Tumor

Actress Karen Black, who's been battling cancer for more than two years, has turned to the public for help to pay for an experimental treatment in Europe - and as of Monday afternoon, the crowdfunding plea was working. The 73-year-old, Oscar-nominated as supporting actress in 1970's "Five Easy Pieces" with Jack Nicholson, has worked steadily for more than 40 years but is best known for her work in 1970s films including "Airport 1975," "The Day of the Locust" and "Nashville. " Diagnosed with ampullary cancer in November 2010, she immediately had a third of her pancreas removed, her husband, Stephen Eckelberry, said on the " Help Karen Beat Cancer " GoFundMe webpage, launched on March 14. After chemo, she was declared disease-free in mid-2011.  It didn't last, he said.

As it has become more efficient and less expensive to analyze the DNA in normal cells, it has also gotten a whole lot easier to analyze the mutated DNA in tumors - a project scientists hope will help explain why cancer behaves as it does and what new strategies oncologists might use to stop its growth. Writing in a special section of the journal Science (available for free with registration) on Thursday, researchers distilled much of what they've learned from tumor sequencing so far. In this review article , Johns Hopkins cancer geneticist Kenneth Kinzler and colleagues looked at the results of more than 100 cancer genome sequencing projects to compile a list of just a few general principles about the disease.

A Los Angeles surgeon whose recent victory in an employment lawsuit against Cedars-Sinai Medical Center raised questions about the safety of the patients he once saw there was ordered this week to pay a Maryland patient and his wife $800,600 in a malpractice case. The malpractice occurred after Dr. Hrayr Shahinian left Cedars-Sinai in 2006 and began practicing at Brotman Medical Center in Culver City. In a scathing ruling this week, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger said Shahinian committed fraud when he performed an inappropriate surgery on the man and then altered a pathology report to cover up his failure to remove a tumor.

Actress Karen Black, who's been battling cancer for more than two years, has turned to the public for help to pay for an experimental treatment in Europe - and as of Monday afternoon, the crowdfunding plea was working. The 73-year-old, Oscar-nominated as supporting actress in 1970's "Five Easy Pieces" with Jack Nicholson, has worked steadily for more than 40 years but is best known for her work in 1970s films including "Airport 1975," "The Day of the Locust" and "Nashville. " Diagnosed with ampullary cancer in November 2010, she immediately had a third of her pancreas removed, her husband, Stephen Eckelberry, said on the " Help Karen Beat Cancer " GoFundMe webpage, launched on March 14. After chemo, she was declared disease-free in mid-2011.  It didn't last, he said.

Michael Douglas’ revelation on the Late Show with David Letterman on Tuesday night that his throat cancer is stage four elicited a gasp from the audience. But what exactly does stage four mean? As Douglas went on to explain, “You like to be down at stage one,” when the tumor is relatively small and isolated. But, according to Douglas, doctors said his chances of survival are 80%. That may be because even though stage-four cancer is considered advanced, there are different substages within it, said Dr. Gady Har-El, chairman of Lenox Hill Hospital’s Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery in New York.

Michael Douglas has a tumor in his throat and will undergo eight weeks of radiation and chemotherapy, his rep tells People. Doctors recently discovered the mass in the film star's throat, his representative said. A full recovery is expected. "I am very optimistic," Douglas said in a statement. It's been a tumultuous year for the actor, whose son Cameron was sentenced in May to five years in prison after pleading guilty to possession of heroin and distribution of crystal meth.

North Carolina basketball Coach Roy Williams, according to reports, is in surgery today to have a tumor removed from his kidney. WRAL.com originally reported the story, while ESPN, citing a source, says it has confirmed the information. North Carolina spokesman Steve Kirschner confirmed Williams was having surgery but refused to provide more specific details. Williams is set to begin his 10th season at North Carolina. He led the Tar Heels to NCAA titles in 2005 and 2009. ALSO: Shaun White apologizes for his behavior Atlanta Falcons coach is disappointed in Michael Turner Jon Cryer is injured after falling off bike during Malibu triathlon

Patients are holding out hope that someday - soon, they hope - physicians will be able to personalize medical treatment more precisely than they've been able to in the past.  For people with cancer, this might mean taking a quick biopsy, studying the genetic profile of a tumor and then tailoring interventions  to target the cancer effectively, with as few side effects as possible. But a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday underscores why the vision remains a challenge.  Cancer researchers in England showed that individual kidney tumors and their metastases had different mutations in different locations - and that those mutations, in turn, affect the biology of those tumors in varying ways in different locations.    “A single tumor-biopsy-specimen reveals a minority of genetic aberrations … that are present in an entire tumor,” wrote Dr. Marco Gerlinger of the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute and co-authors.  For example, the scientists found that one region of a renal carcinoma could display gene expression signatures associated with a good prognosis, while signatures in another region of the same tumor could be associated with a poor prognosis.

