Dr. Harold J. Burstein, a medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has been appointed editor-in-chief of The Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

Joan Vitello has been named chief operating officer for Lawrence Memorial Hospital of Medford. She was previously vice president and chief nursing officer of Hallmark Health System, to which the Lawrence hospital belongs.

Dr. James H. Thrall, radiologist-in-chief at Massachusetts General Hospital, has been named chair of the American College of Radiology Board of Chancellors. Dr. John A. Patti of North Shore Medical Center was elected vice chair of the same board.

Dr. Anthony L. Zietman of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center has been elected president and chairman-elect of the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.

Two Boston hospitals make US News & World Report's latest Best Hospitals rankings look a little like "Partners and Everyone Else," to borrow a phrase from former Globe business columnist Steve Bailey.

That's because Partners stalwarts Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital are the only ones in the state to crack the magazine's 19-member Honor Roll. The distinction signifies hospitals that scored at or near the top in at least six of the list's 16 specialties. Pediatrics will have its own ranking in the fall.

Not that other hospitals didn't perform well. Our medical mecca's reputation is still intact with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, McLean Hospital, and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital all finishing in the top 10 of various specialties.

Dr. Holcombe Grier (left, seated) doesn't gloss over the tragedies that can come along with the successes in treating childhood cancer, according to a profile in Newsweek.

"Some kids do die," he told the magazine, explaining a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute mural in memory of those who didn't survive.

The banjo-playing doctor and researcher acknowledges 30 years of remarkable progress in beating back cancer, but worries about a plateau in research funding for the Children's Oncology Group, a nationwide scientific network.

"Pediatric cancer is rare," he says, "and the only way to study rare tumors is in a big collaborative group."

Four research teams based in Boston are among eight groups that have garnered $19 million in grants from a foundation focused on discovering new treatments for recurrent prostate cancer.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation, a philanthropy based in Santa Monica, Calif., announced its 2008 Challenge Awards, which will be distributed to each program in three annual payments of $500,000 to $1 million.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Boston's three leading medical schools are among 14 nationwide that will receive federal grants aimed at helping scientists more quickly turn their discoveries into treatments for patients.

Under the program, Harvard Medical School has been awarded $117.7 million over the next five years, while Boston University Medical School will receive $23 million and Tufts University School of Medicine $20 million over that time period, the National Institutes of Health announced today.

The awards reflect a sea change in federal funding for scientific research. Schools that have traditionally competed within their own institutions for federal dollars must now form one collaborative center at each medical school to pull together all of its researchers and departments.

The mission of the grant program, called the Clinical and Translational Science Award, is to create a network of medical research institutions across the country that will translate new knowledge into tangible benefits for patients. Launched in 2006, the initiative has awarded money to 24 other medical schools. Total funding for the 14 new recipients will be $533 million over the next five years, the NIH said.

"Everybody knows there is a lot of great research going on but it doesn’t get to public practice," said Dr. Harry Selker, director of Tufts' new Clinical and Translational Science Institute. "This (grant program) is a big deal for the nation."

Ten scientists from Massachusetts were named Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators today, five from MIT alone and one from Boston University, marking a first for that institution.

Harvard has three and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and University of Massachusetts Medical School each have one new investigator. Fifty-six scientists from 31 research centers will be supported by $600 million over five years from the biomedical philanthropy as they continue to lead laboratories at their home institutions. The new appointments bring to 19 the number of HHMI investigators at MIT, the highest concentration at one location in the country, the institute said.

Patients with the kind of brain tumor Senator Edward M. Kennedy has may need to scale back their activities while undergoing treatment, a Boston cancer expert said in a chat on boston.com this morning.

"Some of my patients are able to maintain very busy schedules during treatment," said Dr. Andrew Norden, a brain cancer specialist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "Most of my patients, though, experience fatigue that prompts them to cut back. I advise my patients to plan for a significant reduction in work hours."

