Quick Facts on cancers affecting women

1. Breast cancer
Breast cancer is estimated by the National Cancer Institute to affect 178,480 women in 2007, causing 40,460 deaths.

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center is one of the research centers which has received a Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant from NCI for breast cancer research. The five-year, $13 million grant funds translational research – laboratory-based research which can be applied in the clinical setting.

Carlos L. Arteaga, M.D., principal investigator and director of the Breast SPORE, said work is promising in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer – so-called (ER)-positive breast cancer – and HER2-positive breast cancer, cancers with amplification of the HER2 gene.

But some kinds of breast cancer are still baffling to scientists – specifically breast cancer called triple-negative or of the basal type. Nearly 10 percent of all breast cancers are triple-negative and they are most prevalent in minorities.

“Those tumors don’t have detectable hormone receptors so hormonal therapies don’t work. They don’t depend on HER2, so known treatments don’t work against them. In those tumors we have little understanding of what critical molecules are driving the cancer,” Arteaga said.

2. Lung cancer
Lung cancer traditionally has been considered a man’s disease, but the disease now kills nearly twice as many women as breast cancer.

“There’s a feeling it’s a self-inflicted cancer, which is incredibly unfair since cigarettes are legal and highly addictive, and especially unfair to the nearly 20,000 people per year who take care of themselves, never smoke, and get lung cancer anyway,” said David Carbone, M.D., Ph.D., Harold L. Moses professor of Cancer Research and director of the Thoracic Oncology Center.

Even people who smoke for a few years and later quit can develop the disease decades later due to the permanent genetic damage smoking causes. Lung cancer is also highly lethal, with only about 15 percent of people diagnosed alive five years later.

Carbone is particularly excited about the 2007 renewal of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s SPORE in Lung Cancer grant from NCI, which he directs. Much of the research in that SPORE is focused on finding a blood test for lung cancer.

3. Colon cancer
Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death in the United States and until age 50 women are nearly as likely as men to develop the disease. Modest decreases in colorectal cancer deaths in the past decade have been attributed to the detection and removal of precancerous growths or polyps, early detection of tumors through screening and improved treatments.

One of the best screening tests is a colonoscopy, however, the invasive nature of a colonoscopy makes some patients unwilling to undergo the screening test which is recommended for everyone at age 50 and even earlier for those with risk factors like a family history of colon cancer. So researchers at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center are trying to develop a simple blood test to screen for the disease.

“I think in the next five years we will be able to identify proteins that are indicative of cancer, and we will be able to detect many of these markers in the blood,” said Daniel Liebler, Ph.D., director of the Jim Ayers Institute for Pre-Cancer Detection and Diagnosis.

4. Cervical cancer
The most important news about cervical cancer in women is that it may be preventable. Scientists have discovered most cases of cervical cancer are caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases. The FDA has now approved a vaccine for girls and young women which prevents the HPV infection that leads to cervical cancer.

Physicians are using colposcopy to identify abnormal blood vessel patterns on the superficial epithelium of the cervix. When serious abnormalities are found, the cells are removed through large-loop excision – a wire loop that cleanly removes the affected tissue, said Howard Jones III, M.D., director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology.

For more information on women and cancer visit www.vicc.org/women.