That March day, the 59-year-old resident of Woodland Hills, California, showed up at a Los Angeles County emergency room with severe abdominal pain. The pain itself wasn’t new; he’d been talking to doctors about it for two years. But the intensity was. Soon, the ER team discovered what Gardea’s other doctors had not seen: an 8-centimeter tumor on his liver.

Tests showed Gardea had hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer in adults. He also had hepatitis C and early stages of cirrhosis. Gardea says his doctors told him that the tumor’s size and the underlying liver disease left him with a poor prognosis, and they advised him to get his affairs in order...

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OVER THE PAST DECADE, lung cancer treatment has changed dramatically, especially for patients who have advanced stage disease. Many patients now benefit from a better understanding of what drives tumors to develop and grow and how they interact with our immune system and the surrounding environment. This has led to advances in areas of immunotherapy and targeted therapies.

Immunotherapy

Our body's immune system recognizes things that may be dangerous – such as certain bacteria, viruses and cancer cells – and works hard behind the scenes to keep them from causing us harm.

Cancer is good at tricking the immune system, however. It can make it difficult for the immune system to recognize cancer as harmful, so it doesn't attack and destroy the cancer cells.

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Leukemia is a cancer of the blood or bone marrow. Bone marrow produces blood cells. Leukemia can happen when there is a problem with the production of blood cells. It usually affects the leukocytes, or white blood cells.

It is most likely to affect people over the age of 55 years, but it is also the most common cancer in those aged under 15 years.

In the United States, 62,130 people are expected to receive a diagnosis of leukemia in 2017, and around 24,500 deaths will likely be due to this disease.

Acute leukemia develops quickly and worsens rapidly, but chronic leukemia gets worse over time.

• Fast facts on leukemia
• Causes
• Treatment
• Early signs
• Types
• Symptoms

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Scientists have engineered a new kind of antibody that attaches itself to cancer cells before summoning and activating killer T cells from the immune system to destroy them.

The immune system has many ways to protect the body against cells that grow out of control.

However, there are times when the rogue cells "overwhelm or evade" these natural defenses and give rise to cancer.

A new approach in cancer treatment, known as immunotherapy, is developing therapies that can give the immune system a helping hand.
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Colorectal cancer is the fourth most commonly diagnosed type of cancer in the United States. Though various treatments are available for it, certain tumor cells are therapy-resistant. Now, research suggests that an antifungal drug may be effective against these persistent cells.

The drug itraconazole is typically used in the treatment of fungal infections.

These can include certain types of vaginal yeast (vulvovaginal candidiasis) and fungal infections on the hands and feet (Tinea pedis and Tinea manuum).

But researchers from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute have suggested a brand new use for this substance — namely, as a treatment that is able to eliminate dormant tumor cells in colorectal cancer.
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According to a landmark study, a large percentage of individuals with the most common form of early breast cancer could safely skip chemotherapy. The findings could impact thousands of people each year.

While new therapies such as immunotherapies are becoming increasingly crucial in treating cancer, chemotherapy is still a mainstay.

In short, chemotherapy uses drugs to cure or control cancer throughout the body.

As opposed to surgery or radiation therapy — which concentrates on the tumor and the area surrounding it — chemotherapy will affect the whole body.

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​Many of the symptoms of colorectal cancer can also be caused by something that isn’t cancer, such as infection, hemorrhoids, irritable bowel syndrome, or inflammatory bowel disease.

In most cases, people who have these symptoms do not have cancer. Still, if you have any of these problems, it is a sign that you should go to the doctor so the cause can be found and treated, if needed:

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