Current Oncology, Volume 16, Issue 2

“Privatization is not an answer to health care access problems, increased public funding is,” or so claims Ervin B. Podgorsak in the first of our guest editorials in this issue of Current Oncology [...]

Approximately 27% of North American cancer deaths are attributable to cancer of the lung. Many lung cancers are found at an advanced stage, rendering the tumours inoperable and the patients palliative. Common symptoms associated with palliative lung...

The most important characteristics of a health care system are its quality, access, and cost. [...]

In Canada people affected by cancer access psychosocial care and support from two systems. In the conventional medical system, psychosocial professionals focus mainly on screening for and treating those most distressed by their diagnosis. Many patien...

Several novel tumour-targeting and drug-delivery approaches in cancer treatment are currently undergoing intensive investigation, among them physical approaches such as tissue electroporation. [...]

The cell cycle governs the transition from quiescence through cell growth to proliferation. The key parts of the cell cycle machinery are the cyclin-dependent kinases (cdks) and the regulatory proteins called cyclins. The cdks are rational targets fo...

Suffering is an affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be physical or mental (or both), depending on whether it is linked primarily to the body or the mind. [...]

Numerous therapeutic options have been introduced for metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) in recent years, including monoclonal antibodies such as bevacizumab and small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors such as sunitinib and sorafenib. Similarly...

The introduction of the “maximum tolerated dose” in usual treatment protocols (and its concomitant overt toxicity) made necessary the imposition of rest periods between cycles of therapy—a practice that not only involves re-growth of tumour cells, bu...