Awards |
Wednesday, December 14
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has named Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City as a Center for Quantitative Imaging Excellence for its research in cancer screening, treatment and follow-up care, specifically with modalities such as mammography, PET, CT and MRI.
While overall imaging costs are increasing faster than overall Medicare cancer care costs, 18F-FDG PET or PET/CT account for approximately 1.5 percent of Medicare cancer care expenditures, according to an economic analysis published online in a December supplement to the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
Patients seeking information about nuclear medicine and molecular imaging can now access discoverMI.org, a patient-focused website launched by the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM).
The UK’s first Biograph mMR, a hybrid molecular MR system from Siemens Healthcare, has been delivered to the University College Hospital (UCH) Macmillan Cancer Centre in London.
Over the next decade, the population of cancer survivors over 65 years of age will increase by approximately 42 percent, according to a report published in the October issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed a gene-based imaging system to target castration resistant prostate cancers (CRPCs), potentially allowing oncologists to find and treat metastases faster.
A retrospective examination of 5,201 high-risk patients undergoing annual screening CT studies for five years found unsuspected extrapulmonary malignancies in 0.5 percent of the cohort, according to a study published online Aug. 9 in Radiology.
Written by James Brice
Slowly but steadily, radiation oncologists are adopting PET and PET/CT to measure the early response of cancers to radiotherapy and other treatments. And progress has been significant.
Written by Lisa Fratt
Microscopic gold particles could multiply the effectiveness of standard cancer radiation therapy by acting as tiny missiles that destroy blood vessels feeding cancerous tumors. Early research about this method, which could shorten cancer treatment and make it more effective, is being presented at the 2011 Joint Meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) and Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists (COMP).
Two tiny genetic variations can predict which patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma are most likely to develop radiation-induced second cancers years after treatment, according to a genome-wide association study (GWAS) published online July 24 in Nature Medicine. Knowing in advance who is at risk could help physicians tailor treatment to reduce the risks for patients who are most susceptible to long-term damage.
Most primary care physicians (PCPs) are confident in their abilities to provide cancer survivors with adequate follow-up care, an assurance in the skills of PCPs shared by less than one-fourth of oncologists, who see themselves as better-equipped to care for survivors. Meanwhile, both PCPs and oncologists order significantly more screening than professional guidelines recommend.
Medicare cuts for imaging are restricting access to care for America’s most vulnerable while stifling innovation and jobs growth—a planned eighth round of cuts in five years must be stopped, wrote a group of U.S. senators in a letter to President Barack Obama.
Researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have demonstrated in mice that the performance of a novel biomarker-development pipeline using targeted mass spectrometry is robust enough to support the use of an analogous approach in humans, based on findings by principal investigator Amanda Paulovich, MD, PhD, an associate member of the Hutchinson Center's clinical research division, and colleagues published in Nature Biotechnology.
Cardinal Health has opened its first cyclotron facility in the state of Georgia, expanding its capability to manufacture molecular imaging biomarkers that aid in the early diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of cancer, neurological disorders and heart disease.
Written by Justine Cadet
The SNM 2011 annual meeting, being held at the San Antonio Convention, Sports & Entertainment Facilities Center in San Antonio from June 4 to 8, is bridging the ‘ologies, as nuclear medicine and molecular imaging are beginning to stretch their legs into multiple subspecialties, including neurology, cardiology, psychology, pharmacology and oncology—all of which are well represented in the program.
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has established a new initiative, the NCCN Specialized Imaging Research Consortium, designed to advance the treatment of patients with cancer through the clinical application of specialized imaging technologies.
Written by Clint vanSonnenberg
As many in the political and public arenas argue that the costs of healthcare are on an unsustainable trajectory, physicians may be reaching their limits as well: the costs of care for oncology “are unsustainable” and require far-reaching changes in treatment and attitudes, among oncologists as well as patients, wrote the authors of a May 25 article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
A class of engineered nanoparticles—Raman-silica-gold-nanoparticles—has been shown to be safe when administered by two alternative routes in mouse models, according to a study published April 20 in Science Translational Medicine. This marks the first step up the ladder of toxicology studies that, within a year and a half, could yield to human trials of these agents for detection of colorectal and possibly other cancers.
Li Sun, PhD, associate professor of mechanical engineering at University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering, has received a three-year, $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a new class of contrast agents to provide color to MRI images.
Novelos Therapeutics has completed its acquisition of Cellectar and $5.1 million financing to develop three novel cancer-targeted compounds.
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