Category Archives: Cancer

The epic battle with cancer’s ‘Death Star’

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Forty years after the mutant genes that cause the deadliest cancers were discovered, drugs that target them could be approved

In the early 1980s, Channing Der was just beginning his career as a scientist at Harvard Medical School when he happened upon a discovery that would change the course of cancer research. At the time, the holy grail of cancer biology was discovering so-called oncogenes – genetic switches that can turn a normal cell into a cancer cell – in the genomes of tumours. But while teams of scientists had thrown everything at it for the best part of a decade, their efforts had proved fruitless. One by one, they were beginning to accept that it might be a dead end.

Der found himself assigned to test 20 different genes that had been identified as possible oncogene candidates. His question was simple: did any of them actually exist in tumours in a form that was different from normal cells?

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Nearly half with cancer symptoms in the UK did not see GP in first wave of pandemic

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People avoided seeking medical help during first lockdown because they did not want to burden NHS

Almost half of those who had a potential symptom of cancer during the pandemic’s first wave did not see a GP, even when they coughed up blood or developed a lump, a new study shows.

People held off seeking medical help because they did not want to waste health professionals’ time, add to the pressure on the NHS or go to hospital in case they caught Covid-19.

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CT scan catches 70% of lung cancers at early stage, NHS study finds

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Exclusive: early detection hailed as ‘major breakthrough’ for treatment of Britain’s deadliest form of cancer

Thousands of lives could be saved if people at risk of developing Britain’s deadliest cancer were screened to diagnose it before it becomes incurable, a major NHS study has found.

Giving smokers and ex-smokers a CT scan uncovers cancerous lung tumours when they are at an early enough stage so they can still be removed, rather than continuing to grow unnoticed, it shows.

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UK-US Brexit trade deal ‘could fill supermarkets with cancer-risk bacon’

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Fears of illness over nitrites used in US but currently banned in Britain and EU

British stores could be flooded with “dangerous” bacon and ham from the US, marketed under misleading labels, as the result of a transatlantic trade deal, says the author of a new book based on a decade of investigation into the food industry.

The meat has been cured with nitrites extracted from vegetables, a practice not permitted by the European Commission because of evidence that it increases the risk of bowel cancer. But it is allowed in the US, where the product is often labelled as “all natural”. The powerful US meat industry is likely to insist that the export of nitrite-cured meat is a condition of a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal, which the UK government is under intense pressure to deliver.

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Experience: I got married with months to live

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The only photos were taken on my phone by an oncology nurse, but they reflect the joy we were feeling

I met Emma at a horrendous “mingling event” one wet spring evening in 2015. We connected immediately, and after a couple of dates I think we both knew we had a future together. By Christmas, Emma had moved out of her flat in Hove and into the house I lived in for my job, as site manager for a Brighton primary school. We’d talked about wanting kids on our very first date; we were both in our mid-30s and it seemed important to be upfront.

Our son, Archie, was born in 2018 and by the time he was toddling he was like my shadow, following me as I fixed things and helping put away tools. It never occurred to me I might not get to see him grow up. I’ve always been fit and healthy, and when I suddenly started losing weight last summer my first thought was, “Great – now I won’t need to spend so much time at the gym.” But I was losing my appetite, too, and soon people were saying, “James, what’s up? You don’t look great.”

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How race to track mystery gene with links to three cancers saved millions

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25 years ago, a mutation was discovered that makes some people susceptible to the disease, and now it has transformed treatment

Ten years ago, Tony Herbert developed a lump on the right side of his chest. The clump of tissue grew and became painful and he was tested for breast cancer. The result was positive.

“I had surgery and chemotherapy and that worked,” he said last week. But how had Herbert managed to develop a condition that is so rare in men? Only about 400 cases of male breast cancer are diagnosed every year in the UK compared with around 55,000 in women. A genetic test revealed the answer. Herbert had inherited a pathogenic version of a gene called BRCA2 and this mutation had triggered his condition.

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‘Find a part of each day to relish’: coping with cancer and Covid

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This year has challenged us all. But for Sarah Hughes it’s been particularly hard. Here, she talks about living with cancer – and letting in the light in the darkest of times

The strangest thing about having an incurable illness during a time of pandemic is the weird but unavoidable sense that everyone has finally caught up with you. As people started talking about how worried they were, how they couldn’t stop thinking about the virus, how difficult life now seemed, how isolated, the temptation to say: “Hey guys, welcome to my world” was overwhelming.

