Latest Epidermal growth factor receptor Stories

OMAHA, Neb., May 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Transgenomic, Inc. (OTC/BB: TBIO) announced today that it has acquired an exclusive worldwide license to Montefiore Medical Center's (Bronx, NY, US) patent application, "Method of Determining the Sensitivity of Cancer Cells to EGFR Inhibitors including cetuximab, panitumumab and erlotinib". The invention relates to the discovery by Montefiore scientists and collaborators that tumor-specific mutations in the genes PIK3CA and PTEN can aid in...

RIDGEFIELD, Conn., May 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. will present new phase Ib data at the 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago (June 3-7) that indicates combining its investigational therapy afatinib (BIBW 2992) with cetuximab at the maximum tested dose controlled disease in all (n=22) treated epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutation positive patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who developed...

Some of the most effective and expensive cancer drugs, dubbed "smart drugs" for their ability to stop tumors by targeting key drivers of cancer cell growth, are not effective in some patients. In two related studies, Yale School of Medicine researchers examined one such driver, the EGF receptor (EGFR), and found that a decoy receptor might be limiting the amount of drug that gets to the intended target."We know that smart drugs like Cetuximab are not always effective in the...

UT MD Anderson scientists find new biomarkers for erlotinib treatmentTwo sets of gene expression profiles predict response to a common lung cancer drug for patients that have no guiding indicators for their treatment now, scientists from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report at the AACR 102nd Annual Meeting."The only way we have to predict erlotinib's treatment benefit for patients now is by checking for certain mutations and amplifications of the epidermal growth...

Repeat biopsies may provide information critical to guiding treatment decisionsA detailed analysis of lung tumors that became resistant to targeted therapy drugs has revealed two previously unreported resistance mechanisms. In a report in the March 23 Science Translational Medicine, investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center also describe how the cellular nature of some tumors actually changes in response to treatment and find that resistance-conferring...

LSU oncologist Vince D. Cataldo, MD, is the lead author of a review article reporting two chemotherapy drugs now indicated for second and third-line therapy in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer are remarkably effective in treating a certain subset of these patients. Dr. Cataldo, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Medicine, practicing at LSU's Earl K. Long Medical Center and Hematology-Oncology Clinic in Baton Rouge,...

Combining targeted therapies might be required for maximum anti-tumor activity when treating HER2-positive breast cancers, according to two new studies by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) investigators.The findings, reported in two papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggest that upregulation of the HER3 receptor limits the effectiveness of two classes of targeted therapies (HER2- and PI3 kinase-targeted therapies). Therefore targeting HER3 together...

European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology newsSpanish researchers have identified a gene whose expression level strongly predicts how well certain lung cancer patients will respond to treatment with the drug erlotinib.Dr Rafael Rosell and colleagues reported their findings at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO), 24-26 February 2011 in Lugano, Switzerland.The researchers studied 55 patients with non-small cell lung cancer, whose tumors had...

First revision since 2004 takes a multidisciplinary approach, includes newest researchThree of the world's top lung associations have published a new international multidisciplinary classification of lung adenocarcinoma, the first revision to the classification in six years.The new classification is published in the February edition of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, the official publication of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC)."With the many rapid...

New research shows that loss of a gene called NFKBIA promotes the growth of glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer, and suggests that therapies that stabilize this gene may improve survival for certain glioblastoma patients.The study was published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine."We show that NFKBIA status may be an independent predictor of survival in certain patients with glioblastoma," says senior coauthor Dr. Arnab Chakravarti, chair and...