When cancer blooms in the body, tiny bits of tumor DNA can be found in the blood . Cancer specialists would love it if these DNA fragments could one day be used in noninvasive diagnostic tests -- “liquid biopsies ” --  that are relatively inexpensive and sensitive. There's a lot of work going on in this area right now. One team of researchers reported a step toward that goal in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Q: Our 8-year-old mixed cocker spaniel has been getting small growths on his eyelids, some of which seem to be getting larger. We had one removed about 1 1/2 years ago and were told that they were not cancerous. However, since there seem to be a few new ones, I am not so sure. He doesn't seem to have any problems with his vision and they don't seem to hurt him. What are these growths? Could they be cancerous?

Jesús García saw no reason to be afraid of death. "It's not good to fear anything," he once said. "Death is always around, but you've got to laugh at death. " After leaving the hospital that afternoon in early May, he boarded the bus at Vermont and Sunset and headed south. The shops and congestion of Koreatown streamed by. He didn't bother calling his mother. She was in Idaho and would get the news soon enough. Besides, she would only start to cry, which was more than he could deal with.

An eerie new disease is cropping up among raccoons in Northern California and Oregon: brain tumors that may be linked to a previously unidentified virus discovered by a team led by UC Davis veterinarians and researchers. Necropsies conducted since 2010 have found brain tumors in 11 raccoons from Northern California and one from Oregon, the researchers said. All of the animals with tumors also had the virus scientists know as raccoon polyomavirus. "Previous to this, there had been two reports of a raccoon with a brain tumor over the past two decades," Patricia Pesavento, a pathologist at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and principal author of a study on the malady published earlier this month in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, said in an interview.

A new genetic test may help determine whether a small tumor in the breast is likely to turn in to full-blown breast cancer, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The small tumor, called a ductal carcinoma in-situ, or DCIS, resides in the milk ducts and is generally considered pre-cancerous. But according to the study, DCIS lesions left untreated will eventually progress to breast cancer in about 50% of patients. The lesions, which tend to be small and only detectable via mammogram, have become increasingly common as mammography has become more widespread.

About a third of all tumors discovered in routine mammography screenings are unlikely to result in illness, according to a new study that says 30 years of the breast cancer exams have resulted in the overdiagnosis of 1.3 million American women. The report, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, argues that the increase in breast cancer survival rates over the last few decades is due mostly to improved therapies and not screenings, which are intended to flag tumors when they are small and most susceptible to treatment.

They pat him on the shoulder, put their arms around him and shake his hand. So many friends and acquaintances are coming up to trainer Mike Mitchell that you'd think he were running for political office. Mostly, they are expressing their profound respect and gratitude for the 64-year-old as he continues to dedicate himself to his family and the horses he loves while dealing with serious health issues as he prepares for next week's Breeders' Cup World Championships at Santa Anita.

A common type of brain tumor may be caused by mature adult cells being genetically "rewound" to a more immature state, according to a study in the journal Science . The discovery could pave the way for improved brain cancer treatments. The cancer that was studied, called glioblastoma multiforme, is the most common type of brain tumor. It is also the most aggressive. Researchers had previously thought that the tumors were generated by neural stem cells gone awry rather than adult cells, which were not thought to have a natural ability to revert to an earlier state of development.

As few as two CT scans of the head in childhood can triple the risk of developing brain tumors, while five to 10 such scans can triple the risk of leukemia, British researchers reported Wednesday. The absolute risk of developing the cancers remains small, but the study illuminates the dangers of unnecessary use of X-ray imaging in diagnosis. The development of CT (computed tomography) scanning was one of the major developments of 20th century medicine because it allowed physicians to look inside the body more accurately than a conventional X-ray.

While the voters argued over who won which debate, while the presidential conventions produced their speeches, while Californians pondered tax initiatives and condom use in the pornography industry, and the shuttle Endeavour wowed us as it flew over our heads but angered the people on the ground whose trees would make way for its slow procession through Los Angeles, Andrew Lyon was out of the picture, thinking about issues as immediate as whether he...

The Boston Red Sox thought Bobby Valentine would restore order to a coddled clubhouse that disintegrated during the 2011 pennant race. Instead, he only caused more problems. The brash manager was fired on Thursday, the day after the finale of a season beset with internal sniping and far too many losses. Valentine went 69-93 in his only year in Boston, the ballclub's worst season in almost 50 years. :: Sandy Alomar Jr. , who guided Cleveland in its final six games after Manny Acta was fired last week, interviewed to become the Indians' full-time manager.