Colorectal cancer represents the third most common and the second deadliest type of cancer for both men and women in the United States claiming over 50000 lives in 2014. The 5-year survival rate for patients diagnosed with metastatic colon and rectal cancer is < 15%. Early detection and more effective treatments are urgently needed to reduce morbidity and mortality of patients afflicted with this disease. Here we will review the risk factors and current treatment paradigms for colorectal cancer, with an emphasis on the role of chemoprevention as they relate to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) blockade. We will discuss how various EGFR ligands are upregulated in the presence of Western diets high in saturated and N-6 polyunsaturated fats. We will also outline the various mechanisms of EGFR inhibition that are induced by naturally occurring chemopreventative agents such as ginseng, green tea, and curcumin. Finally, we will discuss the current role of targeted chemotherapy in colon cancer and outline the limitations of our current treatment options, describing mechanisms of resistance and escape.

BACKGROUND & AIMS:Gastric cancer is the leading cause of infection-related cancer death and the third-leading cause of cancer death worldwide. The effect of immigration on gastric cancer risk is not well-defined but might be helpful for screening or surveillance endeavors. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to define the risk of gastric cancer in immigrants from high-incidence regions to low-incidence regions (including Western that identified immigrants from high-incidence regions of gastric cancer, provided clear definitions of immigrant and reference populations, and provided sufficient data to calculate gastric cancer incidence and gastric cancer-related mortality. We performed meta-analyses of standardized incidence ratios (SIR) for first-generation immigrants from high-to low-incidence regions, stratified by immigrant generation, sex, and anatomic and histologic subtype, when data were available. RESULTS:We identified 38 cohort studies that met our inclusion criteria. All 13 studies of 21 distinct populations reported significantly increased SIRs for gastric cancer in first-generation foreignborn immigrants (men SIR range, 1.24-4.50 and women SIR range, 1.27-5.05). The pooled SIR for immigrants with all types of gastric cancer was 1.66 (95% CI, 1.52-1.80) for men and 1.83 (95% CI, 1.69-1.98) for women. Nine studies from 2 high-incidence populations (the former Soviet Union and Japan) reported an increased gastric cancer standardized mortality ratio in first-generation immigrants who migrated to regions of low incidence (former Soviet Union immigrants, 1.44-1.91 for men and 1.40-2.56 for women). CONCLUSIONS:Immigrants from regions with a high incidence of gastric cancer to regions of low incidence maintain a higher risk of gastric cancer and related mortality, based on a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis. Assessment of immigrant generation along with other risk factors might help identify high-risk populations for prevention and therapeutic interventions.

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic disease that can present at various stages of disease activity and severity. Traditionally, severity scoring has focused on disease activity during a single moment with various tools, including patient-reported symptoms, as well as clinical, laboratory-based, endoscopic, histologic, and imaging variables. Optimal delivery of care depends on the accurate assessment of disease severity, which must take longitudinal variables into account. This article reviews the history of severity scoring in UC and provides a concise, clinically oriented approach to assessing disease severity.

BACKGROUND: Procoagulant states, leading to activation of the coagulation protease thrombin, are common in cancer and portend a poor clinical outcome. Although procoagulant states in osteosarcoma patients have been described, studies exploring osteosarcoma cells' ability to directly contribute to procoagulant activity have not been reported. This study explores the hypothesis that osteosarcoma can regulate thrombin generation and proliferate in response to thrombin, and that attenuating thrombin generation with anticoagulants can slow tumor growth. METHODS: Pathologic analysis of osteosarcoma with adjacent venous thrombus was performed. In vitro proliferation assays, cell-based coagulant activity assays, and quantification of coagulation cofactor expression were performed on human and murine osteosarcoma cell lines with varying aggressiveness. The efficacy of low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) attenuation of tumor-dependent thrombin generation and growth in vitro and in vivo was determined. RESULTS: Venous thrombi adjacent to osteosarcoma were found to harbor tumor surrounded by fibrin expressing coagulation cofactors, a finding associated with poor clinical outcome. More aggressive osteosarcoma cell lines had greater surface expression of procoagulant factors and generated more thrombin than less aggressive cell lines and were found to proliferate in response to thrombin. Treatment with LMWH reduced in vitro osteosarcoma proliferation and procoagulant activity as well as tumor growth in vivo. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that elements of the coagulation cascade may play a role in and represent a pharmaceutical target to disrupt osteosarcoma growth. They also have broader implications, as they suggest that, to be effective, dosing of anticoagulants must take into account an individual tumor's capacity to generate thrombin. Cancer 2012;118:2494

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