charlottetown and St. John's. Maclean's, CPAC and L'actualité were partners with the CMA in the undertaking.

An electronic copy of What Makes us Sick can be found at http://www.cma.ca/advocacy/cma-media-centre.

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) is the national voice of Canadian physicians. Founded in 1867, the CMA is a voluntary professional organization representing more than 77,000 of Canada's physicians and comprising 12 provincial and territorial medical associations and 51 national medical organizations. CMA's mission is to serve and unite the physicians of Canada and be the national advocate, in partnership with the people of Canada, for the highest standards of health and health care.

SOURCE Canadian Medical Association

UK's "Super Mouse" Yielding Major Discoveries in Cancer Research

Newswise — LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 26, 2013) — It appears tiny and inconsequential enough, but the "super mouse" — created by researchers at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center some six years ago — has spawned plenty of new research into preventing and/or treating many types of cancer.

Back in 2007, cancer researcher Vivek Rangnekar and his team announced that they discovered a gene — known as Par-4 —that specifically kills cancer cells without killing normal cells. Rangnekar's team used this gene to develop cancer-resistant mice that become known as "super mice" for their ability to stay healthy and tumor-free compared to normal mice.

Since that initial discovery, researchers across the country have built upon Rangnekar's discovery, including a team at the University of Pennsylvania, who recently published findings on how Par-4 downregulation affects breast cancer recurrence.

In a new article for Cancer Cell, UK researchers including Rangnekar as well as Tripti Shrestha-Bhattarai and Nikhil Hebbar discuss a recent study and how its findings may lead to the development of novel treatment strategies for breast cancer.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women. Even with treatment, one in five patients will relapse from the disease within 10 years, and patients who have triple-negative breast cancer have an especially high risk of both local and distant recurrence. Treatment for these aggressive cancers is difficult because they tend to be resistant to "standard of care" therapies.

The study performed by the UPenn team showed that in women who experienced breast cancer relapse, the Par-4 protein was suppressed. These low levels of Par-4 allowed the cancerous cells to survive and multiply even after a full course of treatment. Conversely, tumor cells that have high levels of Par-4 are eliminated by apoptosis (cell death) following treatment. These new findings may provide insight into deciding which patients are at the highest risk for cancer recurrence.

"What this tells us is that low Par-4 may act as a predictor of breast cancer recurrence," said Rangnekar, associate director for the UK Markey Cancer Center. "This is important, because although this group studied only breast cancer, their observations may be relevant to recurrence in a broad range of cancer types because Par-4 is a general tumor suppressor gene."

Using Par-4 levels as a biomarker prior to treatment — and knowing whether that patient is at an elevated risk of recurrence — would give physicians another tool to use in determining the best course of treatment. Additionally, their findings may provide the basis for the development of novel treatment strategies for breast cancer.

Other 'tumor suppressor' genes exist, says Rangnekar, but what makes Par-4 so special is that it is not mutated as frequently as other known suppressors, and it's "selective" in its actions in that Par-4 will only kill cancer cells and not normal cells. Par-4 can become 'suppressed' or inactivated, leading to tumor re-growth, but Par-4 can be 'activated' again — and one of the next major steps is developing a safe and effective way to activate Par-4 in the cancerous cells.

"If Par-4 is still present in the cells, the strategy should be to try and utilize that Par-4, so as to restore it’s apoptotic function and bring about apoptosis of the cancer cells," Rangnekar said.

Researchers are still years away from being ready to test these theories in clinical trials, but Rangnekar says they have already begun looking at agents, both natural and synthetic, that may help restore the expression of Par-4 in human cells, allowing the cancerous cells to become susceptible to treatment. Each new study on Par-4 brings researchers one step closer to developing a powerful method for both treating and preventing many of the deadliest types of cancers.

The findings in the cancer-resistant mouse have stimulated several collaborative projects on Par-4 at UK. Several UK investigators are now examining the role of Par-4 in diverse types of tumors: recently, Rangnekar and UK cancer biologist and immunologist Subbarao Bondada were jointly funded by the National Institutes of Health to study the role of Par-4 in chronic lymphocytic leukemia; UK pathologist Craig Horbinski’s group is investigating Par-4 in aggressive brain tumors called glioblastomas; and UK chemist David Watt and cancer biologist Chunming Liu are developing small molecules that can activate Par-4 and kill cancer cells.

“Our multi-disciplinary team, working together, uses a multi-faceted strategy in our research,” Rangnekar said. “This allows us to gain a better understanding of the complexities of cancer in order to effectively kill recurrent tumor cells, especially those that have spread from their origin to distant tissue sites.”

Scholarship Recipient Drawn to Neurosciences by Father’s Losing Fight Against Brain Cancer

Newswise — LOS ANGELES (July 25, 2013) – As the 2013 recipient of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Pauletta and Denzel Washington Family Gifted Scholars Program in Neuroscience award, Christine R. Carico will spend the next year researching brain disorders like the one that took the life of her father, who survived four years after being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor called an anaplastic astrocytoma.

