North Carolina State Director of Athletics Lee Fowler and Head Women’s Basketball Coach Kay Yow announced jointly that Yow will be taking a leave of absence from her coaching duties for an indefinite period of time.

Associate head coach Stephanie Glance will serve as interim coach, Yow and athletic director Lee Fowler said in a news release.

Yow is battling breast cancer and doctors recently found it was progressing. That means she’ll have to undergo chemotherapy and targeted biologic therapies.

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In September of 1998, the FDA approved Herceptin to treat breast cancer after it had become metastatic. Few days back,  the FDA approved Herceptin’s use for women diagnosed with breast cancer just after surgery. The drug is already widely prescribed for adjuvant therapy even without the FDA’s approval, a practice called off-label use. Off-label use means that a prescription drug is being prescribed for a purpose not listed on the product’s label. This is a common and acceptable practice by doctors and the Food and Drug Administration.Clinical trials were conducted that showed women who received Herceptin (trastuzumab) given along with chemotherapy had fewer relapses than those who only received chemotherapy. Twenty to thirty percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have this genetic alteration of the HER2 gene and could benefit by being treated with Herceptin.

A new drug has been approved in Scotland for the treatment of breast cancers in the early stages. The drug named Arimidex seems to be beneficial specifically in treating breast cancer in women, who have crossed menopause. Arimidex is an aromatase inhibitor that works by inhibiting the oestrogen production in the adrenal gland.

Scotland became the first part of the UK this week to approve Arimidex for post-menopausal women with early breast cancer.

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Belinda Emmett, wife of television personality Rove McManus, has died after a long battle with cancer.

Australia’s beautiful actress Belinda Emmett was surrounded by family and friends yesterday morning when she lost her eight-year battle with cancer at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital.

“It is with great sadness we advise that Belinda Emmett’s battle with cancer has ended,” Emmett’s family said in a statement.

Emmett grew up on NSW’s Central Coast and got her acting break when she appeared on popular long-running soap Home and Away, playing Rebecca Fisher, between 1996 and 1999. Emmett was only 24 years old in 1998 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was considered Australia’s sweetheart and one of the most popular stars of Home and Away.

The Australian actress successfully underwent surgery to remove a malignant tumor, followed by six weeks of radiotherapy.

In 2001 the cancer returned and Belinda was diagnosed with bone metastasis. She spent the next five years seeking alternate therapies and using her celebrity to increase cancer awareness. She married Rove McManus, one of Australia’s most popular television personalities, in January of 2005.

Her last public appearance was on September 20 at Channel Seven’s 50 years of television celebration, where as always, and despite her obvious frailty, her smile lit the room. “Our deepest sympathy is extended to Belinda’s family who have supported her through this illness,” Seven Channel Network said in a statement.

Belinda Emmett had great acting ability and her warmth, her smile and her spirits will be truly remembered.

Breast Cancer will soon lose its image of a Killer Disease. Instead it will become a long term manageable condition or a disorder like diabetes or arthritis, said the experts yesterday in London.

This would mean women living with the disease, but not necessarily dying from it. The survival rate among breast cancer patients has increased due to the significant developments in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease. It was revealed at the conference that the recurrence of the cancer was reduced by new drugs like Herceptin.

Treatment for breast cancer has significantly improved in the last one decade. Better targeted radiotherapy and improved cosmetic surgery techniques are also improving women’s care.

Pamela Goldberg, chief executive of the Breast Cancer Campaign, said, “Women now had a much better chance of surviving breast cancer. “As well as drugs like Herceptin and aromatase inhibitors such as anastrozole and letrozole, patients can also benefit from better cosmetic results which can have a significant psychological impact.

“While a cure for everyone may still be out of our reach, a move towards breast cancer being a lifelong manageable condition could be round the corner,” Ms Goldberg said.

As a result of current treatment, 80 per cent of the 41,000 women diagnosed each year in the UK will be alive in five years – up from 57 per cent 20 years ago, the conference heard.

Professor John Toy, medical director of Cancer Research UK, said: “New methods of prevention, screening and diagnosis, and new generations of targeted and tailored drugs and treatments, could hugely improve cancer survival rates in the next decade and beyond.

“The majority of women treated for early breast cancer already have an excellent outlook, but efforts to achieve yet better outcomes must continue.”

Dr Alexis Willett, from Breakthrough Breast Cancer, added: “Breast cancer is a complex disease but progress is being made all the time in understanding it. This is resulting in real differences for patients.”

In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors have announced that the addition of the chemotherapy drug epirubicin to standard chemotherapy can help more women to survive early breast cancer.

Chemotherapy is given after surgery to patients suffering from breast cancer to destroy any molecules of cancer that might have spread to other parts of the body. The standard chemotherapy treatment involves a combination of three drugs and is known as CMF (a cocktail of clophosphamide, methotrexate and fluorouracil). In the study, doctors have announced that a chemotherapy “super-cocktail” given to women with breast cancer reduced deaths by more than 30 per cent, compared with standard treatment. This news comes from two British studies that together looked at 2,400 patients with early breast cancer. Both studies show better survival rates with epirubicin in addition to standard chemotherapy.