Norden also said patients need to wait at least 10 to 14 days after having a biopsy before they start radiation and chemotherapy to be sure they have healed from the procedure that brought them their diagnosis.

Asked by a reader how he breaks such devastating news to a patient, he said: "It's a difficult conversation, of course. I focus on the fact that treatments are constantly improving and that I will help the patient through the difficult road ahead."

A leading cancer expert called on Congress today to renew its commitment to the war on cancer by funding research, fostering collaboration among cancer centers and with industry, and shoring up the ranks of researchers and oncology nurses.

Dr. Edward J. Benz Jr. (left), president of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, told a committee chaired by Senator Edward M. Kennedy that cancer requires a broad focus. Elizabeth Edwards and Lance Armstrong also spoke at the hearing.

"Just as cancer needs to be attacked biologically on a variety of fronts, so does cancer research need to concern itself with all the implications of the disease and its treatment," Benz said. "We will not be able to truly defeat cancer unless we grapple with the entire array of issues associated with the disease."

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute President Edward J. Benz is joining cancer survivors Elizabeth Edwards, Lance Armstrong, and others at a Senate hearing chaired by US Senator Edward M. Kennedy on fighting cancer.

Watch it live, starting at 9 a.m.

A national nurses organization has renewed Massachusetts General Hospital's "magnet" hospital designation through 2012.

The American Nurses Credentialing Center today announced the designation for Mass. General, which was the first in the state to receive magnet status in 2003. The name refers to how well hospitals can attract and retain nurses during a shortage. There are five other magnet hospitals in Massachusetts:

-Baystate Medical Center, Springfield
-Children's Hospital Boston
-Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston
-Jordan Hospital, Plymouth
-Winchester Hospital

Children dying of cancer are suffering less as their care focuses more on easing their symptoms than aggressively treating their disease, a Harvard study has found.

Writing in tomorrow’s Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dr. Joanne Wolfe, also of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston, reports that the principles of palliative care, including better communication and better pain control, have contributed to improved quality of care at the end of life.

The study compares 119 children who died between 1997 and 2004 at Dana-Farber or Children’s to 102 children who died there between 1990 and 1997 whose parents were part of an earlier survey. In the later group, hospice was discussed earlier and more often, do-not-resuscitate orders were put in place earlier, and the number of deaths in the intensive care unit dropped, the study found. Parents said their children suffered less from pain and trouble breathing in the later group and more parents said they were prepared for death in the child’s last month of life compared with the earlier group.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has been chosen as a national learning lab for other hospitals interested in improving care for patients and families at the end of life.

The cancer center will share its palliative care practices through the Hospital-Based Palliative Care Consortium, which has six other sites across the country. The program, free for participants, is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and sponsored locally by the Massachusetts Hospital Association.

The other learning labs are: Connecticut Hospice in Branford, Conn.; Detroit Receiving Hospital; Geisinger Health System in Danville, Penn.; Palo Alto VA Health Care System in California; St. John’s Regional Health Center in Springfield, Mo.; and the University of Pittsburgh.

Melanie Joy McDaniel (left) was nine months old and had already had two operations to remove a malignant brain tumor when her parents chose to enroll her in an experimental drug trial at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, according to a 2002 story in the New York Times.

Instead of standard chemotherapy, the trial for children with incurable cancer would offer drugs intended to choke off the blood supply to tumors by disrupting the growth of new blood vessels, the story said. The approach, called antiangiogenesis, was developed by Dr. Judah Folkman (left) of Children's Hospital Boston.

Melanie's father, Paul McDaniel, e-mailed the Times again after Folkman's death in January “to celebrate the accomplishments of Dr. Folkman, who faced resistance on his ideas that, by the grace of God, cured my daughter of an incurable brain tumor," a story in today's Times says.

Melanie is now 7 and attending first grade.

“The doctors told us last year that they do not see any residual tumor in her brain," her father told the Times. "Their original diagnosis was that her tumor had no known cure."

A Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researcher is one of three young scientists to receive funding for novel approaches to fighting cancer.

Nathanael S. Gray (left), 34, has won a three-year, $450,000 Damon Runyon -- Rachleff Innovation Award for his work investigating kinases, proteins that send signals for cellular processes. Kinases work abnormally in cancer, making them targets for specific therapies. Gray is mapping abnormal signaling pathways in cancer cells.

The other two winners are David G. Kirsch, 37, of Duke University and Sarkis K. Mazmanian, 35, of the California Institute of Technology.

The award is funded by Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

A new cancer center will open Monday in Milford that combines services from Boston hospitals with local oncology care.

The Dana Farber/Brigham & Women's Cancer Center at Milford Regional Medical Center, a two-floor, 54,000-square-foot structure built across the street from the Milford hospital, will offer radiation therapy, imaging, medical oncology, and support services.

Milford's two oncologists and their staff will become Dana-Farber employees and provide chemotherapy. Brigham and Women's cancer specialists will offer radiation therapy and Milford will perform imaging services in the town 30 miles southwest of Boston.

Taking low-dose aspirin can cut short hormone therapy used to treat prostate cancer and lead to a lower chance of survival, Boston doctors warn.

In a letter appearing in tomorrow’s New England Journal of Medicine, authors Dr. Anthony V. D’Amico and Dr. Philip W. Kantoff of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Ming-Hui Chen of the University of Connecticut report that the use of low-dose aspirin can cause abnormal liver function tests in men receiving hormones for prostate cancer. That meant an early end to part of their hormone therapy and more than triple the risk of death compared to men who completed full hormone therapy, the researchers' analysis showed.

"It is important for the public to be aware that commonly used medications can interfere with the delivery of full-dose cancer therapy that may compromise curability,” D'Amico said in a statement about the findings. “Therefore, patients should inform their doctors about all of the medications (including non-prescription over-the-counter drugs such as baby aspirin) that they are taking."

More than a third of men with early-stage prostate cancer received treatment that didn’t fit their pre-existing problems with urinary, bowel or sexual function, Boston researchers report in a new study. They said their finding points to poor communication between doctors and patients.

“We found that the mismatches were more common than we figured,” Dr. James A. Talcott of Massachusetts General Hospital said in an interview. “For a single strong contraindication, one-third of patients ended up getting what appeared to be the wrong treatment.”

Men who are overweight when they have locally advanced prostate cancer have almost double the risk of dying from the disease compared with men of normal weight, new research says.

The study, led by a team at Massachusetts General Hospital, is the first to find that excess weight alone is associated with deaths in men whose tumors had grown beyond the prostate or spread to lymph nodes, according to the study, which appears in the journal Cancer.

"The prevalence of overweight and obesity continues to increase in United States, so it’s an issue that's perhaps more important than ever," author Dr. Matthew R. Smith said in an interview. "What we need to do from here are additional studies to understand the mechanisms by which overweight and obesity are associated with worse prostate cancer mortality."

Five Boston researchers have been elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine, a prestigious group established by the National Academies of Science to analyze health issues and make recommendations on policy.

Among the 65 new US members, five are from Massachusetts (four from Harvard, one from MIT), three are from Connecticut (all from Yale) and one is from New Hampshire (Dartmouth). The current 1,538 active members chose new members from candidates nominated for achievement and commitment to service, the IOM said in its announcement of new members today.

Researchers from Boston and Cambridge have won two of three prizes for young cancer investigators.

Angelika Amon (left) of MIT and Dr. Todd R. Golub of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT will receive the 2007 Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The prize recognizes contributions to understanding the treatment of cancer made by scientists under the age of 45.

Amon studies how chromosomes segregate during cell division and Golub uses genomic approaches to classify subtypes of cancer. They will share a $150,000 prize with the third winner, Gregory J. Hannon of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, who studies the biology and biochemistry of RNA interference. All three winners are also Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators.

