The National Cancer Institute shows studies have found the following risk factors for bladder cancer.

1. Age - The chance of bladder cancer goes up as you get older and is rarely found in anyone under 40 years old.
2. Tobacco - Cigarette smokers are three times more likely than non smokers to develop bladder cancer.
3. Occupations - People who work in these professions or who handle these products have a higher risk of developing bladder cancer. Rubber, chemical, leather, textile, printers, painters, machinists, metal workers, hairdressers, and truck drivers.
4. Infections - Certain parasites increase the risk of bladder cancer.
5. Race - Whites get bladder cancer twice as often as African Americans and Hispanics. The lowest risks are Asians.
6. Gender - Men are three time more likely to develop bladder cancer which may be because of the above occupational risks.
7. Chlorine - By products of chlorine are being closely studied.
8. Saccharin - The artificial sweetener has shown to cause cancer in animals and is being studied closer for the risks on humans.

If you have blood in your urine, pain during urination, or frequent urination or the feel the need to urinate often, please discuss your concern with a doctor. Early detection of bladder cancer has been a proven factor in the survival rate of this disease.

A sarcoma is a cancer of the connective or supportive tissue and soft tissue affecting the bones, cartilage, fat, muscle, and blood vessels. Osteogenic sarcoma or osteosarcoma is one of the most common childhood bone cancers. Soft tissue sarcomas are more common in adults than in children. In all, sarcomas constitute fewer than 1 percent of all cancers. Its treatment is made more difficult with the existence of more than 70 varieties.

New studies released by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute showed that children who survive cancers have an increased risk of developing a secondary sarcoma,compared with the general population. Tara Henderson, M.D., of the University of Chicago Department of Pediatrics, and colleagues examined the incidence of secondary sarcomas and the risk factors associated with that risk among the 14,372 participants in the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study. Overall, there were 751 second cancers diagnosed among the participants, 108 of which were secondary sarcomas such as soft tissue sarcoma, malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors, and osteosarcoma. These sarcomas were diagnosed an average of 11 years after patients were diagnosed with their primary cancer.

I have heard differing stories over the years regarding the safety of artificial sweeteners. In most cases, the arguments center around one that has been around for quite some time now: aspartame. Is it harmful? Is it safe? Has it been shown to cause certain types of cancer (leukemia, lymphoma, brain cancer)? Are the results conclusive? So on and so forth. I actually even remember once hearing that aspartame was harmful for lab mice, but not for humans. Huh?

The confusion, at least it seems, may finally be cleared up, thanks to a study conducted by the National Cancer Institute. After surveying over 340,000 men and 225,000 women from 1995 to 2000, researchers found that the development of any of the three above-mentioned cancers was not any higher in people who regularly consumed aspartame than those who reportedly did not. While survey studies can sometimes produce slightly inaccurate results (due to several factors, including the "testing effect"), these findings appear to be solid.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) decided to include lung adenocarcinoma as one of the three cancer tissue types in its first ever pilot project to catalogue changes in human cancers.

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) pilot project is expected to take three years. The goal of the pilot project is to sequence the genome of lung cancer. This research will tell us how mistakes in a cell's genetic instructions lead to lung cancer, how to prevent it from spreading and how to prevent recurrence.

Laurie Fenton, President of Lung Cancer Alliance says "This is exciting news for the lung cancer community". "For too long, lung cancer has been ignored, under-funded and under-researched given its massive public health impact. Let us hope this novel research can map discoveries and, ultimately, cure for this most lethal of all cancers".

A multi-center study funded by the National Cancer Institute involving University North Carolina School of Medicine; University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center in Baltimore; the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston; the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville; Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University in Chicago; and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston found that comparing treatment modalities for esophageal cancer show an advantage to undergoing multimodality therapy as opposed to one type of treatment.

