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Sad news to report for the Bravo family: Blood, Sweat & Heels star Daisy Lewellyn has died at the age of 36.

“We are devastated to learn that Daisy Lewellyn from Bravo’s Blood, Sweat & Heels has passed away this morning after a battle with a rare form of Cancer. Daisy passed on in peace and filled with joy, surrounded by her family and friends,” a Bravo spokesperson said in a statement. “We are all saddened to lose this wonderful woman. Our thoughts and deepest sympathy are expressed.”

“We are extremely saddened at the news of the passing of Daisy Lewellyn,” Leftfield Pictures said in a statement. “We will miss her incredible spirit and heart, and extend our deepest sympathies to her family and friends.”

The always-optimistic style expert was battling a rare form of the disease, which was diagnosed after her makeup artists noticed an unusual coloring in her eyes. She was later diagnosed as having a cancerous tumor in her bile duct. She received treatment, including having the tumor removed as well as getting chemotherapy and radiation treatments. “I have cancer – cancer doesn’t have me. Every day comes with its challenges, but that doesn’t stop me from celebrating what I have in my life,” she said in March 2015. “I wanted to turn this tragedy into triumph by sharing my story in hopes that even one person could feel inspired.”

Before sharing her life on Bravo, the California-native worked at several high-profile fashion magazines including InStyle, Glamour, and Essence. She became known for her expertise in knowing how to look stylish without having to spend a lot of money, penning the 2010 book Never Pay Retail Again: Shop Smart, Spend Less, & Look Your Best Ever. She chronicled her battle with cancer on Blood, Sweat & Heels, taking fans along for her journey with the disease. During the 2015 finale, she even celebrated the end of her radiation treatments during Season 2.

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Originally posted on www.cancer.gov

In 1957, the first results from a clinical trial of the diabetes drug metformin in patients were published. Yet, it would take nearly 40 years for the drug to be approved in the United States as a treatment for type 2 diabetes.

Now researchers want to know whether this decades-old drug may have additional uses in another disease—cancer. Based on findings from a number of large epidemiologic studies and extensive laboratory research, metformin is being tested in clinical trials not only as a treatment for cancer, but as a way to prevent it in people at increased risk, including cancer survivors who have a higher risk of a second primary cancer.

Numerous early-stage clinical trials are currently under way to investigate metformin’s potential to prevent an array of cancers, including colorectal, prostate, endometrial, and breast cancer. Several of these trials are being funded by NCI’s Consortia for Early Phase Prevention Trials. And NCI is collaborating with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to study participants from the landmark clinical trial, the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), to investigate metformin’s impact on cancer incidence.

Some of the early-phase prevention trials of metformin are enrolling participants who are at increased risk for cancer and who are obese, have elevated glucose or insulin levels, or have other conditions that put them at risk for diabetes.

“With the obesity epidemic, these studies are applicable to a substantial portion of the U.S. population and, increasingly, of the world population,” said Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, PhD, MPH, of NCI’s Division of Cancer Prevention.

Expanding the Data Pool

Much of the human data on metformin and cancer has come from epidemiologic studies of people with diabetes. In many, though not all, of these studies, people with diabetes who were assigned to take metformin had a lower incidence of cancer than those taking other diabetes drugs.

Completed in 2002, the original DPP enrolled more than 3,200 people at increased risk of developing diabetes and randomly assigned them to one of three groups: one group received metformin, one took part in an intensive diet and physical activity program, and one received a placebo. Participants in the metformin arm had a substantially lower risk of developing diabetes than the general population; participants in the exercise and diet regimen fared even better.

With NCI’s involvement, the program’s extension, called the DPP Outcomes Study, will allow investigators to document cancer incidence and death among study participants. Those observations should provide some of the strongest data available to date on metformin’s anticancer effects in people without diabetes, explained Dr. Heckman-Stoddard. The first data on cancer outcomes in study participants, which will be based on 15 years of follow-up, should be available in 2014.

“Once we have that data, there are a host of other questions we can ask,” she said. For example, Dr. Heckman-Stoddard and her colleagues plan to study metformin’s impact on certain blood biomarkers that studies have suggested are associated with cancer risk. They will also study the drug’s mechanism of action—that is, how metformin may work to prevent changes in cells that can lead to cancer.

For Prevention, Small Biomarker-Driven Trials

The smaller prevention trials being conducted are very different from the DPP Outcomes Study. These trials are not designed to determine whether metformin prevents cancer. Prevention trials must generally have a large number of participants and span many years to show whether a drug or some other intervention reduces the risk of cancer.

