Band Against Cancer
Superstar Martina McBride recently announced the launch of a national tour to benefit several cancer support agencies. Sarah Cannon, in partnership with McBride and Big Machine Label Group, outlined plans for Band Against Cancer, activated through The Sarah Cannon Tour concert series.
McBride, whose hit “I’m Gonna Love You Through It” became an anthem for so many families impacted by cancer, noted, “Helping families who are facing cancer has always been a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I’m honored to be the voice that connects these individuals and their families with a fully committed team of cancer experts. Together with Sarah Cannon, this means each person can fight cancer where they get their greatest strength, in their own communities, with their own band of support.”
The tour will travel through several key U.S. cities in 2016 before returning home to Nashville with a special concert event at the Grand Ole Opry in October. Other influential country music artists also will join McBride at various concert stops. For updated details, schedules and lineups, go to bandagainstcancer.com.
Warner Named to VICC Cancer Registry Leadership
Jeremy Warner, MD, MS, assistant professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics, has been named to the newly created position of medical director of the Vanderbilt Cancer Registry at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.
Founded in the mid-1930s, the registry is the academic medical center’s official repository for cancer data. With more than 90,000 case histories in the database, the registry provides a rich source of information about trends in cancer diagnoses and disease outcomes.
Warner will assist the staff in identifying and developing new informatics methods to improve the accuracy and timeliness of the data collection process, including strategies to connect with current and future electronic medical record systems. He will be involved in assessing diagnoses that are difficult to categorize as a specific form of cancer and will serve as a liaison between clinicians and the registry staff.
Warner earned his undergraduate degree from MIT and a master’s from UC, San Diego before medical school at Boston University. He joined Vanderbilt’s faculty in 2012 after finishing his internship and residency in San Francisco and a hematology and oncology fellowship at Harvard.
NIH Researchers Identify Striking Genomic Signature Shared by Five Types of Cancer
National Institutes of Health researchers have identified a striking signature in tumor DNA that occurs in five different types of cancer. They also found evidence that this methylation signature may be present in many more types of cancer.
The specific signature results from a chemical modification of DNA called methylation, which can control the expression of genes like a dimmer on a light switch. Higher amounts of DNA methylation (hypermethylation), like that found by the researchers in some tumor DNA, decreases a gene's activity. Based on this advance, the researchers hope to spur development of a blood test that can be used to diagnose a variety of cancers at early stages, when treatments can be most effective. The study appeared February 5, 2016, in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.
“Finding a distinctive methylation-based signature is like looking for a spruce tree in a pine forest,” said Laura Elnitski, PhD, a computational biologist in the Division of Intramural Research at NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). “It’s a technical challenge to identify, but we found an elevated methylation signature around the gene known as ZNF154 that is unique to tumors.”
In 2013, her research group discovered a methylation mark (or signature) around ZNF154 in 15 tumor types in 13 different organs and deemed it a possible universal cancer biomarker. “No one in my group slept the night after that discovery,” Dr. Elnitski said. “We were so excited when we found this candidate biomarker. It’s the first of its kind to apply to so many types of cancer.”
In this new study, they developed a series of steps that uncovered telltale methylation marks in colon, lung, breast, stomach and endometrial cancers. They showed that all the tumor types and subtypes consistently produced the same methylation mark around ZNF154.
PearlPoint Introduces Caregiver Handbook
PearlPoint Cancer Support recently debuted a Caregiver Handbook to help individuals more confidently manage their critical role in supporting those living with cancer.
A number of free handbooks are available for download on the organization’s website at my.pearlpoint.org or the new caregiver guide can be directly downloaded at my.pearlpoint.org/cancer-education/caregiver-handbook.
VICC Adds New Radiation Oncology Technology
Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) recently unveiled a new TrueBeam linear accelerator in the Department of Radiation Oncology on the main Nashville campus to provide enhanced radiation therapy for patients.
The TrueBeam system, which is 2.5 times faster than older accelerators, features an improved leaf design that results in less incidental radiation exposure to uninvolved organs and tissues. Additionally, the device has an enhanced on-board imaging system, which can track patients’ movements during treatment and allows physicians to see the patients’ tumors and normal organs much more clearly.
Lisa Kachnic, MD, professor and chair of Radiation Oncology, said the device offers new cutting-edge treatment possibilities and will be unmatched in terms of accuracy for radiation delivery. “With less than 1 mm accuracy comes two potential great outcomes: first, we may improve the cure rate of the cancer; and second, by minimizing the dose to the normal surrounding tissue, we should see reduced toxicity from the treatments. This technology also has improved capacity to perform stereotactic radiation so that physicians can deliver large radiation doses in many fewer days.”
This is the second TrueBeam system for patient care at VICC. The first is already in use at VICC at Franklin.
Prostate Cancer Survivors’ Risk of Heart Disease Studied
The 3 million prostate cancer survivors in the United States are likely to die from something other than cancer, thanks to early detection, effective treatment and the disease’s slow progression.
According to a paper published by Vanderbilt physicians last month in Circulation, what survivors need to be more concerned with is heart disease, the most common non-cancer cause of death for men with prostate cancer. Vanderbilt’s cardio-oncology program is taking a collaborative approach to help monitor and modulate risk factors, especially in men receiving androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) to treat prostate cancer.
“While ADT therapy is of great benefit to many patients with prostate cancer, it may also increase the risk of developing diabetes or having a heart attack or stroke. By collaborating with urology, medical oncology and the cardio-oncology program, we are better able to determine which patients are most likely to benefit from hormones, and in those who do get hormones, how to better protect their cardiovascular system,” said Eric Shinohara, MD, MSCI, associate professor of Medicine and medical director of the Vanderbilt Radiation Oncology Clinic.
The paper’s senior author, Javid Moslehi, MD, assistant professor of Medicine and director of Vanderbilt’s Cardio-oncology program, helped develop the Vanderbilt ABCDE paradigm for cardiovascular health in cancer survivors, an algorithm that is now being adapted as part of national cancer survivorship guidelines by National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
The ABCDE algorithm for prostate cancer survivors includes awareness and aspirin; blood pressure monitoring; cholesterol management and cigarette avoidance; diet and diabetes; and exercise. Patient education is a shared responsibility of the multiple specialists who comprise the cardio-oncology program.
AACR Annual Meeting April 16-20
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will hold its annual meeting April 16-20 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.
The meeting will draw approximately 19,000 scientists, clinicians, advocates, and others to discuss advances in the field of cancer science. The multidisciplinary program includes and impressive roster of speakers, hundreds of invited talks, and more than 6,000 proffered papers. For more information, go online to aacr.org.
Vanderbilt Investigators Identify a Lung Cancer Culprit
A microRNA — a small piece of RNA involved in regulating gene expression — functions as an oncogene to drive the development of lung cancer, Vanderbilt University investigators have discovered.
The microRNA, known as miR-31, is expressed at high levels in human lung adenocarcinoma, and its expression correlates with reduced patient survival, said Christine Eischen, PhD, professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology.
“We discovered that miR-31 is an independent survival factor, meaning that its expression impacts survival, independent of other factors such as tumor size, tumor burden and tumor location,” Eischen said. “That suggests it’s very important.”
The findings, reported in the January issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, demonstrate that miR-31 can initiate and promote the progression of lung cancer, and they suggest that targeting miR-31 may offer a new strategy for treating lung cancer.
WEB:
NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute
