‘In 2009, the global contraceptives market was estimated at $11.2 billion, and achieved a CAGR of 7% between 2001 and 2009. The market is forecast to record revenues of $14.5 billion by 2016, growing at a CAGR of 4% between 2009 and 2016.’

GBI Research’s report ‘Contraceptive Market to 2016 -Demand for Long Acting Birth Control Pills Encourages Growth in Hormonal Contraceptives Market’ provides a detailed insight in to the contraceptive market to 2016. In-depth analyses on the global contraceptive treatment usage patterns and the contraceptive markets in key geographies, namely the US, top five EU countries and Japan are covered in the report. Details about contraceptive R&D pipelines and potential future blockbuster products are also provided. The report also explores the competitive landscape, with a competitive analysis of the top companies in the market and a key trend analysis of mergers and acquisitions and licensing agreements in the contraceptives market.

Growth of Personalised Medicine and Strong Regulatory Support Will Drive the Future Growth for Biomarkers in Cancer Research

The growth of personalised medicines and the strong support from regulatory agencies such as the FDA will be the two major factors that will drive the demand for biomarkers in cancer research. Personalised medicines are gaining popularity due to their ability to provide customised treatment to patients based on their genetic and medical profile. As personalised medicine gains more importance and popularity and with strong support from regulatory agencies such as the FDA, the demand for biomarkers is expected to increase. The FDA has been strongly advocating the use of biomarkers in drug discovery research as it has also formed associations that work towards the classification and discovery of exploratory biomarkers, and for qualifying and validating them for use in the clinical process. It is expected that the FDA will provide faster, more flexible, simpler and more practical regulatory norms and validation procedures for biomarkers.

According to WCRF, fillers like salami and ham could develop unhealthy food habits in children and also increase the risk of cancer in later part of their life.

Speaking on this Marni Craze, Children’s Education Manager, WCRF, said that if children are given processed meat every day for their lunch, they will be eating a lot of it over the span of the school year. She added that it is better if children are thought to view processed meat as a rare treat.

Craze said that putting processed meat including ham or salami or any other high calorie snacks in kids’ sandwich may seem a convenient option especially for parents who have a tight schedule to prepare healthy lunch for their children. She explained that packed lunch is an essential part of any child’s diet that is pretty easy to prepare and does not require much effort or time to make it more nutritious.

Craze quoted an example that putting green salad as fillers in sandwich will effectively count towards 5 portions of vegetables and fruits that the children should consume every day. A glass of fruit juice may also add up to another portion if it is given instead of a fizzy drink. Speaking of the alternatives to processed meat she said pre-processed chicken, fish, hummus or low-fat cheese can be used as replacement.

Note : The WCRF recommends only about 70g of meat or 3 slices of bacon in a week.

Amgen Inc. believes that denosumab (Prolia), the drug, which is a monoclonal anti-body, can be marketed for prevention of fractures not only in the men who have prostate cancer but also for the post-menopausal ladies who are undergoing hormone therapy procedure for the treatment of their breast cancer. An advisory panel from the US FDA has been scheduled for a meeting very soon to consider upon the application made by Amegen.

The author of the study, Dr. Matthew R. Smith, the director of genitourinary medical oncology at the Massachusetts General Hospital said that 2 million men in America receive the hormone blocking therapy for treating prostate cancer and from one third to around one half of them are potentially using Denosumab.

Denosumab works by blocking the activities of the molecule which causes destruction of the bone cells. Due to the lack of hormones, both men and women lose bones. Patients are given intravenous injection of this drug once in every 6 months.

Smith said that this study is an important one because there has no large scale study for men before which deals in preventing fractures. Over 900 men were enrolled in the study who were already receiving treatment at 156 different medical centers of US and Europe.

It was found that over a period of 2 years, the density of bones increased by 5.6% in men who received denosumab and decreased by 1% in men who were received a placebo. Over 3 years, incidences of fractures of the spine was 1.5% among people who received denosumab while 3.9% in those who received placebo.

Dr. Sundeep Khosla, a medicinal professor in Endocrine Research Unit of Mayo Clinic, wrote a supplementary editorial in which he mentioned that although denosumab is a significant drug and largely effects the condition in both the studies published, it is yet to be decided whether it can be used in prostate cancer therapy or not.

Khosla said that several other drugs are now being in use for preventing bone fractures in men who have received treatment for prostate cancer. Because all other drugs seem to have a similar sort of efficiency, the position of this drug is yet to be decided.

