Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Dist. 16, OH), the chair of the House Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee which oversees funding decisions for agencies such as the National Cancer Institute (NCI), promisd to maintain funding for cancer research at an August 28 town hall meeting in Wooster, Ohio.

C3 has been working with both House and Senate members to ensure an appropriate increase in NCI funding. Though Chairman Regula’s comments do not guarantee increases for fiscal year 2007, they do relieve our fears that current cuts in the House and Senate bills will ultimately be adopted.

C3 advocate Rebecca Dague raised the issue at the constituent gathering (as reported August 29 by The Daily-Record of Wooster, Ohio):

Rebecca Dague, a Medina resident struggling with colon cancer, questioned whether funding would be cut to the National Cancer Institute and research under way to find cures and new methods of treatment. Regula, whose subcommittee handles such funding, assured her otherwise.

“We’re not going to cut funding to NCI – take my word for it,” he said.

Thank you Rep. Regula. We appreciate your promise, and we look forward to working with you to make it real.

Click here to read the full article.

President George W. Bush announced on August 15, 2006 that he intended to appointed John E. Niederhuber, MD to be the 13th director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).  Dr. Niederhuber has been acting director of NCI since June.

Before becoming acting NCI director, Dr. Niederhuber was NCI’s chief operating officer and deputy director for translational and clinical research.

He has had a long career in cancer research and treatment.  Prior to coming to NCI, he was professor of surgery and oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine in Madison.  At Wisconsin, he was also director of the University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of NCI’s 61 designated cancer centers.  Earlier, he was chair of the Department of Surgery at Stanford and held professorships at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

He is a graduate of Bethany College in West Virginia and the Ohio State University School of Medicine.

In a speech to the American Association for Cancer Research in April, Dr. Niederhuber talked about being able to bring the sequencing of the human genome to prevention of cancer and better treatment for individual cancer patients.

We are truly entering a new age of discovery and a new age of therapy: an age in which we will be able to specifically tailor our prevention and our treatment for each individual patient. Ladies and gentlemen, this new treatment isn’t decades away. The technology exists today. It exists because of our country’s investment in cancer research and because of the work in your laboratories.

Dr. Niederhuber’s complete biography is on the NCI web site.

During colorectal screening, patients with HIV — human immunodeficiency virus — had a significantly greater risk for polyps (adenomas) and colon cancers than people without HIV infection.  Since patients with HIV are now living well beyond the 50 years of age when colorectal cancer risk increases, screening is an important issue for them.

In a recent study reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine nearly 2,400 patients were screened for colorectal cancer using flexible sigmoidoscopy.  There were 165 HIV positive patients in the group. 

Individuals with HIV were more than twice as likely to have polyps in the part of the colon reached by flexible sigmoidoscopy.  25.5% of the HIV group had adenomatous polyps compared to 12.9% of controls without HIV.  They also had more advanced adenomas and colorectal cancer (7;3% vs. 3.8%)

Anyone who had polyps found during sigmoidoscopy had a follow-up colonoscopy to examine the entire colon.  Again, HIV-infected people were almost twice as likely to have polyps in the proximal colon — that part of the colon not accessible to flexible sigmoidoscopy.

Edmund J. Bini and his colleagues at the New York University School of Medicine concluded:

Patients infected with HIV are more likely to have colonic neoplasms on screening flexible sigmoidoscopy than those without HIV, and these individuals should be offered colorectal cancer screening.

An article about the study was on Reuters Health Information on August 23, 2006.

About half of colon and rectal cancer patients whose disease has not spread to distant organs will live more than 5 years and be considered cured.  But it is not always easy to predict outcomes for individual early stage patients.

Researchers in Thailand measured levels of two proteins in the blood of colon and rectal cancer before surgery to remove their cancers.  Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels usually increase when cancer spreads.  In addition albumin (ALB) is lower than normal in people with metastatic colorectal cancer.

Between 1998 and 2002, 170 patients had CEA and ALB measured before surgery. CEA was considered high when it was at least 5 ng/ML.  Albumin was low at 2.5 g/dL or below.

Overall 5 year survival for the group was 54%.  However, survival rates differed significantly depending on CEA and albumin levels.  Five year survival rates:

• Low CEA and high ALB — 66%
• Low CEA and low ALB — 63%
• High CEA and high ALB — 46%
• High CEA and low ALB —34%

In addition, patients with a CEA level higher than 5 whose tumors were poorly differentiated had significantly lower survival than those with high CEA and well-differentiated tumors.

Teeranut  Boonpipattanapong MD and colleagues published the results of their research in the August 2006 issue of The Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology.

Additional information about the study can be found on the CancerConsultants.Com web site.

The Food and Drug Administration has issued a warning letter to consumers about the use of high-strength (35%) hydrogen peroxide.  This strength of hydrogen peroxide is being marketed as “35 Percent Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide” on web sites and is promoted for the treatment of AIDS, cancer, emphysema, and other serious medical conditions.

The FDA recommends that:

consumers who are currently using high-strength hydrogen peroxide stop immediately and consult their health care provider.

Further, the FDA press release says,

FDA has never approved high-strength hydrogen peroxide to be taken internally and considers hydrogen peroxide at 35 percent strength dangerous, even if handled according to the manufacturer’s directions. This high-strength hydrogen peroxide — more than 10 times stronger than the solution used in over-the-counter drugs to disinfect minor cuts — is highly corrosive. Ingesting hydrogen peroxide can cause gastrointestinal irritation or ulceration. Intravenous (IV) administration of hydrogen peroxide can cause inflammation of the blood vessel at the injection site, gas embolisms (bubbles in blood vessels), and potentially life-threatening allergic reactions.

The FDA sent warning letters to firms marketing the high-strength hydrogen peroxide.