Instead, these short, 3- to 6-month trials are investigating whether the drug has an effect on specific proteins and/or signaling pathways that have been implicated in cancer development and that laboratory studies have shown are affected by metformin.

At the University of California, Irvine Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, for example, Jason Zell, DO, MPH, is leading an early-phase clinical trial that is testing metformin’s effect on the mTOR signaling pathway in obese people who have previously had precancerous growths removed from their colons.

Numerous studies have implicated the mTOR pathway as an integral hub in cancer development and progression, and laboratory studies have consistently shown that metformin can blunt mTOR signaling.

“The key point of the trial is to get at the mechanisms of action … to see if metformin is behaving in the expected manner” based on the lab findings, Dr. Zell explained.

Numerous early-stage clinical trials are currently under way to investigate metformin’s potential to prevent an array of cancers, including colorectal, prostate, endometrial, and breast cancer.

Dr. Zell and his colleagues chose to study obese patients “because of the interesting side-effect profile of metformin, which can include weight loss,” meaning it may not be suitable for underweight, nondiabetic individuals, he continued.

If this first trial shows that metformin is having the expected effects on mTOR signaling, the next trial would be similar but would measure a clinical outcome, such as whether metformin decreases the number of colorectal polyps that return.

A phase II trial at the University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center is testing metformin’s effects on a host of biomarkers in postmenopausal breast cancer survivors who are obese.

Funded by NCI’s Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer (TREC) program, the trial, called Reach for Health, will involve treatment with metformin alone and in combination with an exercise program. The study will examine the effect of 6 months of metformin treatment, with or without exercise, on a host of biomarkers associated with cancer risk. The change in biomarker measurements before and after treatment will be compiled into a score that predicts the risk of dying from breast cancer.

This is all part of the trial’s novel “biomarker bridge” design, the lead investigator, Ruth Patterson, PhD, explained. The biomarkers and the risk score are being derived from an analysis of tissue samples collected as part of an NCI-supported phase III trial called the Women’s Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) study. This study found that a diet low in fat and high in fruits and vegetables did not reduce the risk of cancer returning in survivors of early-stage breast cancer compared with survivors who maintained their normal diet. Researchers have continued to follow the health of WHEL participants to document their health outcomes, including death from breast cancer.

“The WHEL trial is over, and we have a freezer full of blood samples, and we know participants’ breast cancer recurrences, mortality, and other outcomes,” Dr. Patterson said. “So we’re hooking together a short-term trial with a long-term cohort study by means of blood biomarkers.”

The Dose Is the Question

Most of the cancer clinical trials of metformin use the same doses typically used to treat diabetes. That makes sense, because all of the epidemiologic data suggesting a cancer benefit came from studies that used those doses, said Michael Pollak, MD, of McGill University in Montreal, who has extensively studied metformin and its anticancer potential.

“We already know that those doses are safe, so why not study them?” Dr. Pollak continued. “But then you have to realize that virtually all of the lab studies [of metformin] have been done using drug concentrations that are as much as 100-fold higher than those found in the serum of diabetic patients. So the lab studies do not directly justify the clinical trials that are using conventional antidiabetic doses.”

With the obesity epidemic, these studies are applicable to a substantial portion of the U.S. population and, increasingly, of the world population.

—Dr. Brandy Heckman-Stoddard

Although laboratory studies suggest that larger doses of metformin “deserve study” for cancer treatment, Dr. Pollak noted that “for cancer prevention, we can only consider the hypothesis that the antidiabetic dose, or even lower doses, will be clinically useful.”

Dr. Zell agreed. “In the realm of cancer prevention, where side effects are less acceptable than they are in the realm of cancer treatment, the conventional dose for treating diabetes or something close to it may be the limit.

“I don’t imagine that prevention researchers will be looking to use [significantly larger] doses of metformin,” he continued. “In a healthy population, even a low risk of side effects could be extraordinary when applied to a larger population…. That’s why trials like ours are important. At the end of this 12-week intervention, we’ll have a good idea of whether the standard dose of metformin can affect cancer signaling pathways.”

Early Days

It’s still far too early to tell whether there is any future for metformin as a means of preventing or treating cancer, several researchers said.