Khosla said that zoledronic acid (Zometa) seems to give tough competition to Denosumab. Zometa is a new member in the family of bone-building bisphosphonate. It is also given intravenously, requiring only one injection in the whole year. But the main difference and point of consideration is that zoledronic acid has to be taken under professional guidance of a physician only while Denosumab can be taken under self-administration.

Cost also seems to be a major issue for use of these drugs. A generic bisphosphonate may be available at as low as only $100 in a year while zoledronic acid comes at the wholesale rate of $1300 per year. Khosla said we still do not know how much Amgen will set the cost for the drug. But whatever will be the price, it will be a great thing for some groups of patients. Khosla also agrees with the statement from Smith that around one third to one half of men who receive hormone blocking therapy will be in these groups.

There are some concerns that denosumab can have some effects over the immune system of the person because the molecule that is blocked by it plays a significant role in a human body’s immune response. A study conducted on the post-menopausal women showed some problems related to the immunity such as increase in eczema incidences. Khosla said that although there have been concerns; they are not significant enough to disapprove the medication, although a surveillance may be needed.

The drug works by killing the cancer stem cells that help cancer tumors to grow and spread the disease to entire body of the patient. Unlike all other cancer cells, the ‘mother’ stem cells are not effectively abolished by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as a result of which the cancer may returns after the treatment.

In the laboratory tests, Salinomycin, a new drug, was hundred times more efficient in destroying the stem cells as compared to powerful Taxol, the chemo treatment. When the drug injections were given to mice suffering from breast cancer, it also resulted in slowing down of the tumor growth. According to a journal Cell report, stem cells that were treated with Salinomycin were less capable of starting tumor in animals than the cells which were treated with Taxol.

The researchers from the US believe that a good number of drugs with similar capabilities can be developed in the period of next few years and that the treatment for cancer is only about 10 years away from reaching the market.

The new drug can be combined with the standard therapies so that the cancer stem cells that are left behind after the traditional methods of treatment can be mopped away from the body. Thus the chances of the return of cancer will be abolished.

It can also stop the cancer cells to get spread in other parts of the body. This condition is a very common cause of deaths of 155,000 patients suffering from cancer every year.

Piyush Gupta, from the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, commented that until now, it was not clear whether it is possible to find the compounds that can selectively kill the cancer stem cells. But with this research, this thought has come true. Their work has revealed how targeting the cancer stem cells are affected biologically. Apart from that, it also suggests an approach to find novel therapies to treat cancer which are applicable to any solid tumors maintained by the cancer stem cells.

In the beginning, the researchers found a way to create cancer stem cells in the laboratory in large numbers. Then 16,000 chemicals were tested on the cells to check whether or not any of them and which of them proved to be toxic.

The antibiotic, Salinomycin, was given to the farm animals which came out to be the winner in the tests. It was also successful in zapping breast cancers in mice. A lot of work is needed for identifying how it works and for establishing whether it can be effective for human tumors. If it is found to be safe to be used, several years of rigorous testing on a large scale will be required before the drug can be sent to the market. Even after this, there is no way to confirm whether it will work on all the tumors. However, a lot of excitement has taken place among the experts.

John Stingl from the Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Institute, compared the death of the cancer stem cells with gardening. He said that treating cancer is like mowing your garden. Every time you cut out the dandelions, every time they come back. The main thing is the roots which are the stem cells in case of cancer tumors. If there are different treatments that work on different parts, they can be combined together to bring a bigger effect.

Professor Colin Goding, an expert of stem cells at the Oxford University, warned that there can be dangers that the drug may kill wrong type of cells also inside the body.

The microRNA miR-21 was especially heightened in adenocarcinomas hitting non-smokers; mainly those who have tested positive for mutations pertaining to epidermal growth factor receptor gene. Each year, one tenth of lung cancer sufferers happen to be people who never touched cigarettes.

Researchers from America and Japan who have indulged in this study are strong in conviction that miR-21 protein is not only a sign of the disease akin to PSA levels for prostrate cancer screenings, but also contributor of the disease.

Medical fraternity has long believed that there is a huge difference between those people who have never smoked and those who have been smoking in terms of acquiring lung cancer. Among people who have never smoked, adenocarcinomas happens to be the most common type of lung cancer. It is a type of non-small cell cancer, which can occur in some higher mammals, including humans. Non-small cell carcinoma is by far the most common type of lung cancer in US.

Scientists have tested cancer samples from some 28 patients, all non-smoking ones and suffering from adenocarcinoma. In comparison to those samples that had been taken from smokers, suffering from the same disease, miR-21 was present in a very heightened form in those patients who had never smoked all life.