This had never felt more pertinent than last month, when social media lit up with Breast Cancer Awareness memes and pink ribbons and talk of fighting and beating the disease. For those of us with stage IV cancer such messages seem beamed in from another planet. As the campaign group MetUpUK points out, 31 people die every day from metastatic breast cancer, and countless more of us live each day with a disease that has a median survival rate of two to three years – a rate that drops considerably if you have a cancer that began as a triple negative breast cancer, as mine did. Yet our stories, which might force people to face the uncomfortable truth that we are not “winning” the “fight”, are rarely told.

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Tracey Emin on her cancer: ‘I will find love. I will have exhibitions. I will enjoy life’

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As she recovers from a brutal summer of cancer treatment, Tracey Emin takes us round her new show – and imagines spending the next 30 years painting in her pyjamas to the sound of birdsong

‘I am so lucky,” says Tracey Emin as we stand in the grand galleries of the Royal Academy. I can tell, from her brown eyes, that she’s smiling beneath her face mask. As we roam rooms painted moody blue for her new exhibition, in which her paintings, bronzes and neons are juxtaposed with the oils and watercolours of Edvard Munch, Emin adjusts her stoma bag occasionally and laughs a lot. “I’m in love with Munch,” she says. “Not with the art, but with the man. I have been since I was 18.”

This is not what I expected. Minutes earlier, walking through this London gallery’s courtyard, I felt darkness descending everywhere. England was re-entering lockdown, Biden hadn’t yet won Michigan and the last visitors to the Royal Academy for a month were heading out into the night. I expected the 57-year-old artist to be at death’s door, defeated by disease and circumstance. She is, after all, putting on an exhibition hardly anyone will see: “They sold 16,000 advance tickets but when Boris announced the second lockdown, we knew we couldn’t open.” All she can hope is that the gallery will open in December, but that is uncertain.

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Elliot Dallen, who inspired many with articles about his cancer, dies aged 31

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Dallen died hours after the Guardian published piece that reflected on facing terminal illness

The family of a young man who wrote movingly of coping with terminal cancer against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic have told of taking comfort from the huge response to his articles, after he died on Monday.

Elliot Dallen, 31, died hours after the Guardian published the second of two articles by him in which he reflected on his life and shared the lessons which he had learned.

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Researchers say blood test can detect cancer years before symptoms

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Team based in China develop test that identifies cancers up to four years before signs appear

A blood test can pick up cancers up to four years before symptoms appear, researchers say, in the latest study to raise hopes of early detection.

A team led by researchers in China say the non-invasive blood test – called PanSeer – detects cancer in 95% of individuals who have no symptoms but later receive a diagnosis.

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Kelly Preston, actor and wife of John Travolta, dies aged 57 from breast cancer

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Travolta says ‘Kelly’s love and life will always be remembered’ after revealing actor’s death after two-year illness

Kelly Preston, who appeared in the hit films Jerry Maguire and Twins, has died, her husband, John Travolta, said. She was 57.

Travolta said in an Instagram post that his wife of 28 years, who was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, died on Sunday.

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A difficult conversation with her family led to a better death for my patient | Ranjana Srivastava

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Helping grieving relatives reach a difficult decision without hectoring or judging is a fine art

“What kind of God would do this?” she sobs and rocks. I am sinking in my chair and the nurse is perched on the side table. To focus on something other than her palpable despair, I regard the worn sofa and imagine a public hospital meeting room with comfort and sunlight. When a daughter arrives, she squeezes in beside her grieving mother.

She is a woman plainly devoted to God and her children, especially the unmarried daughter who is now my patient. The second daughter strikes me as thoughtful and educated, and as becomes evident, helpless to stem the tide of her mother’s sorrow. I fret at this, not because I am rushed, rather the patient needs an urgent outcome.

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Cancer treatment during the pandemic is bringing back traumatic memories

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I am about to go through an invasive therapy for my cervical cancer. The process has brought me closer to my seven-year-old self

In a large black planner that I keep next to my bed, I mark off each round of chemotherapy and radiation. And after each one, I feel a growing sense of dread.

