Experimental Breast Cancer Treatment Proving Beneficial

story first appeared on usatoday.com

Vickie Baker did not have time for breast cancer.

The 49-year-old Hazard resident knew she needed radiation therapy, but she couldn't imagine how she could get to University Hospital in Louisville for treatments five days a week. Not when she lives more than three hours away and babysits eight grandchildren.

But a University of Louisville study allowed her to receive radiation treatment just once a week in March and April, after a lumpectomy in January.

Baker, who is doing well today, said the experimental treatment for people with early stage breast cancer made her life easier and offered hope for the future.

Dr. Anthony Dragun, a radiation oncologist at the University of Louisville's James Graham Brown Cancer Center who is overseeing the study, hopes it will make radiation treatment more accessible to women facing such obstacles as distance, transportation problems and time constraints — while also cutting treatment costs by more than half.

Research subjects get higher doses of radiation once weekly than they would receive during each daily treatment, but less radiation during the overall five-week course of treatment. Traditional daily radiation schedules are also usually five weeks, but in some cases may be six or seven weeks.

Some areas of the country have better access to this type of treatment. A Cancer Specialist Detroit procedure might be available in areas less rural than in Appalachia.

Dragun led a study two years ago showing that about a third of Kentucky women with early stage breast cancer didn't get recommended radiation treatments after lumpectomy surgeries.

Among those least likely to get radiation were the elderly, African Americans and women in rural areas, including the Appalachian region of the state.

Women who did not get recommended radiation were 60% more likely to die during the time they were studied.

Dragun said that many times studies like these are published but never followed through to the next step, but made sure that wasn't the case here.

He said he's hopeful about the new regimen. In his study and previous European studies, women getting weekly radiation report similar levels of side effects as those getting radiation five days a week.

Some outside experts say the approach seems promising, but one pointed to research that found drawbacks in terms of breast appearance after once-a-week treatments.

Baker, who is scheduled for a follow-up doctor visit later this month, said she's glad to play a part in advancing the science.

Less trips, money

Dragun's study targets women with breast cancer in Stages 0-II who have undergone lumpectomies and who may be getting chemotherapy or hormonal therapy.

He said the experimental regimen not only improves access to care, but also significantly reduces treatment costs as measured by Medicare reimbursement. Five weekly treatments total $2,901, compared with $6,884 for 25 daily treatments over five weeks.

And that doesn't count such costs as increased medical staff time for the more frequent treatments, and wear-and-tear on the linear accelerator that provides the radiation.

Dragun said it is less costly for the health care system, and added that it also saves patients money on transportation and potential expenses such as overnight stays near cancer centers.

But Dragun said the biggest benefit is improving access to care — which can potentially save lives, while also giving patients more time with their families and less time off of work.

Baker said distance was a big obstacle for her after doctors found a lump in her right breast on a mammogram in 2011 and her family physician referred her to University.

After the lumpectomy in January, she didn't hesitate to join Dragun's research.

Baker said she and family members drove to Louisville each week, returning to Hazard the same day. Noting that she frequently takes care of her grandchildren, she predicted that, if the only option were daily radiation treatments, she would simply have skipped some.

Baker is one of 90 patients who have joined the study, which opened in January 2011 and aims to enroll 250 patients.

An article on the results among the first 42 patients has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, and it concludes that women's tolerance of the weekly radiation compares well with recent reports of daily schedules, and the new regimen appears feasible and cost-effective.

Dr. Bruce Haffty, associate director of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and president-elect of the American Society for Radiation Oncology, said he's aware of Dragun's research, which is one of several alternatives to daily, five-week radiation regimens being studied right now.

Haffty said radiation technology has grown more sophisticated, and such pared-down treatment schedules may someday help patients with long distances to travel.

Unequal treatment

If weekly regimens do become common, Dragun said they could be particularly helpful in such places as Kentucky, a largely rural state beset by doctor shortages, high levels of poverty and cancer disparities.

In his previous study, he and his colleagues analyzed the radiation rates for 11,914 women who underwent lumpectomies for early breast cancer, and found the percentages who didn't get radiation were 47.5% for women 70 or older, compared with 28.9% for those under 50; 43.8% for Appalachian women, compared with 30.4 for non-Appalachian women, and 35.4% for black women, compared with 33.6% for white women.

