More than 20 years ago, when Johns Hopkins scientists Bert Vogelstein, Ken Kinzler and their colleagues linked certain cancers to mutations in genes that repair DNA, they may not have imagined that their findings would spark an idea that has become a crystal ball for predicting whether immunotherapy is more likely to work in a person(...)
Research
What’s next for bladder cancer research?
Posted by | ResearchThe Johns Hopkins Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute recently announced a joint effort with the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network (BCAN) to fund up to two awards totaling $100,000 for young scientists. As part of the announcement, the Institute's director, David McConkey, Ph.D., gave us his thoughts on recent bladder cancer advances and ongoing research. Recent advances, says McConkey, include(...)
Scientists let GENIE data “out of the bottle”
Posted by | ResearchNearly 19,000 de-identified genomic records from cancer patients treated by an international group of hospitals, including the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, have been collected in a database coordinated by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and are now available to scientists across the globe. The data was gathered from the genomic sequencing of(...)
5 Things We Learned About Immunotherapy This Year
Posted by | ResearchImmunotherapy has become one of the hottest areas of cancer research, and the number of cancers successfully treated by immunotherapy is growing. Nearing the end of 2016, there are now four FDA-approved immunotherapy drugs that target immune system checkpoints to treat six types of cancer. We asked Drew Pardoll, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Bloomberg~Kimmel(...)
President Obama Signs 21st Century Cures Act
Posted by | ResearchA ceremony was held yesterday at the White House to sign the 21st Century Cures Act, which authorizes $4.8 billion in National Institutes of Health funding for a broad range of biomedical initiatives, including cancer and precision medicine. Immunotherapy patient Stefani Joho [watch a video of Stefani's story] and Dr. Elizabeth Jaffee, deputy director of the(...)
Studies track how the immune system responds to tumors
Posted by | ResearchThe University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy have published a pair of studies looking at biomarkers involved in the immune system's response to tumors in the Nov. 7 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The University of Chicago studies are explained here. For the Johns Hopkins(...)
How do you decide if a patient is right for a clinical trial at Hopkins?
Posted by | Research“Every clinical trial is done in a way to try to get a very homogenous group of patients, so we can better draw conclusions about whether the innovation we’re testing is actually working,” says radiation oncologist Russell K. Hales, M.D. of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center on the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus. “A patient(...)
It seems that more young people in their 30s and 40s are being diagnosed. Are any studies looking at this and can they help younger patients?
Posted by | Research“I'm not aware of data to show that more young people are being diagnosed with lung cancer,” says Russell K. Hales, M.D., a radiation oncologist, at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center on the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus. “But anecdotally, it is what I seem to be seeing as well. What we tend to see(...)
What Makes Some Kidney Cancers Resistant to Immunotherapy?
Posted by | ResearchSuzanne Topalian, M.D., associate director of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, is a pioneer in the search for biomarkers that predict responses to immunotherapy. In April at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in New Orleans, Topalian and her colleagues presented data linking a virus-associated cancer, called Merkel cell carcinoma - to response(...)
Study: First Hints that Anti-PD-1 Therapy May Help Men with Advanced Prostate Cancer
Posted by | ResearchSo-called anti-PD-1 drugs, which block the interaction between proteins on cancer and immune cells, are currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for certain patients with melanoma and non-small cell lung, kidney and bladder cancers. Now, a new study led by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University's Knight Cancer Institute and partially funded(...)