HIV/AIDS News & Information

Speaker: Ronald B. Natale, MD, Acting Medical Director, Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center, Beverly Hills, California. Targeted therapy with the investigational oral epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor inhibitor ZD1839 (Iressa, Astra Zeneca) was able to shrink tumors in some patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who were resistant to treatment with more than two [...]

Tamoxifen as Standard Adjuvant Hormonal Treatment Speaker: Eric P. Winer, MD, Director of the Breast Oncology Center, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. Assessing the use of aromatase inhibitors as adjuvant therapy for women with hormone receptor positive (HR+) breast cancer, an American Society of Clinical Oncology [...]

Presenter: James Berenson, MD, Medical and Scientific Director, Institute for Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research, West Hollywood, California Multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable B-cell malignancy, and resistance develops in nearly all patients. Most patients develop renal insufficiency, which is associated with poor survival.

Presenter: Hagop Kantarjian, MD, Chairman and Professor, Leukemia Department, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas Nearly 70% of patients with early-chronic-phase CML who receive imatinib mesylate (Gleevec, Novartis) achieve a complete cytogenetic response. After a median follow-up of five years, the annual rate of resistance with progression was 4%, and the annual [...]

Presenter: Azra Raza, MD, Professor of Medicine, and Chief of Hematology Oncology University of Massachusetts, Worcester, Massachusetts The DNA methyltransferase inhibitor 5-azacytidine (Vidaza, Pharmion) elicits complete and partial hematological responses in about 50% of patients with MDS, improves quality of life, and prolongs the time to AML transformation, compared with supportive care. Thalidomide has produced [...]

Clofarabine in Adult Acute Myelogenous Leukemia Presenter: Stefan Faderl, MD, Associate Professor, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas The standard therapy for acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) continues to be based on cytarabine (ara-C, DepoCyt, Enzon), typically in combination with anthracyclines such as idarubicin (Idamycin, Pfizer) or daunorubicin (Cerubidine, Bedford). Although 60% to [...]

Crohn’s Disease with Fistula Adalimumab (Humira, Abbott), a fully human monoclonal antibody that targets tumor necrosis factor (TNF), has been found efficacious for inducing and maintaining remission in patients with Crohn’s disease (CD). According to data presented at the meeting, adalimumab offers sustained responses for the 20% to 30% of patients whose course is complicated [...]