Protease inhibitors are used to prevent progression to AIDS in patients infected with HIV. A recent study conducted at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine revealed that one of these protease inhibitors, nelfinavir, effectively inhibits the growth of HER2+ breast cancer cells, and also inhibits the growth HER2+ human breast tumors transplanted in mice. Clinical trials using nelfinavir can now begin to see if it is similarly effective in treating women...
Angelina Jolie shocked the world last week with her announcement that she had inherited a BRCA 1 mutation – presumably from her mother who died of ovarian cancer in...
Siege, Webster's definition: the act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making capture possible.
There's not a more apt description of metastasis to be found in any textbook of medicine. A state of siege is so apropos of what the breast cancer patient faces;...
Breast cancer cells grow faster than normal cells. They're more aggressive. They are impressively adaptable. And if given what they need to survive, they will live forever.
How do you beat that? Well, not to put too fine a point on it ... with great difficulty.
What is needed is a cure for the cause. The Empress of...
To the best of my recollection, this is how it happened.
I read about the world's first preventive breast cancer vaccine, developed by Professor Vincent Tuohy of the Cleveland Clinic in 2010. I read his paper, published in "Nature Medicine" May 2010, and called his lab to introduce myself as Founder and President of the only breast cancer foundation whose mission is primary prevention of the disease - and, so, his...
Back of the envelope calculation: $50 billion spent every year diagnosing, treating, and researching breast cancer in the United States. A race for the cure? Au contrare, It's a stampede.
News: Professor Vincent Tuohy of the Cleveland Clinic developed a preventive breast cancer vaccine that is 100% effective in preventing breast cancer in mice and is ready for safety testing in women. His results were vetted by a panel of experts over a...
Ever since the 1970's, when lumptectomy was shown to be as effective as mastectomy for treating early-stage breast cancer, surgeons have been stumped by one of the most vexing problems in oncology: how wide should the margins be around the tumor to insure adequate removal of the cancer so that the risk of local recurrence or, worse, distant metastatic spread can be driven down as low as possible?
Early on, the conventional...
I go to bed early and wake up early, but I don't get up right away. I listen to the radio, the news and shows on NPR (WNYC.)
This morning I learned that the women behind MADD, mothers against...
I knew it was important to get good grades in medical school; that is, I knew it was important to know the material. And I knew I had to master diagnostic skills, too, like learning to distinguish different heart murmurs or identify degrees of burn to the skin. But what I was most interested in learning was not the knowledge of medicine, per se, but how to use that knowledge in...
