Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat who was one of the longest serving members of Texas’ Congressional delegation and a longtime advocate for progressive causes, died on Friday amid her battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 74. Jackson Lee began her congressional career as an underdog, defeating four-term U.S. Rep. Craig Washingtonin the 1994 Democratic primary, before establishing herself as a fixture in Congress and Houston with ties to the highest reaches of the Democratic Party. Jackson Lee was a progressive fixture on Capitol Hill for decades. She was an early opponent of the Iraq War and advocate...

U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a long-serving Democrat from Texas, has passed away at the age of 74. * * * The Gateway Pundit reported in June that Jackson Lee had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, has died at the age of 74 after a battle with cancer, her family announced on Friday. "Today, with incredible grief for our loss yet deep gratitude for the life she shared with us, we announce the passing of United States Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of the 18th Congressional District of Texas," her family said in a statement. “A local, national, and international humanitarian, she was acknowledged worldwide for her courageous fights for racial justice, criminal justice, and human rights, with a special emphasis on women and children,” the statement said. Jackson Lee announced in...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who served in Congress for nearly three decades, has died at the age of 74, her family announced Friday evening. “Today, with incredible grief for our loss yet deep gratitude for the life she shared with us, we announce the passing of United States Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of the 18th Congressional District of Texas,” her family wrote in a statement shared to her account on X. Her family did not specify a cause of death, but the news comes just over one month after the Congresswoman revealed that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic...

BREAKING 🚨🚨 Representative Sheila Jackson Lee has died.

Shannen Doherty, best known for her iconic roles in “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Charmed,” has passed away at 53 after a prolonged battle with breast cancer. Doherty’s publicist, Leslie Sloane, confirmed the sad news in a statement to PEOPLE on Sunday, expressing, “It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty.”

Metformin is a widely prescribed drug for managing type 2 diabetes. In recent years, indications of its potential anticancer properties have emerged in research. A study has found that metformin activates the body's immune cells. The effect was particularly observed in what are known as dendritic cells, which are the most effective in helping the immune system identify cancer cells as foreign entities. "Our study found that metformin contributed to the metabolism of dendritic cells so that they became active and enhanced the immune response against cancer cells," says Rita Turpin. Identifying this effect can help to develop anticancer therapies...

Removal of armpit lymph nodes can leave many breast cancer patients with lingering lymphedema, a painful and unsightly swelling of the arm. It's long been known that if a breast cancer has extensively spread within the lymph nodes, removing those nodes is the patient's only recourse. …To help clarify things for patients with such findings, de Boniface and colleagues tracked outcomes for nearly 2,800 breast cancer patients from five countries. All had metastases that were larger than 2 millimeters in one or two of their sentinel nodes. About half of the group were randomly chosen to undergo more complete armpit...

Suzanne Somers, best known for her roles on Three's Company and Step by Step, has died. Somers died on Sunday morning, PEOPLE confirms. She was 76. “Suzanne Somers passed away peacefully at home in the early morning hours of October 15th. She survived an aggressive form of breast cancer for over 23 years,” Somers’ longtime publicist R. Couri Hay wrote in a statement shared on behalf of the actress’ family. “Suzanne was surrounded by her loving husband Alan, her son Bruce, and her immediate family,” the statement continued. “Her family was gathered to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16th....

In a randomized trial, researchers uncover evidence supporting a shorter treatment time for breast cancer patients. The study compared two separate dosing schedules of pencil-beam scanning proton therapy, the most advanced type of proton therapy known for its precision in targeting cancer cells while preserving healthy tissue to reduce the risk of side effects. Survival rates for breast cancer continue to improve due to advances, leading to increasing emphasis on reducing the long-term toxicity of cancer treatment, including radiotherapy. Prior to this study, all patients treated with proton postmastectomy radiotherapy (PMRT) had received a conventional 25- to 30-day course delivered...

Anti-estrogenic therapies can suppress the growth of cancer that does not express estrogen receptors; when combined with immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies, they halt tumor progression in mice models. Estrogen, a group of female hormones, is known to be involved in cancer progression, especially breast cancer. About 75% of breast cancers are estrogen-sensitive: they express the hormone receptor estrogen receptor α (ERα), and estrogen promotes tumor growth. Surprisingly, estrogen has been observed to promote tumor growth in ERα-negative cancers, such as triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), for reasons that are not fully understood. The researchers analyzed patient data from The Cancer Genome...