Despite the very strong epidemiological evidence, there’s a chance that, even if metformin has some ability to prevent cancer, its efficacy may be limited to just several cancer types, Dr. Pollak noted. For example, metformin is not absorbed very well by the body and is absorbed differently by different tissues, he explained, which could limit how effective it might be against particular cancers.

Although the drug in its current form has certain limitations, some investigators are working on developing more potent derivatives of metformin. At the 2012 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, for example, Italian and U.S. researchers reported that several metformin derivatives they had developed potently blocked the growth of breast cancer cells in the laboratory, including cell lines of triple-negative breast cancer, and caused the cells to die.

To be used for cancer prevention, any metformin derivative would have to be safe, with few side effects, Dr. Heckman-Stoddard stressed. As for the original metformin formulation, she added, current trials should help to map the way forward for its use in prevention.

“It’s important that we identify the right populations in which this is most likely to be an effective agent,” said Dr. Heckman-Stoddard. “We need to look at the evidence from all of these early-phase trials as a whole,” she continued, including examining the population groups exhibiting the strongest suggestions of efficacy “so we can design efficient phase III trials.”

Examples of Clinical Trials Testing Metformin for Cancer Prevention
Trial Phase Measured Endpoints Sponsor
Exercise and Metformin in Colorectal Cancer Survivors

II

Insulin levels and other biomarkers Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
An Endometrial Cancer Chemoprevention Study of Metformin [and Lifestyle Intervention]

III

Biomarkers in the endometrium and insulin levels University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Metformin as a Chemoprevention Agent in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

II

Progression of potentially precancerous bronchial lesions (secondary endpoint) in patients who have undergone surgery for lung cancer Mayo Clinic
Prostate Cancer Active Surveillance Metformin Trial

II

Progression of prostate cancer in men undergoing active surveillance for low-risk disease University Health Network, Toronto
Metformin Hydrochloride as Chemoprevention in Patients with Barrett Esophagus

II

Changes in the levels of the signaling pathway protein pS6K1, thought to play important role in progression to esophageal cancer Mayo Clinic
  • Posted: April 15, 2013

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Cancer seems to be the “IT” thing nowadays, the “C” word that people hope to never hear and shocks the soul when spoken.   For whatever reason, more people are being diagnosed with the disease today than they were ten years ago. Growing up, I didn’t know much about the disease, nor did I know of anyone who was living with, dying from, or who had died from cancer.   I’m not sure if this is a result of my innocence and ignorance as a youth, or a result of the natural tendency of humans to keep their illnesses a secret in the name of shame or denial. But as far as I could see, I was living in a cancer-free world.

Then it happened: In October of 2003, cancer knocked on my door and hit my father; Freddie Jordan, Sr. He was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer.  At that moment, I didn’t know how serious it was. I was inexperienced and naïve about the unpredictable nature of cancer.  I thought, “Oh, he’ll be ok once he’s treated, no worries.”   But he wasn’t ok, and I could visually see that when I came home in 2004 for summer break.   I noticed that he was much smaller than I remembered; and his behavior changed within the last few weeks before his passing.  He was more irritable than normal. One time his legs began to swell and he asked me to pray for him.  I was a little uncomfortable, being that we didn’t agree on many things.  As I prayed for him, a warm feeling came over me and his swelling began to subside. I began to cry and that’s when I realized “IT” was real.

I came face to face with the reality that my father would soon be leaving his family. We didn’t talk about it; but then again, we didn’t talk about much (that’s another story). When I reflect back, I’m not sure what he knew or didn’t know about his own medical condition.  What I do know, is that my father was a strong man with a strong amount of faith in God, and I have no doubt that his faith contributed to the remarkable amount of strength and resiliency that he demonstrated in his final days.

My father was a good provider and was able to utilize his many talents to generate supplemental income for our household. He was a talented seamstress, excellent cook, and willingly assumed the responsibility of managing the haircare of his four daughters. During my father’s final days, his ability to engage in his multitude of talents and to continue to provide for his family prevailed.  He taught my siblings and I that adversity is a way of life and in order to “kick its butt” you have to “remain CONSISTENT, strong and not wallow in your pain/sadness past its time”. Despite his obvious appearance of being a dying man, life was normal- he made dresses for an entire bridal party that summer and continued to maintain his duties as the Head Deacon at church.  He fought the battle, but eventually lost the war. On August 21, 2004, my father died of pancreatic cancer.

My family and I were devastated! We couldn’t wrap our heads around what happened or why. I was no longer inexperienced. My innocence was lost and I could no longer afford to be naïve- I lost my dad to cancer. CANCER! He was only 51 years old.

