Cancer drug Gleevec, used for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), has been pulled out of another round of testing so it can get to work stopping the return of a rare stomach cancer. It's that good, according to findings announced on Thursday.

The promise of Gleevec should make it standard treatment for people with gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), a stomach and intestine cancer diagnosed in 5,000 to 6,000 Americans each year.

The drug has already been used for patients whose disease is too advanced for surgery. Now it will be used for those whose tumors can be removed. The drug will be administered for at least one year post-surgery.

More than 600 people participated in this Gleevec trial. Each person took either Gleevec or a sugar pill for one year after surgery. After the one-year mark, cancer returned in 17 percent of people taking the sugar pill and in 3 percent of people taking the actual drug.

Since 50 to 90 percent of GIST cases recur over time, this is great news, say researchers who call Gleevec a highly targeted cancer drug with few side effects.

Bladder cancer is diagnosed in 55,000 - 60,000 individuals annually in the United States. Patients whose cancer has spread to deeper tissues in the bladder and/or nearby lymph nodes may be treated with a radical cystectomy, the surgical removal of the bladder and nearby lymph nodes.

This approach may be able to cure the patient, however recurrences do occur. Researchers want to find out which patients may be more susceptible to a recurrence so that they can either monitor them more closely or treat them more aggressively to reduce the risk of recurrence.

An article was published in Lancet Oncology saying that markers may help predict the risk of cancer recurrences in patients who are treated with a radical cystectomy. Researchers from Texas and Canada conducted a clinical study to evaluate markers found in the the tissue samples taken after surgery. The markers tested included the expression of Bcl-2, caspase-3, P53, and survivin.

The study found that those patients that had an altered expression of Bcl-2, caspase-3, P533 and survivin were associated with over four times the risk of cancer recurrence. Also, the altered expression of all of these bio-markers was associated with nearly seven times the risk of death from cancer.

The researchers conclude that these findings support other studies that show these bio-markers can help predict who will remain cancer free. They look at this as moving forward towards more individualized treatments for the patients.

It did not say in the article whether using this test after the surgery would help them to determine if chemotherapy or radiation would be something that could reduce the risk of recurrence if the markers would show a high risk category of recurrence. I think this these studies are great but we need to be moving forward to get the patients to benefit from this vital information.

Recent research indicates that obesity makes ovarian cancer deadlier and more likely to recur. According to physician and senior author of the study, Dr. Andrew J. Li of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, maintaining ideal body weight is important for many reasons. This is just one more reason to reduce obesity -- because obese women suffering from advanced ovarian cancer are more likely to die than women at healthy weights. They also suffer recurrences more quickly. On average, women in the study considered overweight or obese saw an average of 16 months before recurrence while those considered underweight or at a healthy weight saw 25 months.

Perhaps it's the secretion of adipose tissue that makes tumors less sensitive to chemotherapy. Li said there are ideas on the table -- and his team are looking into them. One fact they feel certain about is that obesity does not increase the chances of contracting ovarian cancer. It just shows the odds of survival are diminished once the disease has been contracted.

Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men between the ages of 15 to 34. There are two different types of testicular cancer based on how the cells look under a microscope. The classifications are seminoma and non-seminoma testicular cancer.

Metastatic nonseminomatuous testicular cancer can be cured in many men with chemotherapy. Sometimes after the treatment the cancer returns. The journal BJU International published results that stated if men recur more than two years following chemotherapy it may prove to be different than cancer that recurs earlier, and may require different treatment options.

Researches in the UK did a study of men who had late relapse. They wanted to see if surgery could in fact have good outcomes on these men. The study concluded that if surgery is feasible it appears to improve survival.

I clearly remember reading a pamphlet about a test that might determine with pretty good accuracy whether or not I would benefit from chemotherapy for breast cancer. This was more than a year ago and I hoped, prayed, wished upon a star that I would be a candidate for this test -- and that the result would reveal that I did not need the toxic chemotherapy that I feared with every fiber of my being. But I did not qualify for this test because it's only effective for tumors that are estrogen receptor positive -- and I am negative. So I received chemotherapy and while I've survived it, there still remains an important issue -- did I need it?