The Daily Scan

Bertalan Meskó will be teaching the first Medicine 2.0 course

Bertalan Meskó announced that he will be teaching the first Medicine 2.0 course, at the University of Debrecen.  How cool is that? 

And he'll be posting all his slideshows online (of course); stay tuned for links and commentary...

Experimental Novartis drug slows kidney cancer

Reuters reports Experimental Novartis drug slows kidney cancer.

"An experimental drug from Swiss drugmaker Novartis slowed the progression of kidney cancer in patients whose tumors returned after initial chemotherapy, researchers reported on Friday.

"The drug, called RAD-001 or everolimus, may provide an option for patients with a difficult-to-treat cancer, the researchers said in an initial release of data ahead of a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Kidney cancer will be diagnosed in 54,390 people in the United States this year and will kill 13,010, the American Cancer Society projects, so this kind of drug can make a massive difference.  Let's hope this early success is continued and the drug makes it onto the market!

GlaxoSmithKline tests Tykerb against Herceptin in early breast cancer

Forbes reports GlaxoSmithKline tests Tykerb against Herceptin in early breast cancer

GlaxoSmithKline has announced that it has launched large-scale trials comparing its late-stage breast cancer drug Tykerb against Herceptin in early-stage breast cancer.

The trial will evaluate and compare the rate at which cancer cells disappear in the breast following treatment with lapatinib, the active ingredient in Tykerb, and/or trastuzumab, the active ingredient Genetech Inc's Herceptin, before surgery in women with early-stage ErbB2-positive (HER2-positive) positive breast cancer.

The implications for digital pathology are minimal; patients would still be tested for Her2 positivity using IHC, FISH, etc, but it might provide a more effective drug with fewer side effects than Herceptin. If nothing else the competition could lower the cost of treatment…

Scientists provide explanation for how cancer spreads

I came across an interesting research paper about the possible origins of metastasis; bone marrow-derived cells fuse with normal and transformed intestinal stem cells.  The research by John Pawelek's team at Yale seems to indicate that metastasis begins when a cancer cells merges with a white blood cell, which then enters the bloodstream and moves to another part of the body.  Via after cancer, now what, who comment:

The fusion theory was first proposed in the early 1900s and has attracted a lot of scientific interest over the years. Pawelek and his colleagues began their research several years ago by fusing white blood cells with tumor cells. These experimental hybrids the researchers observed, were remarkably metastatic and lethal when implanted into mice. In addition, the scientists noted, some of the molecules the hybrids used to metastasize originated from white blood cells, and these molecules were the same as those used by metastatic cells in human cancers. Pawelek and his team then validated previous findings that hybridization occurs naturally in mice, and results in metastatic cancer.

This could be a really import finding, as it may direct development of drugs which inhibit metastasis when a tumor has been detected.

Diagnostic test could pinpoint origins of cancers

SFGate: Diagnostic test could pinpoint origins of cancers:

Pathologists at the Stanford University School of Medicine are trying out a new test from a Sunnyvale company that could give cancer patients a better chance of getting the most effective treatment.

The test, developed by Pathwork Diagnostics Inc., is part of a growing drive to use genetic analysis and molecular markers to guide the choice of therapies in many disease types. Pathwork's test was designed to ferret out a key fact that helps determine which treatment would work best for each patient with advanced cancer.

This is very cool.  Molecular diagnostic tests do offer the best chance of determining the original source of tumor cells - and that [often] determines the best course of treatment.  This isn't the first test of its kind, and as the article notes it isn't the last either; two other companies are working on the same concept.  Regardless the outcome will be better patient care - yay.

Will Ware: More developments in cancer treatment

I just discovered Will Ware's blog, via this post: more developments in cancer treatment.  (Note Will's blog is suntitled aftercancernowwhat.)  These developments all use nanotechnology in some way to attack or prevent cancer.  Such treatments are still in the future, but perhaps it is the near future.  Let's hope so.  In the meantime, please enjoy Will's blog...

using telepathology to train residents

Keith Kaplan: using telepathology to train residents, a presentation from a team at the University of Arizona.  They used a hardware system to track eye movements as students viewed digital slides. 

These data are similar to the information provided by the Tracking feature of Aperio's ImageScope viewer.  Perhaps the most interesting slide shows the way an experienced pathologists zeros right into the areas of medical interest, while a less experienced student views much more of the slide in a more random fashion:

The technique used by the University of Arizona researchers - hardware to track eye movements - might possibly be useful to compare the way people view slides on a microscope vs the way they view them on a computer monitor; that would be fascinating.