The study found that women without private health insurance fared worse. Among uninsured women, 34.4% didn't get radiation, compared with 27.8% for those with insurance, 34.5% for those with Medicaid and 42.1% for those with Medicare.

Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, director of the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, said some people believe that breast-cancer disparities could be eliminated simply by making screenings more available.

But she said the problem is much more complicated, considering big issues with access to care, timeliness of care and quality of treatment for cancer.

She said even the issue of transportation isn't as simple as it seems. In rural areas, public transportation is often scarce.

Nesbitt said new treatment schedules such as the one Dragun is studying could help — not only by reducing the number of commutes but also by improving women's quality of life.

Dragun said if his results hold up, the new treatment regimen eventually could help all early stage breast cancer patients who need radiation because less frequent treatments would be a boon to any woman juggling work and child-rearing.

Doctors Decide to End Certain Cancer Treatments

Story first appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a move that threatens to further inflame concerns about the rationing of medical care, the nation's leading association of cancer physicians issued a list on Wednesday of five common tests and treatments that doctors should stop offering to cancer patients.  Medical Malpractice Lawyers in Virginia Beach are concerned about the repercussions of such a decision.

The list emerged from a two-year effort, similar to a project other medical specialties are undertaking, to identify procedures that do not help patients live longer or better or that may even be harmful, yet are routinely prescribed.

As much as 30 percent of health-care spending goes to procedures, tests, and hospital stays that do not improve a patient's health, according to a 2008 analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget office.

A task force assembled by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), a group of more than 200 oncologists, released the list from a report in its Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Although the task force emphasized that its recommendations -- winnowed from about 10 suggestions by oncologists -- were driven by medical considerations, the report makes clear that expense was a major factor. A number of cancer drugs cost nearly $100,000 but extend life a few months or not at all. Widely-used imaging tests cost up to $5,000 yet do not benefit patients.

The list has been closely guarded, with public announcements scheduled for Wednesday. Patients, advocacy groups, and policy experts contacted by Reuters were mixed in their reaction to the recommendations.


PATIENTS VS. FINANCIAL INTERESTS

Advocates for cancer patients applauded the recommendations.  However, this could be seen as administration of substandard care by patients and charged as medical malpractice as a Salt Lake Medical Malpractice Lawyer has indicated.

Following the science, however, can lead to conclusions that do not sit well with all patients. A patient, who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer eight years ago and has been in remission since 2007, has already felt the brunt of one of the recommendations: that patients who have been successfully treated for breast cancer and have no symptoms of cancer not undergo CT, PET, other imaging, or bone scans to check for a recurrence or spread of the disease, known as metastasis.

Her insurer, guided by the same kind of studies that served as the basis for the ASCO list, would not cover the scan, citing that it provides no benefit.

ASCO recommends against routine use of four other procedures: chemotherapy for patients with advanced cancers who are unlikely to benefit; advanced imaging technologies such as CT and PET or bone scans to determine the precise stage of both early breast and prostate cancers at low risk for metastasis; and drugs to stimulate white blood cell production in patients receiving chemotherapy if they have a risk of febrile neutropenia, an often-fatal condition marked by fever and abnormally low numbers of certain white blood cells.

The supporting evidence for each recommendation is expected to surprise patients and even some physicians, since these very widely-used tests and treatments have little or no scientific basis, said Schnipper.

WITHHOLDING CHEMOTHERAPY

One recommendation likely to stir controversy, and even revive charges of "death panels," is to not use chemotherapy and other treatments in patients with advanced solid-tumor cancers such as colorectal or lung who are in poor health and did not benefit from previous chemo.

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How to Widen the Hunt for Targeted Cancer Therapy

Associated Press

Cancer is a tale of two sets of genetic code, your own and your tumor's - and tracing the unique areas of damage makes for a way to target treatment.

Fifty years after the discovery of the first direct genetic link to cancer, scientists are assessing the state of so-called targeted therapy - with nearly 30 treatments on the market and a dozen or so more under study.

"We're still not using the 'C' word, 'cure,'" cautioned personalized medicine director Jeff Boyd of Fox Chase Cancer Center, who helped organized a meeting in Philadelphia on Tuesday to mark the anniversary and examine the future of targeted therapy.

