Could you ever imagine picking up your morning cup of joe, and instead of drinking it, slathering it over your skin?

A new study indicates that caffeine applied directly to the skin may be able to protect against UV-related sun damage and skin cancer.

Rutgers researchers say that the caffeine guards against certain skin cancers by inhibiting a protein enzyme in the skin called ATR, which in turn slows down non-melanoma tumor growth.

The study found that caffeine worked best at a pre-cancerous stage, as a protective measure rather than a treatment measure.

“Caffeine might become a weapon in prevention because it inhibits ATR and also acts ad as a sunscreen and directly absorbs damaging UV light,” said researcher Allan Conney.

Prior studies have found that coffee is also associated with a decreased risk of several other types of cancer – only in these cases, you can drink it, as opposed to rubbing it on your skin for health benefits.

According to statistics from the National Cancer Institute, sunlight-induced skin cancer is the most prevalent cancer in the United States. Every year, more than 1 million new cases are diagnosed.

Though researchers are still uncertain as to why exactly coffee is effective, they hope their findings can be utilized as a method of prevention.

Researchers have discovered a compound that attacks certain cancer cells by depriving them of their energy source, glucose.

Because the compound can selectively target cancer cells, while leaving normal cells alone, researchers hope it may someday be an option other than chemotherapy for cancer patients.

Chemotherapy can be rough for patients because most of the drugs are unable to distinguish between which cells are cancerous and which are not. Instead, the chemicals simply target all rapidly dividing cells, which include healthy blood cells and cells that make hair.

However, drugs that can target a phenomenon exclusive to cancer cells – such as using glucose for energy – could fight the disease with considerably less side effects.

“This study demonstrates an approach for selectively inhibiting the ability of cancer cells to take up glucose, which is a pretty powerful way of killing those cells,” said senior study author Amato Giaccia, PhD, Stanford University professor and director of radiation oncology.

For the study, the researchers focused on a common kidney cancer in adults, called renal cell carcinomas, for the study. The cancer is resistant to chemotherapy, and patients typically must have the kidney removed.

Using mice, researchers tested the effects two candidate drugs, STF-62247 and STF-31, on renal cell carcinomas. Both succeeded in starving the cancer cells of glucose and slowing tumor growth.

Additionally, there was no apparent damage to normal tissues, immune systems or blood cells of the mice.

The study was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Women with breasts that appear dense on mammograms are not only at a higher risk of breast cancer than women with less dense breasts, but they are also at greater risk of developing more aggressive cancers, researchers said.

Breast density, which is determined by the proportions of fat, connective tissue and epithelial tissue in the breast, has already been identified as a risk factor for breast cancer.  But now researchers add to that finding by reporting that tumors in higher-density breasts also appear to share certain aggressive characteristics.

In a study of 1000 women with breast cancer and 1,800 women without breast cancer, researchers found, as expected, that the risk of breast cancer increased progressively with increasing breast density.

They also found that the tumors in higher density breasts tended to be larger, high-grade and estrogen receptor-negative.  There was no association between density and other signs of tumor aggressiveness, such as nodal involvement or HER2 status.

Researchers warn that the results may potentially be influenced by the “masking effect” – essentially, tumors are harder to spot in high-density breasts and so they are able to go undetected for longer.

However, the researchers said, “Given that the magnitude of the association with breast density is strong across all breast cancer subtypes and particularly for ER-negative disease, breast density should be included in risk prediction models across tumor subtype.”

The study was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Cancer mortality rates are higher for men than women in the United States, which means males are more likely to die from the disease, according to new statistics.

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute looked at U.S. cancer rates and survival data for 36 different cancers, and then divided them by gender.

“Men are more likely to die from cancer than women,” said Michael Cook, Ph.D., an investigator in the division of cancer epidemiology and genetics at the National Cancer Institute. “We found this to be true for a majority of specific types of cancer.”