Aggressive brain tumors receive more than one chemical signal telling them to grow, so more than one targeted drug should be used to shut these switches down, Dana-Farber researchers report.

Writing in the online edition of the journal Science, Dr. Ronald DePinho and his colleagues say they found many kinds of mutated cell-growth molecules sending abnormal signals at the same time, explaining why drugs such as Gleevec that target only one signaling pathway have only limited success.

The researchers were studying cells from glioblastoma multiforme, the most common kind of brain tumor and one of the most lethal forms of cancer people can have. The median survival time is about 12 months.

Testing a combination of three or more drugs, including Tarceva and Gleevec, the authors discovered they were able to block the abnormal signals and kill the cancer cells.

By Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent

A prominent Boston cancer researcher is encouraged that, for the first time in recent memory, cancer is taking center stage in a presidential campaign.

"It seems to me that it is a good thing for sure that this is part of the political debate," Dr. Eric Winer, director of the breast oncology center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said in an interview. "We certainly want cancer to be in the forefront of what the candidates and what Americans are thinking about."

Today Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards presented their ideas at a forum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, convened by cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong. His LIVESTRONG Foundation invited presidential hopefuls to explain what they would do to combat the disease that kills 600,000 Americans a year. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee also agreed to speak at the two-day event.

A Harvard Medical School physician-scientist has been named dean of the Duke University School of Medicine, the North Carolina school announced today.

Dr. Nancy C. Andrews (left), dean for basic sciences and graduate studies at Harvard Medical School, is the first woman to fill the position, Duke said. She will succeed Dr. R. Sanders Williams, who was promoted to senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at Duke.

Andrews, 48, is a pediatric hematologist/oncologist at Children's Hospital Boston and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She previously directed the Harvard/MIT MD/PhD program. A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, she was a Howard Hughes Investigator from 1993 to 2006.

Andrews earned bachelor's and master's degrees in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University, a Ph.D. in biology from MIT, and an MD from Harvard Medical School. She completed her residency at Children's and a fellowship in pediatric hematology/oncology at Children's and Dana-Farber.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has won $16 million to explore how viruses and human genetic variations can disrupt cellular networks, causing disease.

The National Human Genome Research Institute will fund a research team led by Marc Vidal, director of the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Dana-Farber and an associate professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. The group will work with colleagues from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the University of Notre Dame through the new Center of Excellence in Genomic Science.

"We decided to try to see how pathogens are affecting the complex networks formed by our molecules, and relate that back to the genetic differences between individuals," Vidal said in an interview.

Three studies by Boston authors appear in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.

A study from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that a diet high in meat, fat, sweets and refined grains may be associated with a higher risk of colon cancer recurrence and death in people who had surgery and chemotherapy to treat stage III colon cancer.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital report that people with diabetes have an increased risk of death in the first month and first year after they have a heart attack or unstable angina compared with people who have these acute coronary syndromes but do not have diabetes.

A new measure of a lipid protein ratio is no better at predicting coronary heart disease than traditional methods of measuring cholesterol, Boston University School of Medicine investigators from the Framingham Study say.

Hospice care for dying patients has entered mainstream medicine, but it is still misunderstood and underused, according to two opinion pieces in tomorrow’s New England Journal of Medicine. Attitudes and economic constraints are the reasons why, the authors say.

The median length of time a patient receives hospice care is 26 days; one-third of patients enter hospice in the week before they die. That means they have less time to have their unnecessary pain relieved or their families’ care-giving burden eased, both reviews said.

Physicians who equate death with professional failure or think hospice is appropriate only for people near death send patients to hospice too late, Dr. Gail Gazelle of Brigham and Women’s Hospital writes, citing previous research. And patients often think that hospice is only for people dying of cancer, although 40 percent of hospice admissions are for people with conditions such as advanced cardiac disease and dementia.

Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital held on to their honor roll positions in the annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report called "America's Best Hospitals." Nine Boston hospitals are featured in the guide.

Mass. General finished fifth in the standings, down one rung from last year, and the Brigham took tenth place, up one from last year. Once again, Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Mayo Clinic finished first and second. UCLA Medical Center moved up to third from fifth and the Cleveland Clinic slipped to fourth from third.

The magazine evaluated 5,462 hospitals in 16 specialties, excluding pediatrics, and came up with 173 hospitals that met standards in one or more specialties based on reputation, care-related factors such as nursing and patient services, and mortality rate. Eighteen hospitals scored at or near the top in at least six specialties to make the honor roll.

Other hospitals were ranked in the specialty areas, but not in a cumulative score. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was in the top 50 for 10 categories: diabetes (in conjunction with the Joslin Clinic); digestive disorders; respiratory care; heart and heart surgery; cancer care; kidney diseases; geriatrics; gynecology, urology; and ear, nose and throat care.

Boston-area hospitals known for their specialties also made the top 50. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute placed fifth in the list for cancer care. Joslin Clinic, with its partner Beth Israel Deaconess, was ranked 12th for endocrinology. New England Baptist Hospital was 17th for orthopedics and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital ranked eighth for rehabilitation. Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary placed fourth in ophthalmology and in the ear, nose and throat specialty.

Boston Medical Center was ranked 41st in geriatrics.

Mass. General's winning specialty areas were cancer; digestive disorders; ear, nose and throat; endocrinology; geriatrics; heart and heart surgery; gynecology; kidney disease; neurology and neurosurgery; orthopedics; respiratory disorders; urology; psychiatry; and rheumatology.

The Brigham's top specialties were cancer; digestive disorders; ear, nose and throat; endocrinology; geriatrics; gynecology; heart and heart surgery; kidney disease; neurology and neurosurgery; orthopedics; respiratory disorders; urology; and rheumatology.

Xihong Lin (left), professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, has won a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health.

Lin will develop statistical methods for analyzing cancer research data, including long-term and family data as well as genomic and proteomic information in epidemiological studies and population sciences, NIH said in a statement.

Fewer than 5 percent of NIH-funded investigators are selected to receive the awards.

Current MERIT recipients in Massachusetts and their instituions are:

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: Benjamin G. Neel
CBR Institute for Biomedical Research: Timothy R. Springer
Children's Hospital Boston: Michael Klagsbrun and Bruce R. Zetter
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: Stanley Korsmeyer and David M. Livingston
Harvard: John Blenis, Stephen C. Harrison, Peter M. Howley and Andrew G. Myers
Massachusetts General Hospital: Daniel Haber
MIT: Michael R. Lieber, Stephen J. Lippard and Alexander Rich
Tufts: John M. Coffin
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research: Rudolph Jaenisch

By Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent

In an unusual step, the National Cancer Institute has canceled a $130 million clinical trial to compare how well two drugs prevent breast cancer.

Called the P-4 trial because it is the fourth such prevention study undertaken by the federal agency, it would have enrolled more than 12,000 women at high risk for breast cancer at 500 sites and followed them for years. The termination of the study before it began recruiting patients comes at a time when NCI is straining under four years of tight budgets.

The women would have received either raloxifene, an estrogen-blocking drug approved to treat osteoporosis but now prescribed to stop breast cancer, or letrozole, a compound from a newer class of drugs called aromatase inhibitors that deplete the production of estrogen. Both target estrogen because it promotes the growth of cancer cells.

Dr. Bruce Chabner, clinical director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, was on a scientific panel that last week advised NCI director Dr. John E. Niederhuber to pull back the P-4 trial. Niederhuber, who called for a review of the trial in January, visited Mass. General Monday and discussed the trial in previously scheduled sessions with Boston researchers and clinicians.

