Stand Up To Cancer

In case you haven't heard, we got a new president on Tuesday, and SU2C friend Lance Armstrong is excited about President Obama's stance on cancer issues."In my three or four meetings with him he's been delightful, smart, present, and he's given me hope," Armstrong said. "For the US and the world, this is a monumental moment. He brings a kind of hope and optimism not only to the US, but around the world."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jHZiP8ewB7_ao3atcRFHv75-Atsg

Tuesday also brought some bad news: Sen Ted Kennedy (D-NY), who received treatment for brain cancer last year, collapsed at an inaugural luncheon. Fortunately, he seems to be doing all right.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/01/ted-kennedy.html

For those of us addicted to caffeine, there's fresh cause to celebrate: researchers in Florida have found that drinking three cups of tea a day could reduce the risk of breast cancer in women under the age of 50. (Green tea is best.) The health benefits of tea just keep building. Bottoms up!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,481453,00.html

Elsewhere in the US, docs at Cincinnati Children's Hospital have reprogrammed the herpes virus to block tumor formation in mice. The repurposed virus targets and kills cancer stem cells that lead to neuroblastoma. The lead researcher on the study stressed the potential of targeted therapies: "We show that one promising approach for targeted treatment is biological therapy, such as an engineered oncolytic virus that seeks out and kills progenitor cells that could be the seeds of cancers," he said.
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/01/22/Virus_made_to_kill_cancer_stem_cells/UPI-91941232638414/

Seasonal affective disorder is always in the news at this time of year, when most of the country is buried underneath snow and ice. But doctors warn that the solution isn't hopping into a tanning bed; while a few minutes under a sunlamp may lift some of those winter blues, artificial tanning still produces up to 12 times as much dangerous UV light as the sun.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,481469,00.html

Early detection. Early detection. Early detection. It's the drumbeat behind cancer prevention, and an article in Wired this week does a great job of explaining why. "[The] cure-driven approach has dominated the research since Richard Nixon declared war on the disease in 1971," the article says. "But it has yielded meager results . . . More than a third of all Americans--some 120 million people--will be diagnosed with cancer sometime in their lives. Their illness may be invisible now, but it's out there. And that presents a great, and largely unexamined, opportunity."
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-01/ff_cancer

Finally, here's a piece that looks at the other side of cancer statistics. While 120 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetimes, two out of three will not. In a new study, one Swedish researcher suggests taking a look at the people who don't get cancer to figure out what's behind their resistance to the disease. "Cancer resistance must be investigated on its own merits," he said. "It is possible and even likely that evolution has provided our species with highly efficient cancer resistance mechanisms." A dose of optimism - I like it!
http://www.physorg.com/news151840958.html

That's all for this week, but check in next Thursday for more recommended reading!

--Cat