Cancer: Cares, Treatments and Preventions

Cancer is a broad group of diseases involving unregulated cell growth, in which cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. Cancer may also spread to different parts of the body through the lymphatic system or the bloodstream. Cancer -- Cares, Treatments and Preventions discusses some recent advances in cancer research.

Chapter 1 discusses the epidemiology of smoking and tobacco prevention efforts globally with emphasis on anti-tobacco education at the Elementary School level. Chapter 2 considers both the protection and inclusion of pregnant women in clinical trials. Guidance and an algorithm for determining which is appropriate for studies is included. Chapter 3 describes a method called Multiple reaction monitoring (MRM), which is a a targeted MS-based technology that provides the specificity, throughput, and multiplexing capabilities required for candidate biomarker quantitation in patient samples. Chapter 4 discusses monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). mAbs and their derivatives, continue to be the focus of the biopharmaceutical industry for many diagnostic and therapeutic applications. In spite of vast improvements in our capability to deal with mAbs, they still pose many challenges.

Chapter 5 reviews four currently distinguished strategies to achieve tumor-specific infection and presents a transductional targeting strategies to specifically redirect viruses towards surface receptors on tumor cells. Chapter 6 reviews past and present treatment philosophies and regimens for treating Ewing's sarcoma. The authors also highlights how the identification of new therapeutic targets can be exploited through the use of tumor-specific agents. Chapter 7 examines what can be expected from using animal models to learn about cancers that affect humans. As humans and animals are examples of evolved, complex systems extrapolating outcomes from perturbations that occur at or effect higher levels of organization will be unlikely. This in part explains the profound lack of progress in finding treatments to human cancers. Chapter 8 provides a comprehensive overview of mitochondrial energy metabolism and cancer, analyzes mitochondrial protection and energy metabolic improvement of Astragalus Polysaccharides (APS), proposes a novel cancer-preventive mechanism from the perspective of effects of APS on mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation and intracellular adenylates levels, and provides a new way of perspective, thinking and hope for the prevention and treatment of cancer.

Chapter 9 discusses clinically applied radiopharmaceuticals studied and used in Oncology. Constructive summary tables and up-to-date references provide the student and clinician with a working knowledge and understanding of different Nuclear Medicine techniques. Chapter 10 identifies indications for DT technique for chest imaging. Moreover, the authors performed experiments to measure the artificial pulmonary nodules detection capabilities of the DT imaging system for use as an effective screening method and compared the results with those of radiography and CT imaging. Chapter 11 presents a study to understand the behaviours of normal and diseased breast images from the Digital Database for Screening Mammography (DDSM), considering measures of lacunarity and fractal dimension with the corresponding texture signatures. The malignant nodules with the respective adjacent structures (partial pixels) also were quantified applying a multilevel segmentation method based on maximum entropy. All obtained results provide important information about the studied structures and may contribute with the developments of CAD systems. Chapter 12 presents recent advances in the field of Raman-based optical-biopy for cancer detection. A revision concerned applications to breast, oral, cervical cancers, technological challenges and perspectives is discussed.