Press Releases

Sergio Giralt, MD, has been appointed Chief of the Adult Bone Marrow Transplantation Service in the Division of Hematologic Oncology in the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Martin S. Tallman, MD, has been appointed Chief of the Leukemia Service in the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College.

An experimental drug is showing promise for the treatment of men with an aggressive form of advanced prostate cancer. A new multicenter study has concluded that the targeted therapy MDV3100 is safe and effective for patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer, known for its poor prognosis and limited treatment options.

Cancer progression is commonly thought of as a process involving the growth of a primary tumor followed by metastasis, in which cancer cells leave the primary tumor and spread to distant organs. A new study by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center shows that circulating tumor cells - cancer cells that break away from a primary tumor and disseminate to other areas of the body - can also return to and grow in their tumor of origin, a newly discovered process called "self-seeding."

A new study from researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has found that the majority of surgeons treating prostate cancer in the United States have extremely low annual caseloads, potentially leading to increased rates of both surgical complications and cancer recurrence.

In clinical trials for cancer, it is standard for clinicians rather than patients to report adverse symptom side effects from treatments, such as nausea and fatigue. At present, patient self-reporting, although important, is not a well studied source of this information. A new longitudinal study from researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center finds that while clinicians' and patients' reporting of treatment side effects are very different from each other, together they provide a more complete, clinically meaningful picture of the treatment experience.

There is concern that mastectomy is over-utilized in the United States, which raises questions about the role of surgeons and patient preference in treatment selection for breast cancer. New data from an observational study published in the October 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a theme issue on surgical care, found that breast-conserving surgery was presented and provided in the majority of patients evaluated.

Three young investigators who have taken significant steps toward advancing the understanding of cancer will be the recipients of this year's Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, a prize awarded biennially since 2001 to scientists under the age of forty-six by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center physician-scientist Charles L. Sawyers has been named a recipient of the 2009 Lasker~DeBakey Award for Clinical Medical Research.