Relay for Life East Parker County Events

On April 23 the Ringleaders for a Cure team of the members of Relay for Life of East Parker County (Texas) of the American Cancer Society will be having a bake sale at the Aledo Ball Park on Bankhead.

For more information, click on http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=275531667118.

The group will also be having a garage sale April 30 at 8650 Bankhead Highway.

These are part of the continuing festivities leading up to the big Relay for Life that will be held May 14-15 in Aledo, TX from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. at Aledo High School.

In unrelated cancer news, a brain tumor vaccine shows promise in early trials, according to a recent article in Health Day News.

"In the clinical trials, researchers created individualized vaccines for 34 patients using brain tumor tissue and the patient's own dendtritic cells, which are part of the immune system," the article states. "When joined together in a vaccine, introducing the tumor cells to the '˜dendritic' cells '˜trains' the immune system to recognize cancer cells and mount an attack, the researchers said." (http://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/article/36448.htm?c=NL20110413).

About 91 percent of patients who received the vaccine were alive after one year.

In the trials, researchers tested two types of vaccines, according to the story.

"Another measure of the success of cancer treatments is '˜time to progression,' or how long it took for the tumor to come back," states the report. "In the study, patients received the vaccine every two weeks at first and then a booster every three months after that."

In other cancer news, the drug Vandetanib has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat a rare form of thyroid cancer in its latter statges, according to cancercompass.com.

"Medullary thyroid cancer accounts for about three to five percent of the estimated 44,600 cases of thyroid cancer diagnosed each year in the U.S., the FDA said in a news release," the website states. "Vandetanib was evaluated in a study of 331 people with late-stage medullary thyroid cancer."

Five people treated with the drug died from causes that included respiratory problems, heart failure, and a bacterial blood infection called sepsis.

A novel treatment for pancreatic cancer is under study, according to research.

"Researchers appear to have found a new way to significantly shrink pancreatic tumors by targeting the tissue surrounding cancer rather than the cancer itself," reports Cancer Compass. "The approach relies on an experimental antibody that sparks the patient's own immune system into shredding the structural '˜scaffolding' that holds tumors together."

The findings are in the March 25 issue of Science.