With “Bridging the Gap”, the Alma J. Cameron Foundation (AJCF) launches its inaugural campaign against cancer. This event catalyzes a much-needed conversation about lung cancer, the benefits of integrative medicine and the dearth of cancer awareness and information. Concurrently, the AJCF is pleased to initiate its Integrative Medicine grant program which provides those cancer patients facing economic challenges $6,000 for six months of treatments at the Simms/Mann UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology.

SKIN CHANGES AND CANCER TREATMENTS: TIPS FOR HEALTHY SKIN AND HAIR – TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 14, 2010: 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Carolyn Goh, MD, UCLA Clinical Instructor, dermatologist and researcher and Jenny Kim, MD, PhD, UCLA Associate Professor, dermatologist and researcher discuss how skin, (the bodys largest immune system), hair, and nails are affected by the trauma of traditional and newer targeted cancer treatments. General appearance can be altered and affects quality of life. Emphasis is placed on ways to improve skin changes during and after treatment with options available to help maintain healthy skin and hair. Tips for reducing side effects, recovery and looking your best are also presented.

LOCATION:
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center (RRMC) Auditorium
757 Westwood Plaza
Room B130 (B Level)
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Parking is available at the RRMC and the Medical Plaza.
Cost is $11.

www.SimmsMannCenter.ucla.edu

RECENT TREATMENT ADVANCES IN RADIATION ONCOLOGY – Tuesday July 13, 2010: 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Dr. Percy Lee, MD, UCLA Assistant Professor, radiation oncologist and researcher, discusses radiation therapy as an integral component in the fight against cancer and how recent advances have allowed radiation oncologists to target cancer more precisely by conforming the radiation to the size and shape of tumor thus maximally sparing normal tissue. He explains advances in 3-dimensional conformal therapy, intensity modulated radiation therapy, stereotactic radiosurgery, as well as stereotactic body radiation therapy which result in improved tumor control rates, survival, and decreases in short and longer term side effects.

LOCATION:
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center (RRMC) Auditorium
757 Westwood Plaza
Room B130 (B Level)
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Parking is available at the RRMC and the Medical Plaza. Cost is $11 at both locations.

Mark your calendar for the next Insights Into Cancer lecture on August 10, 2010:

Complementary Medicine in Cancer: A Panel of East West, Manipulative Therapies and Herbalism

Mary Hardy, MD, Medical Director, Simms/MannUCLA Center for Integrative Oncology, moderates a panel discussion with experts in treatment areas that complement conventional oncology on how complementary approaches can be utilized to improve quality of life, reduce symptoms and benefit wellness throughout the continuum of cancer care. Keith Henry, BS, DC, Assistant Professor of the Cleveland School of Chiropractic discusses the advantages and cautions of massage and manual therapies for cancer patients; Ka-Kit Hui, MD, FACP, Director, UCLA Center for East-West Medicine describes how acupuncture and herbs are used to treat symptoms of cancer and its treatments; and Amanda McQuade Crawford, BA MNIMH, author, medical herbalist with 20 years of experience shares knowledge about nutrition and herbs as complements to cancer care..

For additional information contact us at www.SimmsMannCenter.ucla.edu
(310) 794-6644

The Canary Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds research in early cancer detection, and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, are sponsoring this multi-institutional effort. NCI�s Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) and the Canary Foundation will provide initial funding of $1 million each.

Research has shown that lung cancer in people who have never smoked differs in many ways from the disease in smokers. For example, non-smokers with lung cancer have different tumor tissue structure, gene mutations, and demographic profiles than smokers with lung cancer. “Efforts to study the disease in never-smokers have been limited, and no screening tests or approaches for identifying individuals at increased risk are available today,” said Samir Hanash, M.D., Ph.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, and team leader for Canary Foundation-funded projects. “This inability to recognize non-smokers who are at risk often leads to delays in diagnosis and results in cancer identification at an advanced stage, and this problem is what we�re tackling with this new study.”

Global estimates suggest that as many as 25 percent of all lung cancers worldwide — 15 percent of those in men and 50 percent of those in women — are not attributable to smoking. “If you consider lung cancer in never smokers as a separate category, it ranks as the seventh most common cause of cancer deaths worldwide, even before cancers of the cervix, pancreas and prostate,” commented Adi Gazdar, M.B.B.S., of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, and team leader for the NCI-funded studies.

Using lung cancer cell lines, tissue, and blood specimens, researchers at five of the nation�s leading research institutions will undertake a coordinated approach to biomarker discovery using their expertise to study the same sets of specimens by different methods. The researchers will deposit the data in a single repository, and integrate the results to find the most promising biomarkers. Because of this design, this project will also serve as a pilot study to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach and the ability to integrate the data across different platforms. If it is successful, the researchers plan to open the project to additional collaborators from the EDRN.

The NCI-EDRN will fund most of the tumor studies, and the Canary Foundation will provide funding for the cell culture studies. Projects funded by NCI include:

• Protein biomarker discovery: In-Depth Proteomic Analysis of Plasmas from Subjects with Lung Cancer Arising in Current, and Never Smokers (Principal Investigator (PI): Hanash)
• Genome analysis: Mining the Genome and Transcriptome in Lung Cancer from Never Smokers (PI: Gazdar)
• Cellular alterations: Mitochondrial Mutations in Lung Cancer from Never Smokers (PI: David Sidransky, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Md.)
• Genome analysis: Genomic Studies of Lung Cancer Arising in Current, and Never Smokers (PIs: Wan Lam and Stephen Lam, British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, British Columbia)

Projects funded by the Canary Foundation include:

• Protein biomarker discovery: Proteomic Analysis of Lung Cancer Cell Lines (PI: Hanash)
• Tumor biomarker discovery: Biomarker Discovery for Lung Cancer in Never Smokers (PI: Gazdar)
• Genome analysis: Genomic Studies of Lung Cancer Cell Lines from Lung Cancers Arising in Current, and Never Smokers (PIs: Lam and Lam)
• RNA analysis: MicroRNA Profiles of a Lung Cancer Cell Line Panel (PI: Muneesh Tewari, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Wash.)
• Genome analysis: Genome-Wide DNA Methylation Profiling of Lung Adenocarcinomas from Never Smokers and Current Smokers (PI: Ite Laird-Offringa, University of Southern California, Los Angeles)

“This project is extremely important, both in its approach toward lung cancer detection and in its structure as a multi-institutional, transdisciplinary project funded through a public-private partnership,� said John E. Niederhuber, M.D., director of the National Cancer Institute. �Identification of biomarkers, which tell us who is at risk for cancer and help diagnose cancer at the earliest possible stages, is an important priority in cancer prevention research and a key component in efforts to reduce the burden of this disease.”

Canary Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to the goal of identifying cancer early through a simple blood test and then isolating it with imaging. Since 2004, Canary has raised over $30 million in pledges towards its initial goal of $50 million for early detection research. Its collaborative research programs span multiple disciplines and institutions. 100 percent of donations go to early detection research activities. For more information, please visit www.canaryfoundation.org.

NCI leads the National Cancer Program and the NIH effort to dramatically reduce the burden of cancer and improve the lives of cancer patients and their families, through research into prevention and cancer biology, the development of new interventions, and the training and mentoring of new researchers. For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI Web site at http://www.cancer.gov or call NCI’s Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).

The NCI�s Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) brings together dozens of institutions to help accelerate the translation of biomarker information into clinical applications and to evaluate new ways of testing cancer in its earliest stages and for cancer risk. For more information, please visit http://edrn.nci.nih.gov/.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation’s Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.