A new genetic marker accounts for up to 1.4% of cases of hereditary cancer

Researchers from the Hereditary Cancer group of the Oncobell Program of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL)--Hereditary Cancer Program of the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) have identified a new genetic marker that accounts for up to 1.4 percent of cases of hereditary colon cancer.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171010114636.htm

FDA approves a game-changing treatment for blood cancer

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a promising new treatment by Gilead Sciences. Gilead's treatment, to be sold as Yescarta, is the second CAR-T to win FDA approval but the first cleared for use in adults.

https://www.statnews.com/2017/10/18/gilead-car-t-approval/

Nobel Laureate: The Future of DNA Sequencing will be in the Palm of Your Hand/Time.com

http://time.com/4971220/future-dna-sequencing/

News item in Denmark today translated from an article in Danish in DR (Danmarks Radio) News app:
In the future, it may be easier to assess the risk that the individual woman will have developing breast cancer. And in the long run, the mortality rate for the cancer-affected women can be further reduced.
This is the good news after international researchers and researchers from Denmark have analyzed 450,000 blood samples in the world's largest study, of which about half of these were in order to look at breast cancer and DNA.

BREAST CANCER
Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in Denmark. One in eight Danish women will at one point in their lives diagnosed with breast cancer. Mortality has fallen considerably over the past many years, and the survival of breast cancer is approximately 97 percent after one year and 86 percent after five years.

Men can also be affected by breast cancer, but it is extremely rare. Under 1/10 of a percent of the affected men are men.
On the average 1,158 women died the 2010-2014 period. During that same period eight men died.
Today, all women between the ages of 50 and 69 are offered mammograms (screening for breast for cancer) every two years.

The study of breast cancer has focused on collecting knowledge about common hereditary factors related to breast cancer, and because of the large amount of data, the measurement is so accurate that it can be used in the clinic in the future, says Professor and Chief Stig Bojesen from the Department of Clinical Medicine at Copenhagen University in a press release.
"We have created the knowledge base to assess risk so precisely that we can hopefully tailor the treatment that women ordinarily are offered for breast to each individual woman. An individual risk-based screening program may hopefully help us reduce mortality among women with breast cancer, says the professor, who is also a physician at Herlev Hospital, about the research findings published in the magazine Nature today.

Patients' gut bacteria may determine response to cancer immunotherapy treatments.

"Some intestinal-dwelling bacteria appear to corral and train immune cells to fight off cancer cells—prior to any spurring from cancer immunotherapies. Without such microbial priming, the drugs may only offer a futile prod. In both studies, published this week in Science, researchers found that the cancer patients who saw no benefit from the drugs (non-responders) were the ones who lacked certain beneficial gut bugs, particularly after taking antibiotics. Meanwhile, cancer patients who did respond to the drugs had bacteria that could prompt the immune system to release chemicals that get cancer-killing immune cells—T cells—to chomp at the bit."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/gut-b...tment-working/?comments=1

Edit: another general article on this study.

https://newatlas.com/gut-bacteria-cancer-treatment-success/52056/