56 patients were studied in a randomized trial that demonstrated a longer survival advantage if treated with chemotherapy and radiation followed by surgery in the treatment of esophageal cancer. This is the first statistical study of this type with esophageal cancer. Patients receiving chemotherapy and radiation followed by surgery survived an average of 2.7 years longer than those that just had surgery without treatments.

According to Clemson University bioengineer Dr. Ted Bateman, astronauts who were on the International Space Station and cancer patients receiving radiation therapy back here on Earth suffer in common the same bone loss. As a result, both groups are more likely to develop fractures compared to the general population. It is an easy connection to make when considering cancer patients receiving radiation as part of cancer treatments experience a decrease in bone density and bone loss that can lead to easy fractures as a result of exposure to radiation, but how did the astronauts come to suffer the same type of bone loss? While in space, the astronauts experienced microgravity and were exposed to radiation from cosmic and solar sources.

"Recent exams of astronauts who were on the International Space Station showed signs of bone loss in the neck and vertebrae. Even five years after returning to Earth, they have not completely recovered from this loss," stated Dr. Bateman.

Conducting studies at Clemson University and the Kennedy Space Center, Osteoporosis Biomechanics Lab researchers exposed mice to replicated solar flares and clinical radiation exposure, to measure bone loss in mice, in the hopes that they can develop effective therapies for astronauts scheduled to spent time in space and for cancer patients receiving radiation therapy to fight cancer.

The National Cancer Institute provides a Radiation Therapy for Cancer: Questions and Answers fact sheet that explains radiation therapy, also called radiotherapy, x-ray therapy, or irradiation as using a type of energy called ionizing radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. They also offer Radiation Therapy and You: A Guide to Self-Help During Cancer Treatment as an educational publication for cancer patients who will be receiving radiation therapy.

To read more about Osteoporosis Biomechanics Lab and Dr. Bateman, go here.

The National Cancer Institute started a program about a year-and-a-half ago that allowed pet owners to enroll their dogs in clinical trials when conventional treatment wasn't working. The idea was to stop giving cancer to animals, start trying to help animals who developed cancer naturally, and help humans in the process. The Comparative Oncology Program (COP) is helping change the controversial issue of medical research involving animals.

Dogs develop many of the same kind of cancers that humans develop and cancer in dogs also metastasizes more similar to humans than lab mice. Dogs are also closer in weight to humans and share the same environment. The types of cancer in dogs that could translate into results for humans include osteosarcoma, breast and prostate cancer, colon, melanoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, head and neck carcinoma, and soft-tissue sarcoma.

Conventional cancer treatments can cost between $4,000 and $7,000 for a dog and sometimes it can be much higher. The COP trials are expected to be very low-cost, or free. Most of the pet owners expense will be for the initial evaluation. Someone whose dog is diagnosed with cancer may be referred by their veterinarian to a local veterinary teaching hospital and if that hospital is a member of the COP consortium and is participating in a clinical trial for that dog's cancer diagnosis, the owner will have the option of enrolling their pet.

The COP Web site features a list of all of the trials sponsored at the various consortium hospitals.

Scientists attending a cancer research conference question the realism of the prediction of a cancer cure by 2015. Back in 2003, when Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach was director of the National Cancer Institute, he announced a goal for eliminating death and suffering from cancer by 2015. Dr. von Eschenbach, who is a cancer survivor and a personal friend of the Bush family, spent 25 years at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Prominent researchers say the goal is merely a gimmick that gives patients false hope and distorts scientific reality. Others say it is simply a publicity stunt aimed at manipulating the media and public as a means to raising funds for cancer research.

Matthew Chayes, the Chicago Tribune newspaper reporter who wrote the article Cancer cure goal praised, criticized, states that a dozen cancer researchers and physicians who were interviewed during the cancer research conference, laughed off the idea that cancer deaths and suffering could be eliminated by 2015. They were not willing to be quoted directly, or go on the record with any remarks because they feared reprisal from the head of a federal agency that controls the purse strings for cancer research. Common sense should rule when it comes to proclamations made by the government, especially when such lofty goals are announced, but still, it seems especially heartless to raise hopes for the motivating purpose of raising money.