MiR-21 is also present in heightened amount in those people who have adenocarcinomas pertaining to tobacco intake, but to a lesser extent. Research conducted earlier clearly suggested that miR-21 and microRNAs were signs of bad survival percentage for lung cancer caused by smoking.

Lung carcinoma in all forms is very difficult to be cured. Less than one tenth of people survive for five years after being attacked by the disease. 160000 Americans die of the curse each year. This makes the researchers pretty enthused on finding anything that helps them target a therapy on the cancer cells. Dr. Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, further suggested the finding shows that there are plenty of reasons to believe that adenocarcinomas for non-smoker exhibiting miR-21 elevation could be treated.

The study was published in the July 2009 issue of the Cell and focuses upon the androgen receptors, the molecules present in the nucleus of prostate gland cells and some other tissues. Androgens, the male sex hormones, get bound with these androgen receptors and ultimately, activate the genes which control the growth of cells.

According to the research, in the prostate cancer that does not need androgens to grow, the androgen receptors get reprogrammed for regulating the group of genes that are involved in a later, different phase of division of cells. This triggers the growth of cells rapidly. It is further shown that modifying the chief component of chromosome lead to this kind of reprogramming.

Qianben Wang, the assistant professor of cellular and molecular biochemistry and one of the researchers in the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center- James Cancer Hospital and the Solove Research Institute said that although some of the prostate cancers in the advanced stage do not need androgen hormones for their tumor growth, but they require the androgen receptors.

The study reveals how androgen receptors are important for development of prostate cancer that has become hormone independent. It studies how these androgens become active and what genes are regulated by them to support the growth of the tumor. After these findings, prostate cancer can be understood in a better way and new therapies can be identified to get rid of this cancer and new treatments can be developed to cure the disease even at an advanced stage.

Prostate cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in men. In the year 2009, more than 192,250 cases of prostate cancer have been expected in US alone and around 27, 360 deaths are anticipated due to the disease.

The study has been conducted by Wang, Dr. Myles Brown, and some colleagues. Brown is working as a professor medicine at the Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. They used the cell lines of both hormone dependent and independent prostate cancer, data from gene expression and tissues from the human tumors. The study showed that in the hormone-dependent prostate cancer, an earlier phase of the cell cycle is regulated by the androgen receptors. In hormone-independent disease, the receptors receive a reprogramming for selectively regulating the genes that are involved in the division of cells, which is known as the mitotic phase of the cell cycle.

UBE2C, a gene, stood out among the other genes and the increased expression of this gene was in co-relation with the progression to the phase in which the prostate cancer becomes hormone-independent. In addition to that, epigenetic change is a chemical change in the histone protein that is associated with the gene enables the androgen receptors be become bound with the gene and activate it in the hormone-independent cancer.

Finally, it was shown that the over-expression of these genes is essential for the cancer cells responsible for hormone-independent prostate cancer. Wang says that the UBE2C gene also gets over-expressed in others types of cancer including breast, bladder, lung, ovary, esophageal and thyroid. This suggests that the findings revealed from the study can have a much wider application. Funding for the study is supported by the National Cancer Institute and the Department of Defense.

The study revealed that once the screening programs started, more breast cancer cases were unavoidably identified. If a screening program is successful, it should be helpful in detecting breast cancer at early stages, and therefore it should lead to a decrease in the number of breast cancer cases found in older women. However, the study conducted by Gotzsche and Jorgensen revealed that the screening systems of breast cancer, which is usually tested on women between 50 to 69 years of age, reported a lot more cases than the number of cases that were previously identified. Overall, the study states that around one third of the breast cancer cases identified by the screening process did not need to be treated at all.

It is a fact that some of the cancers never cause any symptoms in the patient and grow too slowly that they never affect the patient’s health. As it is not possible to differentiate between a deadly cancer and a slow-going one, any cancer that is identified has to be treated. But, breast cancer treatment can also have some side effects harmful for the patient and it can also lead to psychological downturn for women.

For several years, women have been urged to undergo a breast cancer screening process without knowing the risks involved. As a consequence, they have to undertake an unnecessary cancer treatment for a problem that could never have affected their health. Similar is the case with prostate cancer. There have been long debates about the screening of prostate cancer because it has been realized that screening over-diagnoses the patients. According to a study conducted in Netherlands, at least 2 out of 5 prostate cancers were developing too slow that they could never be harmful for the person.

The national health system of Britain recently drained its pamphlet that invited women to have a breast cancer screening because the critics complained that the pamphlet did not told about the over-treatment of cancer patients. However Laura Bell of Cancer Research UK said that women should still be invited to go for screening but they also need to be informed about the pros and cons of breast cancer screening.