Chabner said the trial's cost was considered along with scientific concerns, including the desire to better match powerful drugs with the individuals who can be helped by them.

"I think in times when the budgets were really generous the NCI would probably have gone ahead with the study. It's not so much a criticism of the trial as it's expensive when there are other priorities that are very important," he said. "It is an unusual step. But these are unusual times."

Dr. Kenneth C. Anderson (left) of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has been named editor-in-chief of the journal Clinical Cancer Research, the American Association for Cancer Research said.

Anderson, who had been a senior editor of the oncology journal, is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of the division of hematologic neoplasia and director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber.

Dr. Eric P. Winer (left) today was named chief scientific adviser to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the breast cancer advocacy group.

He will remain director of breast oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School while taking on the new role at Komen. He explained in an interview why he is excited about the opportunity and about the future of breast cancer research.

Why did you agree to join Komen?
It’s a way of helping an organization that I view as a very strong organization to do even better in the future. Komen is about raising money for research and increasing those funds to answer the most appropriate questions as quickly as possible. This is now a way for me to have a slightly larger influence beyond the exam room, beyond my own institution and to work in an organization that is really trying to do good.

By Scott Allen, Globe Staff

Nurses at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute yesterday approved a contract that will make them the highest paid nurses in New England, according to the Massachusetts Nurses Association, with senior nurses making more than $140,000 a year by 2009.

The three-year contract, settled after only five bargaining sessions, will give the cancer center's 225 nurses cumulative pay increases of from 9 to 23 percent, depending on their specialty and experience, the union said. A fulltime registered nurse with 15 years experience would make $67.78 an hour, which translates to $141,000 annually.

Nurses at most other teaching hospitals in Boston make at least several dollars an hour less, according to the nurses association.

"The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is an awesome place to work and they really value their nurses," said Kathleen McDermott, the Dana-Farber nurse who chaired the bargaining committee for the nurses' association. "They have a lot of very experienced nurses and they ... want to keep us."

Officials at Dana-Farber also praised the new contract. "We value our nurses, their skill and the high quality of care they provide our patients and their families," said Patricia Reid Ponte, senior vice president for patient care services and chief of nursing at the hospital.

Harvard researchers including Dr. Todd R. Golub report in PLoS Medicine, the online Public Library of Science journal, that, using a molecular biology technique called microarray expression profiling (an example of a detail is at left), they were able to identify compounds that could target genes involved in Ewing sarcoma, the second most common childhood cancer of bone and soft tissue.

In the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Dr. Alan D'Andrea and colleagues at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute show a new therapeutic target for the treatment of Fanconi anemia, which carries the risk of cancer and bone-marrow failure.

Also in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Dr. Rong Tian and colleagues from Brigham and Women's Hospital report that in mice, mutations in a protein that triggers cells to generate more energy are associated with heart failure.

By Scott Allen, Globe Staff

Officials at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute today announced the second largest gift in the hospital's history: $30 million from a philanthropy dedicated to the memory of the longtime owners of the Boston Red Sox, Tom and Jean Yawkey.

The gift from the Yawkey Foundation will help pay for the first new patient care building in more than 30 years at Dana-Farber, the Yawkey Center for Cancer Care, which is scheduled to open in 2011.

By Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent

Presidential spokesman Tony Snow's colon cancer has returned and spread to his liver, news that comes less than a week after Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential candidate John Edwards, revealed her breast cancer has come back in her bones.

Two Boston oncologists, speaking only in general terms, said medicine has more to offer patients with metastatic cancer -- cancer that spreads -- today than before, but that may not be enough.

"In the past 10 years we've really gotten better at this. There are more effective drugs that allow patients to live longer and better with colon cancer than 10 years ago," said Dr. Charles Fuchs, a medical oncologist who specializes in treating gastrointestinal cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "I would emphasize that what we have is not adequate. It's not where we want to be, but we're able to allow patients to live longer."

