News digest – tobacco disappointment, genetic ‘fine tuners’, vaccine cost drop, and more

The latest cancer news

• Wednesday was a sad day for public health. The worrying rumours we’d heard last week – that the government had scrapped plans to introduce plain, standardised tobacco packaging in the Queen’s speech – turned out to be true. This BBC article has more info. We wrote about why this is a blow in the fight against cancer.
• Our scientists found that genetic ‘fine tuners’ known as microRNAs control the body’s own attack against breast cancer. Read more in our press release
• US scientists uncovered why breast cancer patients with dense breasts are often more likely to develop aggressive tumours that spread. This NewsWise article has more info.
• Also across the pond, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine identified a group of proteins that are faulty in about one-fifth of all human cancers. Science Daily covered the story.

• Pharmaceutical companies agreed a substantial discount on the cost of cervical cancer vaccines for the developing world. The New York Times and the Guardian have more detail.

And finally

• We were dismayed this week by several headlines like this: “Sun’s blood pressure benefits may outdo cancer risks”. The study in question only looked at the blood pressure of 24 volunteers who sat beneath tanning lamps. It didn’t directly look at skin cancer risk and also hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet. Overexposure to UV radiation from the sun or sunbeds is the main cause of skin cancer, so we advise everyone to enjoy the sun safely.