“My interest in neuroscience started when my father was diagnosed, but it wasn’t until his death in 2007 that I realized academic medicine was my calling,” said Carico, who was 12 when her father’s cancer struck. “After witnessing the horrific course of the disease, I have made it my ultimate goal to find a cure for brain cancer so that no other families endure the suffering mine did. This scholarship will help propel me toward this goal by allowing me to learn from some of the most talented and renowned scientists in the field.”

Washington Scholars receive financial support and participate in cutting-edge scientific projects in Cedars-Sinai’s research labs. The Department of Neurosurgery began funding the scholarships in 2004 to support students who demonstrated the desire, initiative and aptitude to make significant contributions in the sciences. Pauletta and Denzel Washington gladly lent their names and continue to take an active role in the program.
The scholarship has provided summertime positions for two students each year but recently was reconfigured to give one recipient more in-depth exposure to research techniques, enabling the scholar to make more significant contributions, said Keith L. Black, MD, professor and chair of the department and the Ruth and Lawrence Harvey Chair in Neuroscience. The yearlong internship provides a stipend of $30,000 to $34,000, and the awardee is expected to submit a research paper or abstract to a national neuroscience, cancer or neurosurgery meeting.

Carico, born in Mountain View, Calif., and living in West Hollywood, soon will earn her bachelor’s degree in neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles. She took a course at UCLA’s Center for Prehospital Care and became a certified emergency medical technician, acquiring skills she hopes to put to work after graduating and before entering medical school. She served in 2009 and 2010 as a tutor in UCLA’s Watts Tutorial Program, which addresses the educational needs of students living in housing developments in Watts and East Los Angeles.

During her junior year of high school, Carico undertook an optional research project, working in Stanford University laboratories. She co-authored a journal article on cells and mechanisms involved in the development of leukemia and shadowed members of Stanford’s neurosurgical team to learn more about the field.

In a letter supporting Carico’s Washington Gifted Scholars application, Richard A. Jaffe, MD, PhD, professor of anesthesia and neurosurgery at Stanford, said, “Considering her level of education, she has an excellent scientific and medical knowledge base, in some areas exceeding that of our own medical students and residents.”

Carico was involved in basic research during a summer 2010 fellowship at UCLA through the Undergraduate Cancer Research Training Program sponsored by Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. Starting in January 2011, she worked more than a year in a UCLA lab studying a signaling pathway involved in the transformation of normal tissue into abnormal masses. At the same time, and while carrying a full academic load, she started working at the Center for Neurosurgical Outcomes Research in the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai, where she continues today and has collaborated on six published studies.

Chirag Patil, MD, director of the Center for Neurosurgical Outcomes Research, has known Carico for more than six years — beginning when she was a high school student and shadowed him at Stanford, where he completed an internship in general surgery, a residency in neurosurgery, and a fellowship in stereotactic radiosurgery.

“Christine is the best and most dedicated undergraduate student I have ever mentored or come in contact with,” he said. “She is extremely bright and is very talented. Neuroscience and neuro-oncology have been a passion of hers since her father’s diagnosis with anaplastic astrocytoma in 2003. … Her story of fortitude, discipline and turning a big loss into a focused drive inspires me (and everyone around her).”

Tide is Turning in Skin Cancer Battle

Originally published here: http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2013/tide-is-turning-in-skin-cancer-battle/#sthash.ISRDakUN.ohK9VbCJ.dpuf

A decade ago there was little doctors could do to help a patient with advanced-stage melanoma.

Now it seems each week yields important new discoveries about the deadly skin cancer.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and now is by any measure the most exciting time for melanoma research,” said Brian Nickoloff, director of the Nicholas V. Perricone, M.D., Division of Dermatology and Cutaneous Sciences at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine.

In the research journal Laboratory Investigation, Nickoloff and colleagues outline recent advances that have put melanoma at the forefront of cancer research, raising hopes that scientists and clinicians may have cornered the deadliest of all skin cancers.

“In the past melanoma outsmarted us, but now we’re starting to outsmart melanoma,” said Nickoloff, who also is director of cutaneous oncology at Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids and a member of the Stand Up to Cancer Dream Team for melanoma research. “Go back 10 years and you’ll see we had almost nothing to offer patients with advanced disease, but now we’re definitely getting the upper hand on this cancer.”

Melanoma is really a catch-all term for the most virulent types of skin cancer. The disease’s complexity is staggering – melanoma tumors have more mutations per cell than any other type of cancer – but new diagnostic tools such as DNA sequencing are helping scientists sort through troves of data to decode each tumor’s “fingerprint.”

And while the list of known mutations that cause melanoma keeps growing, researchers can target most of them by blocking a handful of the “signaling pathways” that control normal cell function and can cause tumors to form and spread.

Meanwhile, about 100 new drugs with melanoma in their sights are in development, and new combinations of drugs show promise for blocking cancer-causing signaling pathways.

Still, optimism about such progress is tempered by the fact that someone dies from melanoma every hour.

Besides being deadly, melanoma is one of the fastest growing cancers worldwide. Melanoma also is unusual among cancers in how often it develops in young people; it is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in 25- to 29-year-old women.

