Caring About Cancer Patients

July 2012

Innovative Program Aims to Improve Support for Cancer Family Caregivers

NCI Special Issue: Posted on Sunday, July 29, 2012 7:57 PM

While much of the discussion around cancer focuses on new treatments and their impact on cancer patients, until relatively recently, family members of cancer patients have often gotten lost in the shuffle.

“Family caregivers provide the vast majority of care for people with cancer across all phases of illness,” said Dr. Betty Ferrell, a leading researcher on nursing and cancerpalliative careat City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, CA. “Yet they are often unprepared for this task and undervalued for their care.

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Experimental Drug Based on Plant Toxin Targets and Kills Tumor Cells

NCI: Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 11:58 PM

Researchers have engineered a drug that can deliver a potent cell-killing toxin to tumors while largely sparing normal tissues. The drug, known asG202, shrankxenografttumors of several human cancers in mice, includingprostate,breast,kidney, andbladdercancer, and had relatively few toxic effects. On the basis of thesefindings, reported June 27 inScience TranslationalMedicine, researchers have initiated an early-phaseclinical trialof G202 in patients with advanced cancer.

G202 delivers its toxic payload—a potent

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Some Children with Hodgkin Lymphoma May Not Need Radiation Therapy

Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 11:25 PM

Children with Hodgkin lymphoma who have favorable clinical features and who respond early to chemotherapy may not need treatment with radiation. The finding, reported in the June 27JAMA, is from a clinical trial of 88 patients with low-risk disease.

Patients who had an early complete response to the chemotherapy regimen used in the trial and were not treated with radiation therapy (as stipulated in the study protocol) had 5-year survival rates similar to those of children who did not have the same response to chemotherapy and therefore required radiation.

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