In 1922, when a patient claimed her breast cancer had been cured by an Ojibwa medicine man, Rene Caisse, a public health nurse from Ontario, Canada became interested in learning the herbal formula for the tea. After obtaining the recipe, she is reported to have successfully cured her aunt's stomach cancer. Two years later, Caisse opened a cancer clinic and began treating thousands of patients with the tea, which she named Essiac, Caisse's name spelled backwards.

In 1977, one year before her death, Cassie gave the formula for the tea to a Toronto manufacturer, with a promise that the tea be sold at an affordable price to cancer patients. The original formula for Essiac included burdock root, slippery elm inner bark, sheep sorrel and Indian rhubarb root. Watercress, blessed thistle, red clover, and kelp were later additions to the formula and sold as Flor Essence.

It challenges the imagination to envision a device so small it has the ability to enter a cancer cell, take a look around, report on what is happening inside the cancer cell, and then possibly be instructed to destroy the cancer cell. The National Cancer Institute is imagining just such a new technology, called nanotechnology, and has established eight research centers to focus on the future of this exciting new method of treating cancer. The team science approach to research includes the Stanford Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence Focused on Therapy Response, UCLA, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the University of Texas-Austin, General Electric Global Research and the Intel Corporation.

"There is a big shift in science and medicine right now toward saying - look, we can't just have individual labs doing their individual research," said Dr. Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, professor of radiology and bioengineering director of the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, "this is the other extreme of a large team of a diverse group of scientists and physicians. The first year, the biggest challenge is going to be getting these people working together."

According to the ambitious project leaders, if approved for human use, the nanoparticles could become useful for assessing a patient's response to therapy and in early diagnosis of cancer, when maybe only a few cells are cancerous. Currently, the best available methods can detect cancer only when a million or so cells have turned malignant.

Successful long-term childhood cancer survival is creating a whole new set of questions without answers. One of the questions researchers will try to answer is whether of not children with cancer, traditionally treated with high-dose chemotherapy and radiation, will pass on inherited health risks to their children when they become parents. The National Cancer Institute has awarded a $4 million dollar grant to Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, and an international team of researchers, to begin a five-year study of this issue. According to Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, thirty years ago, the focus was a singular one of treatment and survival for children, and because of treatment success, there are approximately 270,000 childhood cancer survivors in the United States today. Now long-term quality of life issues need to be understood.

The National Cancer Institute is funding two clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of using prolonged regulated doses of thermal heat, in combination with chemotherapy, as a treatment for cancer. The hypothesis behind thermal therapy hopes to prove that while heat is decreasing the pressure inside a tumor, more of the chemotherapy drugs can be absorbed into the tumor. In addition, by inducing a fever in the patient, the natural infection-fighting defenses of the body will stimulate the production of white blood cells. Patients currently enrolled in the two clinical trials are cancer patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, melanoma, inoperable or metastatic neuroendocrine tumors, and cancers of the gastric system, small bowel, lung, head and neck. Dr. Joan Bull, University of Texas Medical School at Houston oncology professor and Center for Thermal Therapy Cancer Treatment director, is leading the current trials.

Four federal agencies are joining together to accomplish what each one separate cannot accomplish alone, in the investigation of cancer therapies through biomarker development and evaluation. In a collaborative effort, the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, the National Cancer Institute, NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, CMS, are forming the Oncology Biomarker Qualification Initiative, OBQI. The primary goal of QBQI will be to bring targeted, more personalized cancer diagnostics, treatments and preventions to patients in a more timely manner than presently available. By bringing together scientists from many sources and disciplines, these monolithic organizations, collaborating together, become a visionary model for the 21st century for the advances needed in scientific and medical research.