Breast cancer drug tamoxifen, designed to cut recurrence in women with estrogen-receptor positive disease, has been shown to continue working long after women stop taking the drug. And two studies suggest it might also offer long-term protection for healthy women with high risk of developing breast cancer.

One such study found the drug decreases risk of hormone-sensitive breast cancer by 39 percent over 20 years. Another shows a 34 percent decrease for up to eight years after the therapy concludes.

Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, one study -- the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study, or IBIS -- looked at 7,145 women at high risk of breast cancer. And for the first time, clear evidence has surfaced in support of the merits of tamoxifen after the completion of treatment.

IBIS study participants took either a daily dose of tamoxifen or a placebo for five years. At the eight-year mark, 87 women who took the actual drug were diagnosed with estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer. And 129 women in the placebo group were diagnosed with the same disease.

In the second study, researchers from the Royal Marsden Hospital in London investigated 20-year data on 2,471 healthy women at high risk of breast cancer who took tamoxifen for six or seven years. Similar results were found.

Despite the benefits of tamoxifen as a preventative treatment, the drug is not currently approved for this use in the UK, where breast cancer is the most common form of female cancer.

Cancer drug Nexavar has made its point. It can help people with liver cancer survive longer.

Bayer Pharmaceuticals and Onyx Pharmaceuticals announced Monday that advanced stage clinical trials for this drug will end early. And now patients in the placebo arm of the study can begin treatment with the actual drug.

It's been a long road for researchers who have been searching for a liver cancer treatment that can target tumors with minimal side effects while extending life for months or even years.

It is estimated that 16,780 people in the United States will die from liver cancer in 2007 -- and it seems Nexavar, a drug initially predicted to fail when used for liver cancer -- may help save some of these lives.

Bayer and Onyx are planning to pursue FDA approval for this drug that has already been approved for kidney cancer.

The Phase III clinical trial known as OVATURE has gotten underway at The Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. This will be one of sixty hospitals that will participate in this ovarian cancer study to confirm the effectiveness of phenoxodiol in resensitizing patients to chemotherapy.

The total number of patients to be treated in this study will be 470, half will be treated with phenoxodiol and carboplatin and the other half a placebo and carboplatin. Thirty of the hospitals will be in the United States, twenty five in Europe and five in Australia. A Phase II study already conducted showed that phenoxodiol did have a chemosensitizing effect on ovarian cancer patients who's prior chemotherapy treatments failed.

Phenoxodiol is an investigational drug and at this time is not commercially available.

Magic or medicine? That's the question nurse practitioner Kathy Turner at the Stanford University School of Medicine wants to find the answer to and is currently conducting a study of touch therapy. The therapy is described as a noninvasive form of energy-balancing work that aims to promote deep relaxation and is attributed with easing nausea, fatigue, feelings of fear and worry, pain, and lymphedema. According to practitioners of touch therapy, a person's body is surrounded by a field of energy, and unblocking the body's energy flow can aid in healing and maintaining health. For many in the Western medical community, it is pure hooey. But the centuries old philosophy and practice involving a body's energy fields is deeply rooted in Eastern medicine.