Cancer | featured news

More than 100 cancer specialists have banded together to persuade pharmaceutical companies to bring prices down, suggesting that the high prices for medicine needed to keep someone alive is profiteering.

Major academic medical centers in New York and around the country are spending and recruiting heavily in what has become an arms race within the war on cancer. The investments are based on the belief that the medical establishment is moving toward the routine sequencing of every patient’s genome in the quest for “precision medicine,” a course for prevention and treatment based on the special, even unique characteristics of the patient’s genes.

You would think that people who were diagnosed with melanoma -- the most deadly form of skin cancer -- would be meticulously careful about using sunscreen, avoiding tanning salons and generally protecting their skin.

Roger Ebert loved movies. Except for those he hated. For a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and promoted excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative, or the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and viewers.

Researchers might have found the Holy Grail in the war against cancer, a miracle drug that has killed every kind of cancer tumor it has come in contact with, the New York Post reported. The drug works by blocking a protein called CD47 that is essentially a "do not eat" signal to the body's immune system, according to Science Magazine.

Film critic Roger Ebert says he has cancer again and is scaling back his movie reviews while undergoing radiation. In a blog post, the 70-year-old said he'll take a "leave of presence."

Researchers have found that the benefits to women of treating breast cancer with radiation outweigh the risks of heart disease.

Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda Morgenstern on television's "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and its spinoff, "Rhoda," has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer....

President Hugo Chavez, the fiery populist who declared a socialist revolution in Venezuela, crusaded against U.S. influence and championed a leftist revival across Latin America, died Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer.

Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro is meeting with the country's top officials after the nation's information minister reported that the condition of President Hugo Chavez, fighting a battle with cancer, has worsened, state TV said Tuesday.