Journal of the National Cancer Institute
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J. Natl. Cancer Inst. · Feb 2009
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyPotential surrogate endpoints for prostate cancer survival: analysis of a phase III randomized trial.
The identification of surrogate endpoints for prostate cancer-specific survival may shorten the length of clinical trials for prostate cancer. We evaluated distant metastasis and general clinical treatment failure as potential surrogates for prostate cancer-specific survival by use of data from the Radiation Therapy and Oncology Group 92-02 randomized trial. ⋯ Distant metastasis and general clinical treatment failure at 3 years may be candidate surrogate endpoints for prostate cancer-specific survival at 10 years. These endpoints, however, must be validated in other datasets.
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J. Natl. Cancer Inst. · Feb 2009
T670X KIT mutations in gastrointestinal stromal tumors: making sense of missense.
Chronic myeloid leukemia, gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs), and idiopathic hypereosinophilic syndrome are associated with pathological deregulation of the tyrosine kinases BCR-ABL, KIT, and PDGFRA, respectively. Patients who become resistant to imatinib treatment often develop secondary mutations, the most common of which results in a substitution of isoleucine for threonine at the same location in the ATP-binding domain in all three kinases (in KIT this occurs at amino acid 670). We sought to determine why Thr is always replaced by Ile. ⋯ This combination of in vitro and molecular modeling analyses shows why, among all possible amino acid substitutions at position 670 of KIT, only Ile is naturally selected as a resistance mutant in imatinib-treated GIST patients.
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J. Natl. Cancer Inst. · Feb 2009
Estimated risk of radiation-induced breast cancer from mammographic screening for young BRCA mutation carriers.
BRCA mutation carriers are recommended to start mammographic screening for breast cancer as early as age 25-30 years. We used an excess relative risk model (based on a pooled analysis of three cohorts with 7600 subjects who received radiation exposure) to estimate the lifetime risk of radiation-induced breast cancer from five annual mammographic screenings in young (<40 years) BRCA mutation carriers. We then estimated the reduction in breast cancer mortality required to outweigh the radiation risk. ⋯ If we assume that the mortality reduction from mammography is 15%-25% or less for young women, these results suggest that there would be no net benefit from annual mammographic screening of BRCA mutation carriers at age 25-29 years; the net benefit would be zero or small at age 30-34 years, but there should be some net benefit at age 35 or older. These results depend on a number of assumptions due to the absence of empiric data. The impact of varying these assumptions was therefore examined.