But, he added, "there is real potential to transform many cancers into chronic diseases."

One next challenge is how to expand the number of targets to attack, in part by answering what the new chief of the National Cancer Institute calls the "big questions" about what makes this disease so intractable.

Questions like: What makes a tumor metastasize, or spread through the body? Metastasis is what kills, yet scientists don't know why some tumors spread and others don't, and what programs those tumor cells to invade, say, the liver instead of the bone or the lung - factors that undoubtedly could be new treatment targets.

Starting in October, Dr. Harold Varmus, the NCI's director, will begin quizzing top researchers from around the country about which of oncology's underlying mysteries should be part of his "Big Questions Initiative," a new focus of government cancer research.

Answering those questions "would get you over a roadblock that keeps us from making better progress," Varmus told a meeting of his scientific advisers earlier this month.

For Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, such a project might finally offer clues to a huge problem facing patients today: How to tell who needs the most aggressive treatment, and who would be OK skipping the big guns.

A domino effect of genetic alterations is required to cause any of the 200 diseases collectively called cancer. Some occur in the person, making them more prone to illness. But tumors also have their own genetic signature - four to seven genetic changes that are critical to turning, say, a normal breast or colon or liver cell into a cancerous one, and a pattern of activity that signals how aggressive that malignancy will be. Those unique patterns also offer targets for treatment, drugs that zero in on the particular genetic pathways fueling the person's cancer - and even vaccine-like therapies, a fledgling field that aims to train patients' immune systems to recognize and fight their tumors.

It all started with the 1960 publication of what was dubbed the Philadelphia chromosome, a funny-looking chromosome that two scientists - one from the University of Pennsylvania, one from Fox Chase - spotted only in patients with a specific kind of leukemia. Fast-forward to the 2001 approval of the groundbreaking drug Gleevec, which has turned chronic myeloid leukemia from a fast killer into a disease that many patients today manage with a daily pill. It works by targeting the cancer-causing protein produced by the Philadelphia chromosome.

Gleevec wasn't the first genetic targeted therapy for cancer - the decades of research sparked by that discovery actually paid off for some other cancers first.

Boyd predicts there will be more than 100 targeted therapies available within several more years, and the real quest is for targets that prove as crucial to holding cancer in check as Gleevec's did.,

Generating particular excitement now are possible new drugs for hard-to-treat breast cancer, compounds called PARP inhibitors that block enzymes needed for cell growth. Also on the radar are earlier-stage experiments with drugs for melanoma and St. Louis lung cancer treatment that target different genetic pathways involved in spurring cancer growth.

The biggest threat: Funding for cancer research isn't keeping up with the discovery of possible new targets, said the cancer society's Brawley. The NCI's budget has held at around $5 billion for several years, but federal scientists are bracing for possible cuts in 2012.

And because these targeted therapies work differently - shrinking a tumor or slowing its growth - than the tumor-destroying approaches of chemotherapy and radiation, it's harder to prove a benefit.

But Allison Frey, whose aggressive form of thyroid cancer spread to her liver in inoperable patches, says that approach has made her cancer an illness she can manage much like a diabetic manages insulin. For nearly five years, the Lanoka Harbor, N.J., woman has swallowed an experimental pill called Axitinib that shrank those patches and kept them from growing back, working through a pathway that targets a tumor's blood supply.

"Honestly, to me it's just like any other chronic illness," said Frey, who's part of a study at Fox Chase. "I show up for work every day and live life ... with minimal issues."

$93,000 Cancer Drug: How Much are a few Months of Life Worth?

USA Today

 

Cancer patients, brace yourselves. Many new drug treatments cost nearly $100,000 a year, sparking fresh debate about how much a few months more of life is worth.

The latest is Provenge, a first-of-a-kind therapy approved in April. It costs $93,000 and adds four months' survival, on average, for men with incurable prostate tumors. Bob Svensson is honest about why he got it: insurance paid.

"I would not spend that money," because the benefit doesn't seem worth it, says Svensson, 80, a former corporate finance officer from Bedford, Mass.

His supplemental Medicare plan is paying while the government decides whether basic Medicare will cover Provenge and for whom. The tab for taxpayers could be huge — prostate is the most common cancer in American men. Most of those who have it will be eligible for Medicare, and Provenge will be an option for many late-stage cases. A meeting to consider Medicare coverage is set for Nov. 17.

