Axitinib is an agent that targets angiogenesis -- blood supply to a tumor. It disrupts blood vessels that grow and provide nutrients to cancer cells. Without the nutrients and oxygen supplied by blood vessels, cancer cells cannot grow or replicate.

Researchers conducted a trial to evaluate axitinib in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. Patients were either given Taxotere or Taxotere plus axitinib. Anticancer responses were achieved in 40 percent of patients treated with the addition of axitinib to Taxotere, compared with only 23 percent of patients treated with Taxotere alone.

The researchers concluded -- that the addition of axitinib to Taxotere improves anticancer responses and delays cancer progression compared to Taxotere alone in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer.

Movie critic Roger Ebert expects to be back to work at his annual festival for overlooked movies this week. It will be his first public appearance since having cancer surgery last summer -- and while some say his appearance may attract the gossip papers, Ebert says, "So what?"

Ebert, 64, will be seen at the ninth annual Overlooked Film Festival, beginning today at the University of Urbana-Champaign, wearing a gauze bandage around his neck. And his mouth will be seen to droop, he says.

This is all because of Ebert's tracheostomy -- it opens an airway through an incision in his windpipe, rendering him speechless -- that resulted from his June 16 surgery to remove a cancerous growth on his salivary gland and a subsequent July 1 surgery to repair a burst blood vessel close to the same site.

On Tuesday, Ebert shared that his cancer began in his salivary gland but then spread to his lower right jaw. As a result, part of his mandible was removed and two surgeries were necessary to reconstruct the area. Both surgeries were unsuccessful, however, and led to unanticipated bleeding.

"The doctors now plan an approach that does not involve the risk of unplanned bleeding," Ebert, a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, says. "If all goes well, my speech will be restored."

This cancer survivor, who says we spend too much time hiding illness and is proud to be back in the spotlight, has also co-hosted the Ebert & Roeper television show with fellow Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper since 2000. Film critics and filmmakers have been filling in for Ebert during his recovery.

When Dr. Jian-Wei Gu went to Mississippi to study the cardiovascular system and the process of blood vessel growth, he had no idea he'd make national headlines about his research into the world of cancer.

Gu, assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, says his discovery of the mechanism by which alcohol consumption causes tumor growth was purely accidental.

And extremely significant.

Scientists have known for a hundred years about the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. A study from Paris in 1910 showed that 80 percent of patients with cancer of the esophagus or gastric track were alcoholics. More recently, scientists have found correlations between alcohol consumption and cancer of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, large bowel, and even the breasts. Yet lab experiments have always failed to show the effects in animals that investigators knew to be true in humans.

Until now.

It seems past studies used too much alcohol -- in concentrations of 20 percent -- and the animals just wasted away while showing no tumor growth. But when Gu used concentrations of one percent -- about one to two drinks per day in humans -- to study blood vessel growth, he detected stimulated tumor growth in both chick embryos and mice. Thus, his cancer discovery was born.

Gu has further concluded that melanoma cancers in mice grew significantly faster and larger in the mice who consumed the equivalent of one or two alcoholic drinks a day than the mice receiving no alcohol.

Gu's findings, now confirmed by other scientists, are evidence of what many have long suspected -- alcohol, even in moderation, increases cancer risk.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a health warning to consumers that drinking high-strength hydrogen peroxide products sold online are extremely corrosive and can lead to stomach irritation or ulcers; and injecting the solution intravenously could lead to blood vessel inflammation, bubbles in blood vessels and potentially life-threatening allergic reaction.

In addition, the FDA has issued warnings to two Texas-based firms, DFWX and Frad 35 Inc., who are illegally selling 35 percent hydrogen peroxide products to treat AIDS, cancer, emphysema and other serious diseases.

To understand the strength of the hydrogen peroxide the FDA is referring to, high-strength hydrogen peroxide is 35 percent while the strength of hydrogen peroxide solution sold over-the-counter for disinfecting wounds is only 3 percent.

According to the news release, Donald Worden, owner of Frad 35 Inc., said he would continue selling his 35 percent hydrogen peroxide product and that his website provided links to information about potential medical uses but that he was not promoting his products for that purpose.

The FDA has issued a warning about this product. You have been warned.

At the beginning of June we posted that Roger Ebert, Pulitzer prize-winning movie critic for the nationally syndicated movie review show Ebert & Roeper, was scheduled to undergo surgery to remove a cancerous growth on his salivary gland. At that time, Ebert, who is 63, and a three-time thyroid cancer survivor, was quoted as saying, "This is not considered to be a life-threatening form of cancer, and I expect to make a full recovery. I'll continue to function as a film critic during this time."

On June 16, Ebert had a tumor from his salivary gland removed. Recently, he was hospitalized due to complications from the initial surgery when a blood vessel burst. Surgeons performed a life-saving emergency procedure to correct the complication. Reports at this time indicate Ebert is in serious but stable condition.

Ebert began his career in journalism when, in 1966, the Chicago Sun-Times offered him a features writer position. His unique journalistic style in reviewing movies earned him the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a film critic. To learn more about the no-holds-barred critic of film, visit the Oral Cancer Foundation famous people profile of Roger Ebert -- cancer survivor.