That’s because every mark means I’m one step closer to brachytherapy, a process that involves doctors sticking radioactive materials into my cervix – or what’s left of it anyway. It’s a way for them to aim high doses of radiation at my tumor, without risking the other nearby organs.

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Cancer Research UK to cut funding for research by £44m

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UK’s biggest cancer charity expects income to fall by up to 25% as a result of the coronavirus crisis

The UK’s biggest cancer charity is cutting research funding by £44m because of a sharp fall in income and has acknowledged that the move could set back the fight against the disease for many years.

Cancer Research UK (CRUK), which funds nearly half of the cancer research in the country, said it was the most difficult decision it had ever taken but explained that it believed limiting spending now would enable it to continue to support life-saving research in the long-run.

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AI program could check blood for signs of lung cancer

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Scientists hope that if software passes trials it could boost screening rates

Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence program that can screen people for lung cancer by analysing their blood for DNA mutations that drive the disease.

The software is experimental and needs to be verified in a clinical trial, but doctors are hopeful that if it proves its worth at scale, it will boost lung cancer screening rates by making the procedure as simple as a routine blood test.

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We are old and in love, but she left me after my cancer diagnosis | Dear Mariella

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We might assume better treatment from maturing adults but at least she was decisive, says Mariella Frostrup

The dilemma In the summer I met a wonderful woman online. She is kind, clever, good looking and many other positive things. We clicked from the outset and became lovers after a couple of months. We have a combined age of 127, but we both said the sex was the best we’ve ever enjoyed. She told me she loved me – and it was reciprocated. We live 100 miles apart, but that suited our busy lifestyles.

Everything was wonderful and we seemed to be very much on the same wavelength until November, when I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. The treatment is extensive, but hasn’t yet started. She broke up with me over Christmas. She still professes love for me (though we haven’t been in contact for a few weeks), but says she is too busy with work, family and friends to commit to me, and that I would become too needy of her and her time. I don’t agree that I would, but I can see why she might say that. I have recently retired. I miss her terribly and don’t know how to deal with it.

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Second person ever to be cleared of HIV reveals identity

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Adam Castillejo, known as the London patient, goes public to give hope to others with illness

The second person ever to be cleared of HIV has revealed his identity, saying he wants to be an “ambassador of hope” to others with the condition.

Adam Castillejo, the so-called London patient, was declared free of HIV last year, 18 months after stopping antiretroviral therapy following a stem cell – or bone marrow – transplant to treat blood cancer.

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‘Electronic nose’ could smell breath to warn about higher risk of oesophageal cancer

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Current diagnostic method for Barrett’s oesophagus relies on invasive and costly endoscopy

An electronic device that “sniffs” breath may offer a new way to identify people with a condition that can lead to cancer of the oesophagus, researchers have revealed.

Recent figures suggest there are about 9,000 new cases of oesophageal cancer, or cancer of the food pipe, every year in the UK.

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My mum only had a few months to live. So we rented a van and took a road trip

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We’d been incredibly close when I was a child. Then, in 1994 she went away and never came back. Now here we were, taking to the road with no real plan after her cancer diagnosis

I had been sitting in the cafeteria of a hospital in Perth, Australia, for seven hours waiting for the phone to ring.

Seven hours of drained coffee cups, watching families cry and cling to each other, wondering if they were tears of grief or relief, seven hours of slowly feeling the panic rise up through my body.

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Mass cervical cancer vaccine rollout could save 62 million lives in next 100 years

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Studies project rapidly deploying HPV vaccine in 78 of the world’s poorest countries could help prevent more than 74 million cases

More than 74m cervical cancer cases and 62m deaths could be averted in the next 100 years if 78 of the world’s poorest countries rapidly deploy HPV vaccinations, cervical screening and cancer treatment, two new studies have projected.

The predictive modelling is published on Friday in Lancet by Université Laval, Harvard University and Cancer Council New South Wales working with the World Health Organisation. All three teams independently developed their models based on the biological understanding of cervical cancer, and multiple data sources from multiple countries located in east Asia and Pacific, Europe and central Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

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