Losing a parent is one of the most heartbreaking and devastating ways to learn about the devious nature of cancer. But it has also fueled my journey. I wanted and needed answers, so I began to fully research and educate myself about this thing called cancer.  Today, I’m putting my degrees, Health Information Management and Journalism together as a healthcare professional to focus on cancer research. I am writing this blog to share my knowledge, thoughts and experiences with cancer. I hope to bring awareness and shed light on the various forms of cancer, treatments, myths and preventative measures that we can all take to minimize our risk.

This is what I know: cancer isn’t a black or a white thing; it can happen to anyone of any race, any age, and any gender. According to the National Cancer Institute, over 1.5 million people, ranging from toddlers to senior citizens, have been diagnosed with cancer in 2014 and the number is still growing.  No one is immune from being diagnosed or having a love one be diagnosed with cancer.  So, let’s get serious about this thing, people! Every day, new information is released about this disease-clinical trials, stats, research, etc., and we should be talking about it!

Cancer is not always a death sentence, but we can’t begin to win the war without awareness and thoughtful conversation that I hope is generated through this blog. More importantly, no one has to take this journey alone.  We can fight and beat cancer together, one day at a time.

 

 

 

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My final semester in journalism school, a classmate and I produced this documentary as our final assignment. Our degrees were on the line (Famu J-Schoolers, can attest).  We decided to focus on something that pulled at our hearts, breast cancer. Although we didn’t know anyone personally with the disease, we stepped out of our comfort zone and took a chance.  Meet three women from three different worlds, who share the same story. Their diagnosis of breast cancer.

Watch this video and see their journeys unfold. 

For more information visit:
www.breastcancer.org
www.cancer.org

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Cancer: an unsettling word that we are all familiar with. While many of us cringe at the very mention of the word, many are unfamiliar with its actual definition.  Cancer occurs when normal cells in our body experience overwhelming growth and begin to form new, abnormal cells.  These abnormal cells eventually form a mass of tissue called a tumor.

Tumor.  Another bad word, right?  Not exactly. Not all tumors are cancerous (severe).  Tumors come in two forms: benign and malignant. Benign tumors are large masses of tissues that do not spread into or invade nearby tissue.  While they can often be the larger of the two types of tumors, once removed, benign tumors do not usually reappear. Benign tumors rarely create life-altering circumstances, unless they are located in the brain.

Malignant tumors, on the other hand, are far more concerning.  Sarcomas, Carcinomas, and Melanomas are just a few types of malignant tumors that can spread into or invade nearby tissue. Once this occurs, the abnormal cells can break off and spread to other distant parts of the body through the blood and/or the lymph system (major part of the body’s immune system) and generate new tumors away from the original culprit. This is called metastatic disease and is extremely dangerous.   Unlike benign tumors that rarely re-appear following removal, there is always a chance that malignant tumors may grow back.

Whether cancer, malignant and non-malignant, requires treatment will depend on a number of variables: time of diagnosis, the stage and type of cancer, and your overall health. Treatment options range from surgery, which directly removes the tumor, to nothing more than observation. Common forms of cancer treatment include the following:

  • Chemotherapy: a treatment option where chemicals are used to kill the cancer cells;
  • Radiation: another form of treatment that uses X-rays to kill the cancer cells;
  • Palliative treatment: the use of chemotherapy and/or radiation to relieve pain, but does not actually work towards curing Cancer;
  • Holistic medicine: the use of natural dietary and herbal supplements and vitamins instead of medications commonly prescribed by an oncologist; and
  • Observation: monthly visits to view changes in the tumor.

The best treatment option will vary from patient to patient.  Two patients can have the same type of cancer, but will be effected differently.  It really just depends upon the individual, and these variances must be taken into consideration when deciding upon an appropriate treatment plan for a patient. Cancer treatment can never be a one-size fits all approach.

Learning about cancer can be intimidating.   There are a lot of big words, types of cancers, and treatment options.  As a student and researcher, I still experience unfamiliar terms and diagnosis and new information. So, I get it! I really do! But, cancer research efforts are nowhere near complete.  According to the National Cancer Institute there are over 100 different types of cancers and they are steadily presenting themselves and requiring more research. In order to combat this disease, we can’t be intimidated!  We have to open our minds to the possibility and reality that there is so much more to learn about cancer.

 

 

 

 

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