Although Asian Americans have long been portrayed as a “model minority” with few major problems, data released online in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) reveal that distinct groups of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AA and NHPI) differ widely in death and disease rates, including from breast cancer and other conditions such as heart disease, and stand to benefit strongly from culturally appropriate care. In the first issue of a major health journal devoted to AA and NHPI populations, data show striking disparities…

Celsion Corporation ( CLSN) announced that an abstract about the Phase I/II trial of ThermoDox® in Recurrent Chest Wall Cancer (RCW) has been accepted for presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2010 Annual Meeting. The abstract presents the background, rationale, and design of the DIGNITY study which is ongoing and evaluating ThermoDox in combination with hyperthermia in women with recurrent breast cancer on their chest wall. The ASCO Annual Meeting will be held June 4 - 8, 2010 at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois…

Technology never before offered in the U.S. that allows patients to receive one dose of radiation during surgery, as opposed to the current average of six weeks, was successfully delivered to several breast cancer patients last week including the sister of the man responsible for bringing the technology from Italy…

New data from an NIH-sponsored, multi-site study of hundreds of women with newly diagnosed breast cancer shows that Positron Emission Mammography (PEM) may reduce unnecessary breast biopsies. The study found that PEM was significantly more precise at identifying benign and cancerous lesions, in what scientists call “Positive Predictive Value” or “PPV,” therefore reducing the number of unnecessary biopsies. A common physician complaint regarding the use of Breast MRI is its tendency to identify suspicious lesions, requiring biopsies on lesions that ultimately are found to be benign…

TechniScan, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: TSNI) is featured on NVIDIA’s recently posted blog about speeding the amount of time it takes to get breast imaging results into the hands of doctors and patients. NVIDIA is the world leader in visual computing technologies and inventor of the graphics processing unit (GPU). TechniScan’s Warm Bath Ultrasound (WBU™) system utilizes NVIDIA Tesla GPUs to compute its complex algorithms used in creating 3 dimensional images of the breast. “Waiting for medical results of diagnostic breast imaging is very stressful for women…

Many women live with breast cancer that does not respond to standard medical treatment, a condition that researchers at the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare want to change by aggressively targeting specific genes. Improving quality of life and potentially keeping the cancer under control for a longer period of time are goals of a new clinical trial at the cancer center’s TGen Clinical Research Services, a partnership of Scottsdale Healthcare and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen)…

Recent studies show that more women with cancer in one breast are opting for removal of both breasts, even though removal of the healthy breast does little to improve survival rates, New York Times columnist Tara Parker-Pope writes. In 2006, roughly 6% of women who underwent surgery for breast cancer chose to remove both the cancerous and healthy breasts, a procedure known as contralateral prophylactic mastectomy, Pope says…

Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:LIFE) announced that it is collaborating with the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and US Oncology to sequence the genomes of 14 patients afflicted with triple negative breast cancer whose tumors have progressed despite multiple other therapies. The goal of this first-of-its-kind research collaboration is to demonstrate whether genomic sequencing of cancer tissue can provide clues for treatment strategies for these individuals…

A new study has found that one in three early-stage breast cancer patients who received genomic testing when deciding about treatment options felt they did not fully understand their discussions with physicians about their test results and their risk of recurrence. About one in four experienced distress when receiving their test results. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings suggest there is room for improvement in communicating cancer recurrence risks and treatment decisions with patients…

Amber J. Belcher, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Delaware, has won the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The fellowship will support Belcher’s research on how couples cope with breast cancer. Breast cancer is second only to skin cancer as the most common cancer among women in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, every year nearly 200,000 women are diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in the United States and over 40,000 die from the disease..