"I don't know how they're going to deal with that kind of issue," said Svensson, who was treated at the Lahey Clinic Medical Center in suburban Boston. "I feel very lucky."

For the last decade, new cancer-fighting drugs have been topping $5,000 a month. Only a few of these keep cancer in remission so long that they are, in effect, cures. For most people, the drugs may buy a few months or years. Insurers usually pay if Medicare pays. But some people have lifetime caps and more people are uninsured because of job layoffs in the recession. The nation's new health care law eliminates these lifetime limits for plans that were issued or renewed on Sept. 23 or later.

Celgene Corp.'s Revlimid pill for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, can run as much as $10,000 a month; so can Genentech's Avastin for certain cancers. Now Dendreon Corp.'s Provenge rockets price into a new orbit.

Unlike drugs that people can try for a month or two and keep using only if they keep responding, Provenge is an all-or-nothing $93,000 gamble. It's a one-time treatment to train the immune system to fight prostate tumors, the first so-called "cancer vaccine."

It's also in short supply, forcing the first rationing of a cancer drug since Taxol and Taxotere were approved 15 years ago. At the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, doctors plan a modified lottery to decide which of its 150 or so eligible patients will be among the two a month it can treat with Provenge. An insurance pre-check is part of the process to ensure they financially qualify for treatment.

"I'm fearful that this will become a drug for people with more resources and less available for people with less resources," said M.D. Anderson's prostate cancer research chief, Dr. Christopher Logothetis.

For other patients on other drugs, money already is affecting care:

—Job losses have led some people to stop taking Gleevec, a $4,500-a-month drug by Novartis AG that keeps certain leukemias and stomach cancers in remission. Three such cases were recently described in the New England Journal of Medicine, and all those patients suffered relapses.

—Retirements are being delayed to preserve insurance coverage of cancer drugs. Holly Reid, 58, an accountant in Novato, Calif., hoped to retire early until she tried cutting back on Gleevec and her cancer recurred. "I'm convinced now I have to take this drug for the rest of my life" and will have to work until eligible for Medicare, she said.

—Lifetime caps on insurance benefits are hitting many patients, and laws are being pushed in dozens of states to get wider coverage of cancer drugs. In Quincy, Mass., 30-year-old grad student Thea Showstack testified for one such law after pharmacists said her first cancer prescription exceeded her student insurance limit. "They said 'OK, that will be $1,900,'" she said. "I was absolutely panicked." The federal health care law forbids such caps on plans issued or renewed Sept. 23 or later.

—Tens of thousands of people are seeking help from drug companies and charities that provide free medicines or cover copays for low-income patients. Genentech's aid to patients has risen in each of the last three years and the company says nearly 85% of Americans earn less than $100,000, making them potentially eligible for help if no other programs like Medicaid will pay.

—Doctors and insurers increasingly are doing the cruel math that many cancer patients want to avoid, and questioning how much small improvements in survival are worth. A recent editorial in a medical journal asked whether the extra 11 weeks that Genentech's Herceptin buys for stomach cancer patients justified the $21,500 cost.

Doctors also have questioned the value of Genentech's Tarceva for pancreatic cancer. The $4,000-a-month drug won approval by boosting median survival by a mere 12 days. Here's how to think about this cost: People who added Tarceva to standard chemotherapy lived nearly 6 1/2 months, versus 6 months for those on chemo alone. So the Tarceva folks spent more than $24,000 to get those extra 12 days.

When is a drug considered cost-effective?

The most widely quoted figure is $50,000 for a year of life, "though it has been that for decades — never really adjusted — and not written in stone," said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University expert on health care costs.

Many cancer drugs are way over that mark. Estimates of the cost of a year of life gained for lung cancer patients on Erbitux range from $300,000 to as much as $800,000, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society's deputy chief medical officer.

Higher costs seem to be more accepted for cancer care than for other illnesses, but there's no rule on how much is too much, he said.

Insurers usually are the ones to decide, and they typically pay if Medicare pays. Medicare usually pays if the federal Food and Drug Administration has approved the use.

"Insurance sort of isolates you from the cost of health care," and if people lose coverage, they often discover they can't afford their medicines, said Dr. Alan Venook, a cancer specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. He wrote in the New England Journal in August about three of his patients who stopped taking or cut back on Gleevec because of economic hardship.

