E-cigarettes deliver candy-flavored toxins
They’re marketed as a “safe” alternative to cigarettes that you can “smoke” anywhere. Invented in China, electronic cigarettes (“e-cigarettes”) look like their tobacco-filled cousins but use a battery-operated heating element to vaporize nicotine so the “smoker” can inhale it. While e-cigarettes don’t produce smoke, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that they do deliver carcinogens and other toxins to your lungs—including some of the same deadly chemicals found in antifreeze. “Novel products like these need to be regulated and tested rigorously before coming on the market; we have no idea what their short- and long-term health risks might be,” cautions Richard O’Connor, PhD, Director of the Tobacco Research Laboratory, Department of Health Behavior, Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Like traditional cigarettes, e-cigarettes may be appealing to young people, with nicotine in flavors ranging from bubble gum to chocolate chip cookies—some with added “energy” ingredients and vitamin supplements. E-cigarette ads, especially on the Internet, are hitting the mark: annual sales have ballooned from $10 million to $100 million—big profits for a product that carries unknown risks.

A new approach to treating advanced lung cancer
One of the greatest challenges in cancer therapy is finding the right balance between delivering a serious hit to cancer cells and protecting healthy cells nearby. Researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) hope to achieve that balance in a clinical trial designed to benefit patients who cannot undergo traditional curative surgery for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) because the tumor has progressed to a more advanced stage.

Led by Todd Demmy, MD, Chair of Thoracic Surgery at RPCI, the team is using the chemotherapy drug cisplatin to treat lung tumors. But rather than circulating the drug throughout the patient’s entire body, the researchers use it to temporarily replace blood just in the main artery of the lung, thus limiting the exposure of healthy, non-cancerous tissue. When the 30-minute infusion is complete, the cisplatin is flushed out, and normal blood flow resumes.

Initial results of the treatment, to be published this month in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery have been encouraging, showing significant reductions in the targeted tumor volumes. If this research continues to show promise, it may be expanded to cover patients with other tumor types, different classes of drugs and patients with earlier stages of cancer.

New cancer test offers hope for early detection
A new way of testing a stool sample may one day lead to early detection of many digestive tract cancers, such as those of the colon, stomach, pancreas, bile duct and esophagus. The test looks for cancer cells’ DNA or genetic material that’s shed from the surface of cancer cells. Experts at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota tested stool samples of 70 patients with digestive tract cancers and 70 healthy subjects, and detected approximately 70 percent of all cancers and 100 percent of stomach and colorectal cancers. The test was equally accurate in detecting early- and late-stage cancers. The experts hope the test may soon lead to routine screenings for digestive tract cancers, many of which have high mortality rates.

Until then, screening colonoscopy is your best defense against colon cancer. When—and how—should you be screened? Roswell Park Cancer Institute has the answers.

Extra pounds, early menopause linked to uterine disease
“There is no doubt that obesity resulting in excessive estrogen production leads to endometrial cancer,” says Shashikant Lele, MD, Chair of Gynecologic Oncology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Those extra pounds also complicate treatment, he adds: “Surgery in patients who are obese (with a body mass index, or BMI, of more than 30) is always challenging; we have to deviate from standard care in morbidly obese patients.” Those patients also tend to experience significant medical problems following surgery.

Now a report in Obstetrics & Gynecology indicates that the risk of developing endometrial cancer is even greater for obese women who go through menopause early. Researchers evaluated 421 women ages 20-54 who had endometrial cancer and compared them to a control group of more than 3,000 women. They found that women who were younger than 45 when they had their last period and were overweight, with a BMI of 25 to 29.9, were six times more likely than their normal-weight peers to develop endometrial cancer. Those with a BMI greater than 35 were 22 times more likely to develop endometrial cancer. By comparison, obese women older than 45 at the time of their last period were 3.7 times more likely than normal-weight women to face endometrial cancer.