Some women with early-stage, low-risk breast cancer may not need radiotherapy after breast-conserving surgery, according to research. The research shows that women 55 or older with a specific subtype of Stage 1 breast cancer can be effectively treated with just surgery and endocrine therapy. Women with early breast cancer who have breast-conserving surgery typically receive radiation to the breast daily for several weeks to reduce the risk of cancer returning in the breast. However, radiation can be associated with both short-term and long-term side effects. The subtype of breast cancer that researchers focused on—luminal A—represents up to 60% of all...

Treatment times for radiotherapy could be reduced for some early breast cancer patients, according to a trial. Results show giving some breast cancer patients a targeted additional dose of radiotherapy at the same time as treatment to the whole breast (known as simultaneous integrated boost or SIB) cuts the time taken to complete treatment by at least one week. The trial found that SIB radiotherapy given at the right dose works just as well as existing radiotherapy techniques in reducing the risk of the cancer returning in the treated breast. The chance of the cancer returning to the treated breast...

A California mother has claimed she was told to terminate her surrogate pregnancy at 24 weeks by the child's prospective fathers after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Brittney Pearson, 37, from Sacramento told DailyMail.com that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in May at 22 weeks. She says that after a full body MRI revealed the extent of the disease, the gay couple who were paying her to carry their child used legal threats to pressure her into terminating the pregnancy. Initially, Pearson claims, doctors at Sutter Health Medical Centre in Sacramento, believed she would be able to have...

Women ages 45 years and older taking estrogen hormone therapy in pill form were more likely to develop high blood pressure than those using transdermal (topical, applied to the skin) or vaginal formulations, according to research. "We know estrogens ingested orally are metabolized through the liver and this can lead to higher blood pressure," said Cindy Kalenga, an M.D./Ph.D.-candidate This study involved a large group of over 112,000 women, ages 45 years and older. First, researchers investigated the relationship between route of estrogen-only hormone therapy administration and risk of developing high blood pressure at least one year after starting the...

Researchers found when ribociclib, a targeted therapy drug, is added to hormone therapy there are a significant invasive disease-free survival benefit in patients with early hormone-receptor (HR) positive/HER2 negative breast cancer. Researchers found that patients who took the combination therapy had substantially longer invasive disease-free survival compared to those who were treated with the hormone therapy alone, regardless of whether the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. The addition of the targeted therapy reduced the risk of recurrence by 25%. "The results from the clinical trial have immediate implications for patients," said Slamon. "The findings show this combination is...

Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN)—nerve pain, tingling, or numbness in the hands or feet—is a common side effect of certain cancer treatments, including two drugs frequently used to treat cancer—the taxanes paclitaxel and docetaxel. Initial results from a large study that tracked CIPN in more than 1,100 patients treated for breast cancer with a taxane show a pattern of clinically meaningful, persistent sensory and motor symptoms, with patients experiencing more severe symptoms with paclitaxel than with docetaxel. Michael J. Fisch, MD, said "These results are highly relevant because taxanes such as paclitaxel and docetaxel are integral to our treatment of breast...

In what may turn out to be a long-missing piece in the puzzle of breast cancer, researchers have identified the molecular sparkplug that ignites cases of the disease currently unexplained by the classical model of breast-cancer development. "We have identified what we believe is the original molecular trigger that initiates a cascade culminating in breast tumor development in a subset of breast cancers that are driven by estrogen," said Peter Park. The researchers said as many as one-third of breast cancer cases may arise through the newly identified mechanism. The study also shows that the sex hormone estrogen is the...

Many cancer therapies do not produce the hoped-for results. A common reason for this is that the tumors develop resistance to the medications. This is the case with alpelisib, a treatment for advanced breast cancer. A research group has now discovered that the loss of the neurofibromin 1 (NF1) gene leads to a reduced response to alpelisib. The researchers also found that the dietary supplement N-acetylcysteine restores the sensitivity of cancer cells to this treatment. At the moment, patients with advanced and metastatic breast cancer lack effective treatment options. The PI3K signaling pathway is often overactive in breast cancer due...

Scientists have discovered why breast cancer cells that have spread to the lungs may "wake up" following years of sleep, forming incurable secondary tumors. Their research reveals the mechanism that triggers this breast cancer "time bomb"—and suggests a strategy to defuse it. Patients with estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer—the most common type—have a continued risk of their cancer recurring in another part of their body for many years or even decades after their original diagnosis and treatment. When breast cancer cells spread from the first cancer in the breast to other parts of the body it is called secondary...