A press release from the Children’s Cancer Institute outlines hopeful results from experiments performed in mice and 3-D computer models that investigated a new treatment for the rare childhood brain tumor diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). The treatment consists of a combination of the drugs difluoromethylornithine (DFMO) and AMXT 1501. This combo is already being tested in clinical trials in adults with cancer, and… Read more »
July 16, 2018
Focus: All Cancers
Topics: The Big Picture
Excerpt: “Cancer has been called malevolent. Devious. Even ingenious. It’s actually none of these. Cancer has no purpose or direction. As these wayward cells arise, they simply adapt to the environmental conditions of the tissues in which they exist. That concept, which springs from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, is guiding new approaches to fighting this common and deadly disease. “In Darwinian evolution, organisms… Read more »
November 27, 2018
Focus: All Cancers
Originally from the U.S., Ellen McGregor Kortan and her husband saved carefully and retired early so they could travel the world. They had been globetrotting continuously for three years when Ellen was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 46. We emailed her some questions about her nomadic cancer experience, which she answered while en route from Athens to Singapore: You and… Read more »
March 17, 2014
Focus: All Cancers
Late in 2010, Chelsea Price’s boyfriend noticed that a mole on her upper back was scabbed and weeping. “It had always been there but he thought I should get it checked,” recalls Chelsea, who was then 23 years old. By the time her dermatology appointment rolled around, however, the mole had healed. “I almost cancelled,” she says. Good thing she didn’t.
April 6, 2015
Focus: All Cancers
In late 2009, Chris Newman thought she was just another busy person who kept feeling run down. “I had profound fatigue for a year and two bouts of bronchitis,” recalls Chris, who was a lawyer at the time. Then a bad case of pneumonia took her to the emergency room, where an X-ray film revealed a large mass—nearly 3 inches across—and several small ones in her lungs. A biopsy showed she had non-small cell lung cancer, a positron emission tomography (PET) scan for sugar uptake showed it was extremely aggressive, and genetic testing showed there was no targeted treatment for it.
September 22, 2015
Focus: All Cancers
In 2010, Craig Blower had such a bad case of bronchitis that his doctor put him on steroids. Craig’s airways cleared up in a month or two, and he didn’t give it any more thought. Then, in late 2012, his throat began whistling slightly when he woke up. But Craig, who was 59 years old at the time, thought it was just part of getting older.
August 17, 2016
Focus: All Cancers
In March of 2015, Dyanne Søraas was diagnosed with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). She was 30 years old and otherwise healthy. Dyanne and her husband, Lars, began to research potential treatment options. Standard treatment seemed to provide little hope, and they gradually decided they would need to think outside the box in order to maximize the time their family would have together.
May 18, 2015
Focus: All Cancers
In October 2013, Lisa Goldman had a dry cough that wouldn’t go away. “It was bad enough that I went to the doctor, which I don’t do very often,” she says. He ordered a chest radiograph, said her lungs were clear, prescribed codeine cough syrup, and sent her home. But she kept coughing, so she kept coming back. On her second visit, her doctor said her airways were irritated and prescribed an inhaler and antibiotics. By her third visit, she’d begun to cough up a bit of blood, but her doctor just repeated that her airways were irritated and prescribed steroids.
February 18, 2020
Focus: All Cancers
In 2018, on a trip to Lake Tahoe, I went to the emergency room for excruciating belly pain that was keeping me from sleeping. To my surprise, the care team discovered that my pain was due to lymphoma. I soon started a three-month treatment with a combination of chemotherapy drugs known as R-CHOP. Thankfully, it went well. After my treatment, I had a scan… Read more »
November 2, 2015
Focus: All Cancers
In March 2011, Janet Freeman-Daily was about to take a long family trip to China. She’d been coughing for a while, so she asked her doctor for an antibiotic as a precaution before leaving. Even so, she came back in May with a respiratory infection that wouldn’t go away.