Â鶹´«Ã½

News — LOS ANGELES (Feb. 14, 2025) -- 

Study: Black Patients Twice as Likely to Develop Prostate Cancer

Cedars-Sinai Cancer investigators led a data analysis on more than 6 million patients in the Veterans Health Administration system and concluded that Black patients were twice as likely as white patients to develop prostate cancer. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal , also found that Black patients with early-stage prostate cancer were more likely than white patients to see their cancer spread.

“One of our key findings was that even in a setting such as the VA where patients have equal access to care, Black patients have a much higher burden from prostate cancer than white patients do,” said , director of the Center for Integrated Research in Cancer and Lifestyle at Cedars-Sinai Cancer and senior author of the study, who holds a joint appointment as staff physician at the Durham VA Medical Center. “Our findings also point to important racial differences in risk that a patient’s cancer will progress. This information will help spotlight areas for further investigation so that we can identify ways to help reduce the excess burden and death from prostate cancer among Black patients.”

Drug Safe for Long-Term Use in Kids With Rare Cancer, Study Finds

Investigators at Cedars-Sinai and other institutions examined the long-term safety and effectiveness of a prescription drug for children with a rare form of cancer who chose to stop taking the drug when their disease hadn't progressed. 

The study, published in the , evaluated the long-term efficacy of larotrectinib, a drug that specifically targets the TRK fusion protein found in some children under 18 with cancer, more specifically a type of sarcoma. Researchers wanted to understand what happens when young patients stop taking the medicine through a “wait-and-see” protocol.

“Some children were able to stop taking the medicine and still had good results,” said , corresponding author of the study, director of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at , and medical director of the Sarcoma Program at . “If their cancer came back, they responded well when they started taking larotrectinib again.”

The study included 91 patients from two clinical trials. Investigators found that out of 47 who stopped taking larotrectinib, 16 had their cancer come back. When these 16 patients started retaking larotrectinib, most responded to the drug and 94% of them benefited.

These findings suggest that doctors can confidently consider stopping larotrectinib treatment in some children with TRK fusion sarcomas, knowing that the same treatment will be effective if the cancer comes back. This study also paves the way for further research into whether stopping targeted treatment could be beneficial for other cancers currently treated with similar medicines.

Women More Likely to Die From the Combination of Cardiovascular, Kidney, Metabolic Disease

Although women are less likely than men to develop a combination of cardiovascular, kidney and metabolic disease, they are more likely to die from it, according to research co-led by a Cedars-Sinai investigator and published in the journal .

People with metabolic disease who have three or more cardiovascular risk factors—such as high blood sugar, low levels of HDL (good) cholesterol and high blood pressure—often develop cardiovascular disease and kidney disease. People who have two or more of these diseases or are at risk of developing them are described by medical experts as having cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome.

“We need additional research to understand the biologic processes that cause men and women to experience disease differently,” said  the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Health and Population Science in the Department of Cardiology in the , and co-corresponding author of the study. “The more we know, the better we’ll be able to prevent women from dying from less severe forms of CKM syndrome.” 

The number of people with CKM syndrome increased steadily from 1988 to 2018, according to investigators. They also found stage 3 disease occurred more among men (from 18.9% to 22.4%) as compared with women (13.9% to 15.2%). Although women were less likely to develop stage 3 disease, they were more likely to die during any stage of the disease.

Novel Artificial Intelligence Method Identifies Disease Structures, Mechanisms

Investigators at Cedars-Sinai and the University of Pennsylvania created a novel artificial intelligence (AI) method that allows them to study different types of biological data—such as molecular information and tissue imaging—from the same tissue sample. Known as MultI-modal Spatial Omics, or MISO, the tool—described in the peer-reviewed journal —can analyze hundreds of thousands of cells at once, then identify important disease structures and mechanisms.

“Pathologists traditionally identify relevant structures in diseased tissue by visually examining stained tissue images—a method that is costly, time-consuming and typically reliant on a single type of tissue imaging,” said , an investigator in the Department of Computational Biomedicine at Cedars-Sinai, who led the team that developed the MISO tool. “MISO streamlines this process by integrating detailed molecular information with tissue histology, enabling automated and precise identification of disease-relevant structures.”  

The MISO tool can, for example, distinguish regions with different levels of cancer severity within a single colon cancer tissue sample. Additionally, by integrating transcriptomics, metabolomics, and histology imaging, MISO accurately maps detailed structures of the mouse hippocampus at a high resolution. Investigators hope that MISO can lead to a deeper understanding of disease processes, potentially advancing the development of new therapies.

The MISO software is currently available on .

Study: Enoxaparin Bridging Can Be Safe, Cost-Effective for Heart Pump Patients

The anticoagulant drug enoxaparin can be a safe and cost-effective method to prevent blood clotting in patients with heart pumps who require alternative anticoagulation without the need for hospitalization (“bridging” procedures), provided that patients are properly screened for the treatment, according to new research from Cedars-Sinai published in the peer-reviewed journal .

“The key to good outcomes with enoxaparin is careful selection of candidates,” said Lee D. Lam, PharmD, who monitors heart pump patients in the  at the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center. “For instance, patients must have a certain level of kidney functioning and lack a history of bleeding, blood clots or allergic reactions to drugs. Due to potential bleeding risks, enoxaparin should not be used within 30 days after the initial surgery to implant the heart pump.”

Lam is the first author of the new study. , professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, is the corresponding author.

For the study, investigators analyzed medical records from 85 heart failure patients who had been implanted with left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) to boost the heart’s performance. They found that enoxaparin, which a patient can inject at home, is a treatment strategy that can be achieved at a small fraction of the cost of treatment in a hospital setting while improving quality of life. Use of this drug also was correlated with longer patient survival over a three-year period without major bleeding or blood clot events when compared with in-hospital bridging.

Interested in interviewing a Cedars-Sinai expert? Email [email protected].