The cancers which showed highest discrepancies between the genders in terms of survival rates were, in order:

Lip cancer (where 5.51 men died compared to 1 female);

Larynx (5.37-to-1);

Hypopharynx (4.47-to-1);

Esophageal cancer (4.08-to-1);

Urinary bladder (3.36-to-1)

Cancers that had the highest mortality rates overall also showed greater risk of death in men than women, including lung and bronchus (2.31-to-1); colon and rectum (1.42-to-1); pancreas (1.37-to-1); leukemia (1.75-to-1); and liver and intrahepatic bile duct (2.23-to-1).

However, researchers emphasize that the differences were not significant, and the root cause of higher cancer death among men isn’t that men are more susceptible to the disease, but rather that they are less likely to be screened or diagnosed.

“Our research suggests that the main factor driving the greater frequency of cancer deaths in men is the greater frequency of cancer diagnosis, rather than poorer survival once the cancer occurs,” said Cook. “If we can identify the causes of these gender differences in cancer incidence then we can take preventative actions to reduce the cancer burden in both men and women.”

The study was published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Southern states lag behind Northern states in colorectal cancer survival, according to a new study.

Officials from the American Cancer Society say the mortality rates from colorectal cancer have significantly improved over the past decade in Northern states but have remained the same in Southern states.

Massachusetts, for example, saw a 37 percent reduction in death rate from colorectal cancer from 1990 to 2007, while there was no reduction of the death rate in Mississippi.

“This was very surprising, because when you look at the differences in reductions by state they are huge,” said Ahmedin Jemal, D.V.M., Ph.D., vice president for surveillance research at the American Cancer Society.

Colorectal cancer remains the third leading cause of cancer both for men and women, but rates have been declining nationwide over the past several decades.

Researchers say the Northern-Southern divide in colorectal cancer deaths may be explained by differences in rates of screening, economic disparities and amount of health care coverage.

In Mississippi, 18.8 percent of people do not have health insurance, compared with 5.4 percent in Massachusetts. More than 20 percent of the population of Mississippi lives below the poverty line, compared with a national average of 13 percent.

“It used to be that the highest rates of colorectal cancer mortality were in the northeastern part of the United States, but now we’ve really seen a switch,” said Elizabeth Jacobs, Ph.D., an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Arizona. “It shows the importance of access to screening.”

The study was published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

In December, the Food and Drug Administration drafted a proposal to remove the approval of Avastin for breast cancer treatment. Now, tensions have hit a fever pitch during a current hearing as patients and the drugmaker Roche plead for the government organization to reconsider.

The FDA first approved Avastin for breast cancer in 2008 after a study showed the drug stalled cancer growth by almost six months when used in combination with chemotherapy. Because the drug was given accelerated approval, the FDA required Roche to run follow-up studies to confirm the drug’s effectiveness.

However, the later studies weren’t as successful, finding only a one to three month delay in cancer growth. None proved that Avastin extended the lives of patients with advanced breast cancer, and some patients had severe side effects such as holes in the stomach and intestines.

Nevertheless, since the FDA began its hearing for Avastin on Tuesday, breast cancer patients have stepped forward to recount their success stories, thanks in part, to the drug. Some have held signs and chanted outside the FDA building in favor of Avastin.

Personally, I agree with these patients. I think that the FDA should keep the approval of Avastin for breast cancer, pending new studies.

Metastatic breast cancer, in many cases, is very difficult to treat, and the choices of treatments are often limited.

I am aware of the discrepancies in cancer survival rates with the use of Avastin. However, there are some patients that do show significant improvement after taking it, and it is unfair to have the drug’s approval removed for this use when there is a select group of women that could definitely benefit from it.

Medical treatment, especially for something as complicated as metastatic cancer, has to keep whatever positive gains toward a cure it has and build upon that to get to newer drugs and better treatments with higher degrees of success.

Now, I know that even without FDA approval of Avastin for metastatic breast cancer, doctors can still utilize the drug. However, Medicare may not cover its costs, and certainly many private insurance agencies may think twice before approving claims for it. This could be devastating for the 17,000 breast cancer patients out there that are currently taking Avastin.

Because, really, at the end of the day, it is the patients and their families who will be hurt the most.