Tuesday, August 30, 2011

New Lung Cancer Pill Highlights Improved Way of Treating Patients

A new drug to combat a certain type of lung cancer is being hailed today as an "amazing development" by medical experts.

The drug crizotinib (Xalkori), manufactured by Pfizer and approved last week by the Food and Drug Administration, is intended for a small number of patients.
The twice-daily capsules are meant for patients with non-small cell lung cancer who have a unique gene known as an abnormal anaplastic lymphoma kinase(ALK). An ALK gene causes cancer growth and development.

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Thursday, August 18, 2011

Sniff out Lung Cancer with a dog??

German researchers report in the European Respiratory Journal that dogs can be trained to detect lung cancer by sniffing human breath. The scientists worked with an admittedly small number of canines — just four, including two German shepherds, a Lab and an Australian shepherd — but the dogs had good success. They were able to suss out cancer in 71 out of 100 breath samples from lung cancer patients, and were able to correctly identify 93% of cancer-free samples, giving them an impressively low rate of false positives.

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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Tobacco giants suing FDA over warning labels mandate

(CNN) -- Five tobacco companies, including some of the largest in the United States, filed a lawsuit against the federal government on Tuesday, alleging that government-mandated graphic warning labels on cigarette packages unconstitutionally infringe on the companies' rights.