Tumor

There were tears in the winner's circle Saturday at Betfair Hollywood Park after 10-1 longshot Camp Victory won the Grade I $250,000 Triple Bend Handicap by 31/4 lengths over The Factor. Camp Victory's trainer, Mike Mitchell, underwent surgery Friday for a brain tumor. "He called me this morning," said one of Camp Victory's owners, Lynne Miller. "I didn't know if I was ever going to talk to him again. It was so good for Mike. He's cracking jokes. " Mitchell was watching the race from a computer in the intensive care unit of USC Medical Center.

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.

Sheryl Crow says she has a brain tumor - one that was found after she became concerned about her increasingly spotty memory. Crow's benign meningioma showed up during a screening the breast cancer survivor had done in November on a hunch. "I worried about my memory so much that I went and got an MRI. And I found out I have a brain tumor," Crow recently told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "And I was, like, 'See? I knew there was something wrong.' " Though frequently referred to as "brain tumors," meningiomas actually form in the lining around the brain and spinal cord.

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.

Researchers have found a way to classify breast cancer tumors into 10 distinct categories ranging from very treatable to extremely aggressive, a major step on the way to the long-sought goal of precisely targeting therapies for patients. The new categories, described in a study released Wednesday, should help scientists devise fresh approaches to treat some of the cancers and could spare many women the risks and pain of unnecessarily toxic treatments, oncologists said. "If you belong to one group you'll need one therapy, and if you're in another you'll need another," said Dr. Carlos Caldas, a breast cancer geneticist at the University of Cambridge in England who helped oversee the research.

Blocking "don't destroy me" signals that normally sit on the surface of tumor cells and render them resistant to immune-cell attack slows the growth of a broad range of human cancers when they're implanted in mice, researchers have found. The approach, reported by immunologists at the Stanford University School of Medicine, was effective against ovarian, breast, colon, bladder, liver, prostate and brain cancer cells. If the work can be repeated in people, the approach may someday help doctors marshal defender cells in patients' own bodies to fight cancers, the researchers said.

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.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced Tuesday that he will undergo surgery to repair a 1-inch "abscess" in the same abdominal area where Cuban doctors removed a cancerous tumor in June. Chavez's surprise announcement, made during an official trip to Barinas state, came amid swirling rumors published this week in Brazil's O Globo newspaper that his cancer had metastasized to his liver. "It's a small lesion, about 2 centimeters in diameter, very clearly visible, which requires new surgery, which one supposes will be less complicated than the last one," Chavez said as he visited the Santa Ines industrial complex.

Gary Carter, a Hall of Fame catcher from Fullerton who helped lift the New York Mets to a dramatic victory over the Boston Red Sox in the 1986 World Series, died Thursday in Florida. He was 57 and had brain cancer. Nicknamed "Kid" for his grit and youthful exuberance, Carter was an 11-time All-Star who hit .262 with 324 home runs and 1,225 runs batted in during 19 seasons playing for the Montreal Expos, Mets, San Francisco Giants and Dodgers. His goal to become a major league manager unfulfilled, Carter was coaching at Palm Beach Atlantic University near his Florida home last May when he experienced headaches and forgetfulness and was diagnosed with brain cancer.

The Oklahoma City Thunder signed All-Star point guard Russell Westbrook to a multiyear contract extension on Thursday. Westbrook was set to become a restricted free agent at the end of the season, meaning the Thunder would have had to match any offer he received from another team if it wanted to keep him. Instead, it locked him up with a new deal 15 games into this season. Terms were not disclosed, but Yahoo Sports reported the deal was worth $80 million over five years. Oklahoma City has the best record in the Western Conference, with Westbrook averaging 20.5 points, 5.5 assists and 5.0 rebounds.