By Scott Allen, Globe Staff

Elizabeth Edwards this week got the news that all breast cancer survivors dread: her cancer is back.

Less than two years after she finished treatment for invasive ductal cancer in her right breast, doctors told the wife of presidential candidate John Edwards that she now has a small tumor in a rib on her right side. The diagnosis means that Edwards likely will never be cancer-free and she may require chemotherapy or other treatment for the rest of her life.

However, oncologists said that Edwards, 57, could live with cancer for many years.

Dr. Eric Winer, director of breast oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said Edwards has good reason to be optimistic about her treatment. He said that nearly half the patients he saw today were facing a recurrence of their cancer, adding, "Many women we take care of are living with metastatic breast cancer for many years."

Up to one-quarter of breast cancer survivors eventually face cancer again, depending on the type of cancer. Oncologists say that Edwards may have been at above average risk of recurrence, in part because the original tumor had grown so large.

Dr. Michael V. Seiden, a leading cancer clinician and researcher, is leaving Boston to become president and CEO of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, the center announced today.

Seiden, 48, is head of the gynecological cancer program at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and chief of clinical research in cancer medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. An associate professor of medicine at Harvard, his research focuses on ovarian cancer tumor biology. He is the physician coordinator of the cancer stem cell project at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.

On June 1 he will succeed Dr. Robert C. Young, 67, who is retiring from Fox Chase, which treats about 6,500 new patients a year and employs about 2,500 people.

Seiden is a graduate of Oberlin College and earned his M.D. and Ph.D. at Washington University in St. Louis. He completed his internship and residency at Mass. General, was a fellow in medicine at Harvard, did a three-year clinical fellowship in medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and was a postdoctoral fellow in molecular pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

When you're hot, you're hot.

Three researchers from Boston and Cambridge ranked among the world's most highly cited scientific authors in 2005 and 2006, according to the March/April issue of Thomson Scientific’s Science Watch newsletter. Its Web of Science database identifies a paper as "hot" if it is cited in scientific journals at a much higher rate than similar papers over a two-year period.

Richard D. Gelber of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute had six hot papers in biostatistics and oncology; Max Tegmark of MIT had six in space science; and Mark J. Daly of Harvard Medical School had five in genetics.

They finished behind Shizuo Akira of Osaka University, who had 7 hot papers in immunology. Akira and Tegmark are the only two researchers who stayed hot for the second list in a row.

A new online research tool called The Faculty of 1000 Medicine aims to help researchers and clinicians make sense of the flood of scientific information available online. Tomorrow its 100 Boston members are invited to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to discuss how its interpretive approach can help speed research advances along the path to patient care.

"The thing that's missing from a lot of online publications is the role of interpreter who is an expert in the field and who objectively puts things in the right perspective," Dr. Edward J. Benz, president of Dana-Farber and one of the hematology editors for the online resource, said in an interview. He and Dr. M. Rashad Massoud, senior vice president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, will speak at the 4 p.m. reception.

Not a single institution on either side of the Charles cracked the Top 15 places to work in a survey of postdoctoral life scientists, the March issue of The Scientist magazine says.

Training and experience matter the most to these researchers, who have finished their Ph.D.s but don't have faculty positions, the survey reports. They ranked access to books and journals next, followed by affordable medical insurance and then equipment and supplies for research.

The closest Boston or Cambridge came was Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's 28th-place finish, shooting up from 97th last year.

Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute also made the top 40. MIT dropped out of the top 40, placing 53rd.

Interesting suggestion from Blog, MD, the blog of Dr. Samuel C. Blackman, a Boston pediatric oncologist. He discusses a recent study in the British Medical Journal, which looked at whether mothers of infants in the ICU were able to recall information better when given audiotapes of their conversations with doctors.

"A couple of years ago, when I was a relatively new 1st year fellow, a family brought a tape recorder into the room and set it down right in front of me," he writes. "I can’t remember whether or not they asked me if I would mind being taped (I think they did), but I remember being weirded out by it and telling them that I’d prefer not to have my every word recorded."

