Cancer Cells

Washington -- From the green, yucky juice of broccoli, cabbage, collards and the like, scientists have squeezed still another chemical that seems to inhibit cancer cells.The new substance stimulates production of enzymes that can break down carcinogens, including the female hormone estrogen, Texas A&M University researchers reported in today's issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.Trouble is, this chemical seems to work in almost the opposite way from other broccoli-derived compounds that are thought to have anti-cancer properties.

Dr. Merrill Jon Egorin, an internationally known cancer researcher, a founder of the University of Maryland's Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center, and a co-director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute's Molecular Therapeutics and Drug Discovery Program, died Aug. 7 of multiple myeloma at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Shadyside Hospital. The former Reisterstown resident was 62. "He was a brilliant, insightful and funny man who always made me laugh.

Dr. David Brandes, a Baltimore pathologist whose work in electron microscopy studying cancer cells led to a greater understanding of their structure and the effects of treatment on cellular growth, died Jan. 8 from complications during heart surgery at Union Memorial Hospital. He was 81. A longtime resident of Tudor Arms Apartments in Wyman Park, Dr. Brandes was associate chief pathologist at the old Baltimore City Hospitals, now Johns Hopkins Bayview, from 1965 until retiring in 1987.

Night shift workers who had low levels of the body's vital "sleep hormone," were significantly more likely to develop breast cancer than those who were awake during the day but got plenty of shut-eye at night, a team of scientists reported this week. The analysis by Boston researchers goes straight to the heart of a question scientists have asked for years: Are night shift workers, because of extended exposure to light, more likely to develop cancer? "Two or three years ago, we probably would have been reluctant to say there was an association," said Dr. Eva Schernhammer, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Scientists hope that someday stem cells will cure diseases. Pamela Joseph fears that cancer stem cells will kill her first. As her doctors explain it, stem cells are the source of multiple myeloma, a blood cancer the 56-year-old Clarksville woman has been fighting since 2005. Stem cells might also be the reason that the cancer - which has killed one member of Joseph's family - is incurable. The notion of stem cells as potential villains is counterintuitive, given their highly publicized promise for repairing damaged tissues and organs.

A diagnosis of Stage IV metastatic breast cancer sounds like a death sentence. And, for some, it can be. It is both inoperable and incurable. But cancer experts say the disease is treatable, and its victims' prognoses vary as widely as their individual cancers. Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, learned Monday that her breast cancer, first diagnosed and treated in 2004, has turned up in her bones. But chemical, hormonal and biological drug therapies can be used to keep it in check, said Dr. Michael Schultz, director of the breast center at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson.

Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc. shares gained 9.6 percent after it said its brain cancer treatment is scheduled to be reviewed June 14 by the Food and Drug Administration.Guilford shares rose $2.75 to a record $31.50.The Baltimore-based biotechnology company said yesterday that the product, the Gliadel wafer, is implanted in the cavity created when a surgeon removes a cancerous tumor from the brain.The wafer slowly dissolves, releasing the chemotherapeutic drug it contains to the tumor site over a period of time.

A gene blamed for many human cancers may someday guide surgeons who want to make sure they have rid their patients of disease and haven't left any malignant cells behind, doctors from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine said today.Until now, the fast-growing science of cancer genetics has provided scientists with hope of identifying people who are predisposed to deadly cancers -- such as those of the breast and colon -- so doctors and patients can watch for the first suspicious signs.An article published in today's New England Journal of Medicine presents an additional possibility: that genetic "probes" can do a better job than microscopes of finding residual cancer cells in tissues bordering visible tumors.

NEW YORK - In a head-to-head test of two designer cancer medications, researchers say they are now certain that neither of these drugs nor similar ones will have universal applications for lung cancer patients. The discovery by scientists at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston adds yet another chapter to the unfinished - and disappointing - story about several designer cancer drugs, which burst onto the scene with great fanfare but have left many cancer patients without hope. Iressa and Erbitux are members of the class of drugs popularly called targeted therapies.

TWO LOCAL veterinarians are giving chemotherapy to several older animals that have cancer.Jean Townsend and Marian Siegel, graduates of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, both feel that as long as a quality life is still possible for the pet, it is worth it.They are treating three of their own pets and three patients following a treatment ''devised by veterinarian Ann Jeglum from Chester County, Pa., who is an animal oncologist," says...