Two of the three now are getting the drug from its maker, Novartis AG, which like most pharmaceutical companies has a program for low-income patients. About 5,000 patients got help for Gleevec last year, said Novartis spokesman Geoffrey Cook.

"We have seen a steady increase in requests over the past few years" as the economy worsened, he said.

Showstack, whose leukemia was diagnosed last year, gets Gleevec from Novartis. The dose she's on now would cost $50,000 a year.

"I'm not actually sure that I know anyone who could afford it," she said.

Gleevec's cost is easier to justify, many say, because it keeps people alive indefinitely — a virtual cure. About 2,300 Americans died each year of Showstack's form of leukemia before Gleevec came on the market; only 470 did last year.

"I don't think we quibble with a drug that buys people magical quality of life for years," Venook said.

It's unclear whether Provenge will ever do that — it needs to be tested in men with earlier stages of prostate cancer, doctors say. So far, it has only been tried and approved for men with incurable disease who have stopped responding to hormone therapy. On average, it gave them four months more, though for some it extended survival by a year or more.

Until it shows wider promise, enthusiasm will be tepid, said Dr. Elizabeth Plimack a prostate specialist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

"I've not had any patient ask for it," she said. "They ask about it. Based on the information, they think the cost is tremendous, and they think the benefit is very small."

Logothetis, at M.D. Anderson, said Provenge and other experimental cancer vaccines in development need "a national investment" to sort out their potential, starting with Medicare coverage.

"It's no longer a fringe science. This is working," he said. "We need to get it in the door so we can evolve it."

Advances Reported Against 2 Cancers

Boston Globe

Using two opposite strategies, scientists say they have made significant progress in taming two of the most intractable types of cancer.

One approach, highly focused on specific types of tumors, shrank them significantly in 57 percent of patients with a lung cancer marked by a specific genetic abnormality.

Even though the clinical trial was small (just 82 people, with no control group), the results were considered so striking for such sick patients that the study will be featured today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference.

“This is a phenomenal example of finding the right patient and the right drug very early on,’’ said Dr. Pasi A. Janne of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who was involved in the trial.

The other strategy is a potentially universal treatment for all types of cancer that works by releasing a brake on the body’s immune system, letting the immune system attack the cancer more vigorously.

In a study of patients who had advanced melanoma, those who got an experimental drug lived a median of about 10 months, compared with 6.4 months for those in a control group.

Bristol-Myers Squibb, which sponsored the trial, is planning to apply for regulatory approval to sell the drug, ipilimumab.

The lung cancer drug, by contrast, blocks an aberrant protein called ALK that is found in only about 5 percent of non-small-cell lung tumors. But in patients whose tumors have this aberration, the drug seems to work wonders. Not only did the tumors shrink in 57 percent of the 82 patients, they remained stable in 30 percent more.

Pfizer, which sponsored the study, has started a more definitive trial aimed at winning approval of the drug, crizotinib.

There are caveats. The effects of crizotinib can eventually wear off, though 72 percent of the patients in the trial were free of cancer progression for six months.

As for the melanoma drug, because it removes checks on the immune system, 10 percent to 15 percent of patients who took it in the study suffered severe side effects that had to be treated with immune-damping steroids. Seven patients out of 540 who got ipilimumab died from these immune effects, according to a report of the study published online yesterday by The New England Journal of Medicine.

Cancer Treatment Uses Body's Immune System

BND

A first-of-its kind prostate cancer treatment that uses the body's own immune system has received federal approval, offering a gentler alternative to chemotherapy and radiation.

Studies by the Dendreon Corp., of Seattle, found that its Provenge vaccine added four months to the lives of men with advanced prostate treatment. That's a month longer than the chemo drug Taxotere, and doctors hope it will provide even more benefit if given earlier in the course of the disease.

It works like this: From each patient, doctors collect special blood cells that allow the immune system to recognize cancer as a threat. The cells then are mixed with a protein found on most prostate cancer cells and another substance to rev up the immune system. The resulting "vaccine" is then given to the patient through three infusions over a two-week period.

"The big news here is that this is the first immunotherapy to win approval, and I suspect within five to ten years immunotherapies will be a big part of cancer therapy in general," said Dr. Phil Kantoff, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who helped run the Provenge research.