In the study, half of the patients were treated with the standard chemotherapy while the other half were given the drug epirubicin along with the standard chemotherapy.

The researchers found that in group of patients treated with epirubicin plus chemotherapy, 82 percent lived for at least 5 years and 76 percent did not have relapses. Whereas in the patients treated only with the standard chemotherapy, only 75 percent lived for at least five years and only 69 percent did not have relapses.

Chris Poole, the consultant medical oncologist at the University of Birmingham, said: “The results show conclusively that the addition of epirubicin to chemotherapy has a significant impact on survival in early stage breast cancer.”

Dr Poole said that most women with breast cancer in the UK would be treated with epirubicin. “But whether they are getting it in the right dose and on the right schedule is another matter,” he said.

High doses of epirubicin were administered for the first four cycles of treatment but it was then replaced with standard chemotherapy, maximizing the impact of the drug but minimizing the long-term risks, such as leukemia.

The women were recruited to the study between 1996 and 2001 to look at the recurrence of tumors and survival rates. Unlike the hormonal treatment Herceptin, which is effective in only 20 per cent of patients with oestrogen-positive breast cancer, chemotherapy works for all women?

“It is an old-fashioned, blunderbuss treatment. It does seem to be uniformly effective,” Dr Poole said.

The evidence showed that the effects of hormonal drugs such as Herceptin given after chemotherapy had a cumulative effect, on top of any survival gain achieved by the chemotherapy, Dr Poole said.

The researchers maintain that further studies need to be conducted before the doctors are able to determine the best chemotherapy regimen for an individual patients caner treatment.

The results of the studies, funded by Cancer Research UK and others are published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Results of a phase II clinical trial, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, says that breast cancer patients who experience worsening of bone metastases during bisphosphonate therapy can improve pain control by switching to another bisphosphonate called Zometa (zoledronic acid).Researchers conducted the trial among 31 patients with metastatic breast cancer and wanted to see the effect of switching from one bisphosphonate to another. All study participants have been treated with one of the bisphosphonate drugs — Aredia or Bonefos. Zometa was administered once a month for three months.

After eight weeks of Zometa, 13 of the 31 patients, 42 percent reported a reduction in pain. Researchers concluded that for breast cancer patients with worsening bone metastasis switching to Zometa can improve pain. Results of this trial need to be confirmed by a Phase III clinical trial.

‘America’s Sweetheart’ Julia Roberts has been alarmed ever since a mysterious mole showed up on the side of her right breast during a recent photo shoot.

photographers spotted the blemish as they snapped the Pretty Woman star at a Hollywood tribute to George Clooney and now cancer experts are calling for the actress to get screened.

After seeing photos of the actress’ mole Dr Christine Horner, a cancer expert and plastic surgeon in Taos, New Mexico, where Roberts has a home, told US tabloid the Globe that it would be better to remove the mole.

“I would definitely remove the mole. It is raised, pigmented and greater than a centimeter, which statistically increases the risk of it converting to malignancy,¡± he was quoted by Contactmusic, as saying.

But Beverly Hills dermatologist Dr David Stoll insists the blemish looks as if Roberts has already had a growth removed.

“It looks like a scar from the removal of a growth,” he added.

An alternative screening test for breast cancer may catch the disease when mammograms fail to diagnose it.

While mammograms remain the gold standard for detection, they miss roughly 20 percent of cancer cases, according to experts, leaving some women to consider additional tests.

Among the alternatives is a new screening technique in which radioactive liquid is injected into a patient to detect cancer. The liquid passes out of the patient’s body within a few hours, giving doctors time to look for cancer.

“Cancer cells are more active than normal cells, so they will take up more of this radioactive tracer than the rest of the surrounding cells,” said Dr. Lillian Stern, at Methodist Hospital in Philadelphia.

Stern said if the cancer exists, a visible black spot will form.

“It’s very useful in some cases to help us problem solve,” said Dr. Betsy Angelakis, at the Lahey Clinic in Massachusetts. She said it’s especially helpful in women with dense breast tissue, which can obscure cancer in a mammogram.

“At least 25 percent of mammograms will have some degree of cloudiness or breast density that can hide a cancer,” Angelakis said.

Technology has come a long way over the years — and now the technology behind digital mammography is allowing life-saving screenings for the toughest patients to diagnose with breast cancer.

This is no small technological breakthough. It is a critical component for lowering the breast cancer death rate the American Cancer Society reports has declined 2.3 percent each year between 1990 and 2002. Since breast cancer is a treatable disease if caught early, digital mammography will up the odds of survival for women with this disease.

Digital mammography operates according to a computer-based technique that allows for digital manipulation of a breast X-ray. It exceeds the capability of film mammography — and is much like the comparison between digital photography versus film photography. Both work. But one works better.

Studies show digital mammograms have a lot to offer. They detect tumors better in young women with dense breast tissue, for example. They allow for ease of storage and retrieval of images. And they can easily become part of a woman’s electronic medical record.

There are still benefits of traditional mammography and women are still urged to use this less expensive option. They are also urged to conduct self-breast exams and to report for clinical exams with physicians. It’s the whole package that contributes to comprehensive breast health, not just one isolated test. When used in combination with all other screening methods, digital mammography makes for a more accurate overall picture.