Lung cancer is one of the most common causes of deaths due to cancer. Non-small-cell lung cancer being the most common kind of lung cancer, it has a survival rate of only 5 years on an average, and that too for only 40% of people. According to the researchers of University of Kentucky, profiling of the anti-bodies, when incorporated to comprehensive strategy of screening, can be very powerful in early detection of lung cancer. Attempts have been made to prove the reliability of the test and if it is confirmed, it will become the first blood screening procedure for any type of cancer; after PSA test or prostate specific antigen used to determine the presence of prostate cancer.

Although there are CT scans or computer tomography scans which can find tumors of lung cancer, but these scans have a very high rate of showing false positives. Due to this, many people who are shown positive with CT scans have to undergo the unnecessary painful procedure of biopsy to remove the suspicious lump and later find out that the lump was actually non-cancerous at all.

In most cases, by the time lung cancer is diagnosed or start to show symptoms, it is already too late to treat the disease. According to researchers, a test has been developed which can detect the proteins that the body produces during early formation of tumors in the lungs. The test had been conducted on people who were under treatment for lung cancer. Result showed that it correctly identified 90% of the cases with lung cancer and when conducted on people not suffering from lung cancer, it came up with a very low percentage of false positives.

Blood samples of lung cancer patients taken years before were also tested. The test correctly identified cancer in 4 out of 7 samples taken a year before being diagnosed, and in all samples taken 2, 3 and 4 years earlier. The researchers explained that the lung cancer can be present in a person to as much as 3-4 years before the tumor reaches a size that can be identified by radiographic detection.

Prostate cancer screening know as PSA or Prostate Specific Antigen reduced the mortality risk of prostate cancer by barely 20% in the best case scenario, as per the reports of the University of Texas Health Science Center published in July-August issue of the CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. The life time risk result from the screening is shifted from 3% to 2.4% but it has not come without paying a price. The risk of diagnosis has increased from 6%-9% with no screening to 17% -20% of heavily screened individuals. The researchers have also noted that unresolved issues with PSA threshold argue against the efficiency of the screening.

According to experts, the PSA screening should be conducted only in mutual decision making program between the individuals and their physicians. For the past 20 years, prostate cancer screening is based on the blind faith of early detection rather than being based upon the evidence of decreased mortality rates. Experts also commented that decrease in the costs of healthcare can only be possible if the testing is done on the basis of evidences rather than on the basis of faith or profit based medicinal practice.

It has been estimated that 55% of men who are 50 years or older get a PSA screening every year out of which 75% get tested at least once in their life time. This dramatically affected the incidence rates of prostate cancer; as lifetime risks of diagnoses increased significantly after the introduction of PSA screening in the US in 1980s. According to the statistics, it was 7.3% in 1977 while it has risen to 17% in 2005. Finding more cases in prostate cancer is a poor goal as it gets virtually present in men as they get older. The main aim is to reduce the risks of death due to prostate cancer and its morbidity or other related healthcare expenses.

Since the year 1993 which is only 4-5 years after the screening was introduced, there is a continuous decline in age-adjusted death rate due to prostate cancer which was 39.3 per 100,000 men to 24.6 in 2005. A group of experts said that the decrease cannot be attributed to screening because the disease has a very long natural history. Other things that can explain the decrease in mortality rate can be significant innovations and improvements such as surgery, hormonal therapies and radiation during the same period in which screening proliferated. According to the computer models, 29% to 50% of the prostate cancers detected by screening do not have the possibilities of having clinical significance and therefore were over-diagnosed.

Only around 10% men with localized prostate cancer choose for active surveillance in place of treatment, which come with higher risk of urinal, sexual and bowel related complications. Whether the screening saves lives from prostate cancer or not can only be verified with a well-conducted, well-designed and prospective randomized scientific trial. Some of the trials that have already been published are:

• The Quebec study which found that 16% extra death cases in screening group compare to non-screening group.
• According to a Swedish trial, 47% higher rates of diagnosis and 4% higher risks of deaths due to prostate cancer randomized to screening as compared to those that were not offered the screening procedure.
• Interim analysis of US Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening test revealed that there are no significant differences between the two.
• An interim analysis of European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) revealed a ratio of 0.80 in mortality rate that favored screening but near double in incidence.

The ERSPC says that in order to prevent one death due to prostate cancer, 1410 people need to be screened and 48 more prostate cancer cases need to be treated. Thus, a man who undergoes screening has 48 more times risks to be harmed through screening than he can be saved, 9 years after the diagnosis.