Side effects are relatively mild, including chills, fatigue, fever and headache. The one limiting factor will be the cost: nearly $100,000 per patient.

"There are going to be a lot of patients that want it and there will be limited resources as they are getting this up and running," said Dr. Deborah Bradle of Duke University.

Don't eat raw crawfish

Don't try to show friends what a cast-iron stomach you have by eating raw crawfish. You could wind up with a potentially fatal illness.

That's what at least six people recently discovered when they came down with lung-fluke infections after ingesting raw crawfish from Missouri rivers, according to the state's Department of Health and Human Services.

Usually seen in Asia, the lung fluke (paragonimiasis) is a food-borne infection caused by eating raw or undercooked freshwater crabs or crayfish. The parasitic trematode eventually breaks through the digestive tract to infest the rest of the body, including lungs, brain and nervous system. Symptoms can mimic tuberculosis -- fever, cough and spitting up blood.

People who develop such symptoms after eating raw crabs or crayfish are urged to seek immediate medical care. All six Missouri patients improved after they were hospitalized and give medicine to treat parasitic infections.

New cancer treatment study

A new study of women diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ may have uncovered important clues that will lead to personalized treatment.

DCIS is a common form of cancer in which malignant cells develop within the milk ducts of the breast. Currently, a woman who is diagnosed chooses either a lumpectomy with radiation treatment or has a mastectomy.

But a study of nearly 1,200 women at 63 San Francisco area hospitals uncovered three "biomarkers" that may help doctors determine how aggressively they should treat each patient. Of women with all three markers, 20 percent developed an invasive cancer within eight years. Of those with none of the markers, only 4 percent developed invasive cancer.

If the findings are confirmed, such differences may help women choose a more appropriate treatment, experts said.

"At this point in time we're probably overtreating people and undertreating people," said Dr. Karla Kerlikowske, a professor of medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco. "If we can define a woman's risk a little better, then we can personalize what they want to do."

Sun protection in vehicles

If you're in a car or truck for extended periods, you might want to add skin cancer to the list of traffic hazards you face.

A new study finds that skin cancer is found predominantly on the left side of the face -- and especially in men.

"Drivers need to be aware of the amount of sun exposure they receive behind the wheel," said Dr. Scott Fosko, the chair of dermatology at St. Louis University and co-author of the study, which appears in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. "The cumulative effect of being exposed to the sun builds up over many years."

And, he says, professional drivers aren't the only ones that need to monitor exposure to the sun. Carpooling moms and daily commuters should be concerned as well.

His recommendations: Regularly apply sunscreen that blocks both UVA and UVB rays. Tinting glass and using UV filters on windows also can help. Wear protective clothing whenever possible.

The American Cancer Society estimates that most of the more than 1 million cases of non-melanoma skin cancer diagnosed annually in the United States are sun-related. Melanoma caused most of the 12,000 skin cancer deaths last year.

Noninvasive depression treatment

Psychiatrists at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield have become the first in downstate Illinois to use a new noninvasive treatment for depression.

Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2008, transcranial magnetic stimulation -- or TMS -- may help adults who have not had successful treatment results from anti-depressant medications.

TMS therapy uses magnetic pulses to stimulate targeted regions in the brain during the 45-minute outpatient procedure. The pulses induce a painless electric current, which, in turn, causes neurons to release mood-boosting natural substances such as serotonin and dopamine.

Patients are awake and alert during the treatment, which is usually administered daily for four to six weeks. National studies found it produced statistically significant improvement in such symptoms as sadness, loss of interest, insomnia, fatigue and low self-worth.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in area

Helping make cancer cures a slam-dunk will be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's goal when he hosts "illumination10," the annual gala benefiting The Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis.

This year's program on May 15 at the Chase Park Plaza will support the Barnes-Jewish Hospital's Foundation's Cancer Frontier Fund, a 10-year, $50-million initiative to boost research at Siteman.

Abdul-Jabbar, the National Basketball Association's all-time scoring leader and six-time MVP, has had a stake in the work long before he was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia last year.

"My grandfather died from colorectal cancer, my uncle died from colorectal cancer and my father almost died from colorectal cancer," he told CNN last November. "I think it's possible for someone in my position to help save lives."