On the pulse

Cancerkin’s News….
Breast Cancer awareness month events this week…
On Wednesday, Dr Alison Jones gave a highly informative and interesting lecture as the first of our Breast Cancer Awareness Month talks this week. Talking on the subject of ‘advances in drug treatment’, Dr Jones touched on past, present and future developments in breast cancer treatment and helped to explain how decisions about treatment are made, which drugs are available, why they are chosen and how drug treatment will evolve in the future. Afterwards, she held a question and answers session, giving many of our patients the opportunity to find out more about treatment. We would like to thank Dr Jones for sharing her expertise with us.

Also on Wednesday, we held our annual Breast Cancer Awareness Month sale, which was another huge success. All in all, we raised over £800 and this was largely thanks to Rada Ristic, who had kindly donated her extensive book collection to Cancerkin for fundraising when she died. We would like to thank all those who visited our stall and helped make the sale a hit. We really appreciate the hard work done by our volunteers who helped to collect donations and to hand out cake on the day – thank you!

Goodbye Lauren!
Lauren Newton, our Events and Development manager, will be leaving the Cancerkin team at the end of this week. She’s off on her travels before beginning a new job at Accenture, but will be back to support Cancerkin efforts in the future. We wish her all the best!

Creative writing in November…
Lily Seibold is back, holding her next creative writing session on Monday 1st November 2010 at 10am-3pm. This workshop will focus on the theme of ‘Friendship’. If you would like to attend, please email our Office Manager Habeeb at h.ahmed@cancerkin.org.uk or call 0207 830 2323 to book your place.

In the news…
Drug advances for triple negative breast cancer…
As we reported in On the pulse in September, scientists have recently made breakthrough progress in understanding the development of ‘triple negative’ breast cancer (TNBC), a particularly aggressive form of cancer that often affects younger women. As reported in The Telegraph this week, new advances in treatment for TNBC have been made, which could almost double survival times for many women.

Of the 46,000 people diagnosed with breast cancer each year, 15 to 25% are cases of TNBC and treatment options for women with the disease are currently very limited. Trials into a new drug called Iniparib have produced positive results, with survival times in patients with advanced TNBC increasing on average from 7.7 months to 12.3 months. The trial of 116 patients found that, on average, when combined with chemotherapy, Iniparib shrank tumours, stopped cancers getting worse for nearly six months and increased survival by almost 5 months.

Iniparib belongs to a group of anti-cancer drugs known as Parp-inhibitors. They work by inhibiting enzymes that normally repair damage to DNA but that, when taken over by cancer, advance its growth. Breakthrough Breast Cancer have welcomed the study’s research into this group of drugs and described its results as ‘encouraging.’ However, further clinical trials with the drug will be necessary before it can be made available to breast cancer patients and the final phase of trials is due to start next year. Once approved, the drug could benefit thousands of women with triple negative breast cancer. If you would like to read more about the trials, please click here.

Healthy eating can cut the risk of breast cancer…
In a society that is troubled by increasing levels of obesity, it is well known that being significantly overweight can contribute to the risk of developing breast cancer. In fact, according to an article published in The Daily Mail this week, obesity is thought to be the cause of up to a third of all cases. As part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the newspaper has released a series of articles detailing two new, but very different diets that both claim to reduce the risk of developing the disease. While both concentrate on helping us to lose weight, they also claim to have added cancer-fighting benefits.

A new book written by the American dietician Dr Mary Flynn advises that we should not obsessively count calories but should eat as many foods with cancer-fighting properties as we can. She suggests avoiding food without these properties, so that means no meat or fish. In her eyes, the ideal diet would be an entirely vegetarian one, which includes plenty of cancer-beating olive oil, wholegrain, vegetables and fruit, some dairy and eggs and even the odd glass of wine. If you would like to learn more about Dr Mary Flynn’s diet and to find examples of some detailed meal plans, click here.

Taking a quite different approach, a strict low calorie diet has appeared following a study conducted by the Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester and published in the International Journal of Obesity. A group of women kept to a specially formulated diet consisting of just 650 calories for two days a week, a figure that is a third of the daily recommended intake for women. After 6 months, scientists found the women lost weight and also had considerably lower levels of cancer-causing hormones in their blood. The science behind the diet suggests that when the body is deprived of food, less sugar reaches breast cells, making them less likely to divide and become cancerous. Commenting on the study, however, Dr Julie Sharp of Cancer Research UK said, ‘this study is not about breast cancer, it’s a study showing how different diet patterns affect weight loss and it’s misleading to draw any conclusions about breast cancer from this research.’ To read more about the findings of the study click here.

Possible link between breast cancer and air pollution…
Scientists in Canada have evidence to suggest that post-menopausal women living in areas with high levels of traffic-related air pollution are at a higher risk of developing breast cancer. Researchers at the McGill University and the University of Montreal cross-referenced air pollution maps with maps displaying the home addresses of women diagnosed with the disease, and found that those living in areas with higher levels of nitrogen oxide, found in car exhaust fumes, were much more likely to develop breast cancer. They found that post-menopausal women living in the most polluted areas were almost twice as likely to develop the disease as those living in areas with the lowest levels.

Co-author of the study, Mark Goldberg, stated that, even after other risks contributing to the development of breast cancer had been factored in, for example smoking, drinking and hazards in the workplace, ‘ the results were startling’. However, another University of Montreal researcher, France Labrèche added that more research was required before conclusions could be drawn. She said “at the moment, we are not in a position to say with assurance that air pollution causes breast cancer. However, we can say that the possible link merits serious investigation." To read the article in full, please click here.

Laura Smith 15th October 2010
l.smith@cancerkin.org.uk