Science’s rapid progress in understanding and treating melanoma must be coupled with prevention efforts to educate people about the dangers of sun exposure and artificial tanning, Nickoloff said.

“It’s entirely preventable,” he said. “Nobody should die from advanced-stage melanoma.”

Education was part of the goal of the College of Human Medicine’s Gran Fondo, a June bicycling event in Grand Rapids that in its first year attracted 1,500 cyclists and raised about $100,000 for MSU melanoma research.

Nickoloff said that community support is matched by an increasingly collaborative research atmosphere in Grand Rapids – his co-authors on the new paper included Michigan State medical students and cancer experts from Van Andel and Mercy Health Saint Mary’s – that will keep MSU and its West Michigan partners at the leading edge of melanoma research.

“I wish I were 20 years younger, because we’re going to see more and more long-term remissions,” he said. “We’ll get better every year we’re at this.”

Canada and Asbestos Today - A Guest Post from Kathleen Ruff

The following post first appeared on the Canadian Meso blog, which is a part of the Canadian Cancer Survivor Network's recent project committed to providing survivors, patients, families, and the wider public with information and news about asbestos and asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma. 

Now that Canada no longer mines or exports asbestos, what are the next steps we should be taking as a country?

The last two asbestos mines in Quebec have finally shut down after more than a century of operation. Other asbestos mines in BC, Ontario, Newfoundland and the Yukon closed down years ago.

Finally, Canada, which, for the past century, was a leading world producer, exporter and promoter of asbestos, is no longer in the asbestos business.

But much remains to be done. While the asbestos mines have shut down for economic reasons, the Canadian government continues to support asbestos use, continues to fail to protect Canadians from asbestos harm and continues to fail to provide assistance and support to asbestos victims and their families.

Shockingly, the Canadian government continues to deny the science on asbestos and, instead, supports the discredited propaganda of the asbestos industry, which claims, against all the evidence, that asbestos can be safely used.

The Harper government opposes the recommendation of the World Health Organization that all use of asbestos should stop. And the government has rejected requests from the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Public Health Association and many other health, labour and public interest organisations that the Canadian government take action to stop the use of asbestos in Canada and to protect Canadians from asbestos harm.

Over 50 countries have banned asbestos, including all the countries of the European Union. Because Canada has not banned asbestos, products are allowed to be imported into Canada that contain asbestos. Millions of dollars’ worth of asbestos-containing car brakes, for example, are imported into Canada each year. Over past decades, many auto mechanics have died from having been exposed to asbestos when grinding and repairing brakes. This will continue to happen, as long as Canada does not ban asbestos.

The Canadian government needs to show leadership on the threat to the health of Canadians posed by asbestos that was placed in thousands of homes and buildings decades ago. Construction workers, carpenters and electricians are especially at risk when they renovate or demolish old buildings.

Many people cannot afford to hire trained professionals to do renovation work on their homes and so they do the work themselves. They usually lack protective equipment and training regarding asbestos and are thus at risk of being exposed to asbestos fibres, as they are unlikely to even recognize it in the walls, ceilings and floors they are cutting into.

While the Canadian government is failing to protect Canadians from asbestos harm, it is spending millions of taxpayers’ dollars on removing asbestos from the Parliament Buildings and from the Prime Minister’s residence. Apparently, the government believes that members of Parliament and the Prime Minister should be protected from asbestos harm.

Many Canadians think, wrongly, that asbestos is a problem of the past. Other countries have national programs to inform and educate the public about the continuing dangers of asbestos. But not Canada. This, in spite of the fact that, every day, more Canadians fall victim to an asbestos-related disease.

When Canadian workers are repeatedly exposed to asbestos because of wanton negligence on the part of their employers, the Canadian government does not lay charges of criminal negligence against the employers, even though the Criminal Code has a provision allowing for such charges to be laid. Thus there are no serious repercussions. The employer may have to pay a fine under occupational health regulations, but, when an employer repeatedly pays the fine and continues to expose workers to asbestos harm, clearly the fine is not a sufficient deterrent.

Because the last asbestos mines have been closed down,Canadians can be glad that we are no longer exporting asbestos to harm people overseas.

The Canadian government should, however, set up reparation funds in those countries to which, to our financial profit, we exported huge amounts of asbestos for decades. These funds would help pay for health care and compensation to all those whose lives will be harmed and help pay for removing asbestos from schools, homes and buildings overseas once those buildings begin to deteriorate and threaten to release asbestos fibres into the air.

As an immediate priority, the Canadian government should take action to protect Canadians from further asbestos harm by banning asbestos, by setting up an asbestos registry and initiating a national program to inform Canadians of the ongoing threat posed by asbestos already placed in so many buildings.

Furthermore, the Canadian government should take responsibility for the asbestos the government itself placed in homes on First Nations reserves and in homes on military bases. The government has washed its hands of this problem and the deaths it has caused.

It is time for this callous and irresponsible conduct to stop.

Kathleen Ruff is founder of the human rights website RightOnCanada.ca and author of Exporting Harm: How Canada markets asbestos to thedeveloping world