But he's had a change of heart. "One would think that a tool as simple as a tape recorder would be more widely used for complex discussions such as informed consent for chemotherapy," he writes. "I believe that offering parents the opportunity to tape one’s important discussions with them telegraphs a message of confidence and trust, and would go a long way to establish rapport at a very important moment in a family’s life."

He's eager for comments from parents of children with cancer and from cancer patients themselves.

Contrary to traditional notions of grief after the death of a loved one, a new study finds that yearning is felt more powerfully than depression.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Yale University School of Medicine found that yearning was the strongest negative emotion after loss, they report in tomorrow's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Negative emotions associated with grief peaked within six months, meaning people with more prolonged symptoms might need more help after that point. And the researchers recommend that the standard psychiatric reference, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, be revised to focus less on depression after the death of a loved one.

"Yearning is reacting to the loss of someone or something, and once that is gone, you miss it, you pine for it, you hunger for it, you crave it. That was the primary emotional experience after bereavement, rather than depression," Holly G. Prigerson, one of the authors, said in an interview. "This suggests that the DSM reconsider what the natural response to loss is, especially with respect to depression and yearning."

The road to personalized medicine is a bumpy one, but researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute have found a method that might smooth the way.

Writing in yesterday's Nature Genetics, they report on a faster, cheaper method of screening for multiple mutations that turn on cancer genes.

Taking advantage of mass spectrometry, a tool researchers use to detect variations in genes, they were able to narrow down their search for relevant mutations in 1,000 samples of tumor tissue by examining only regions of genes where most troublesome mutations occur.

"You don't have to sequence the entire cancer genome," said Dr. Levi A. Garraway, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber and an associate member of the Broad, a joint MIT-Harvard institute. "All you need to do is look in specific locations."

Nearly three-quarters of patients with advanced cancer felt their spiritual needs were not met by the medical system, including chaplains, a survey by Harvard researchers shows. Nearly half of the patients thought their religious communities gave them little or no support.

People who had spiritual support tended to have better quality of life, according to the Coping With Cancer study, based at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. And people who described themselves as religious were twice as likely to want more aggressive treatment to extend their lives, it said. The survey of 230 patients is reported in Saturday's Journal of Clinical Oncology.

"These findings provide further evidence that oncology practitioners really should include a spiritual history as part of a patient's history of social support and culture," Dr. Tracy A. Balboni said in an interview today. She is a senior resident in the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program and the paper's lead author. "It allows the practitioner to know whether something's important to the patient and also makes the statement, 'We understand this might be an important part of dealing with your illness.' "

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute plans to raise $1 billion for research and patient care, the largest hospital fund-raising campaign in New England history.

Tufts Health Plan will reduce its staff by about 10 percent, laying off about 100 people and leaving about 75 jobs vacant.

In a pilot program the Food and Drug Administration will issue drug safety report cards detailing unexpected side effects that emerge within 18 months of a drug's approval.

More Boston hospital workers may be getting flu shots this season than the national average, but beyond that it’s hard to figure out how they measure up.

Public health officials have been pushing for virtually all hospital workers to get flu shots because they can easily be exposed and infect vulnerable patients. But each of six hospitals that answered a White Coat Notes query today counts health care workers involved in direct patient care in its own way. And they don’t necessarily know who might have gotten a flu shot outside their hospitals' programs.

Here are the results:

Boston Medical Center: 71 percent
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: 63 percent
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: 60 percent
Massachusetts General Hospital: 59 percent
Brigham and Women’s Hospital: about 48 percent
Tufts-New England Medical Center: more than 50 percent, according to a preliminary count

Fighting cancer under 40 raises special challenges, the first of which is believing it can happen to you. Dr. Karen Albritton of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Bruce A. Chabner of Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Dr. Nadine Tung of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center comment in a New York Times story.