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The number of cancers related to HPV has dramatically increased, a new government report finds. But too few people are receiving the best protection against the preventable and potentially deadly diseases of the cervix, head and neck: a vaccine given to pre-teens which could protect them later in life. (Gussone, 7/7)

Black women are at a greater risk of dying of breast cancer and of suffering from aggressive subtypes of the disease. Recent advances in survival rates among women of other races haven’t applied to them, and scientists aim to better understand why through a large study. A $12 million grant will finance a study of more than 20,000 black women with breast cancer, comparing them with thousands of black women who do not have the disease and white women who do. (Victor, 7/7)

Juno Therapeutics, a pioneer in the sizzling field of treating cancer by revving up the immune system, on Thursday said it had halted development of its lead treatment after three patient deaths, dealing a blow to a promising but still unproven approach to oncology called CAR-T immunotherapy. The treatment, dubbed JCAR015, is created by harvesting a patient’s own immune cells and rewiring them to home in on cancer in the blood. Three patients — all younger than 25 — died after excess fluids accumulated in their brains, Juno said. (Garde and Keshavan, 7/7)

Older members of the Hmong community, in particular, often resist undergoing screening tests that could save their lives because of cultural beliefs, say health professionals and advocates. Studies show the Hmong community has a higher cancer mortality rate when compared to other Asian Americans, in part because the disease is diagnosed at a later stage, which greatly reduces chances of survival. Part of the issue — low utilization of cancer screenings — is rooted in a distrust of invasive medical procedures, says Kay Vu Lee, chair of the Hmong Cancer Coalition and one of the event’s organizers. (Romero, 7/7)

Doctors cling to comfortable, widely used medical practices, even if they’re no longer particularly effective, right? A new study disputes that popular perception. In the case of a particular breast cancer treatment at least, many physicians quickly abandoned it after a clinical trial showed it was ineffective. The study, published in the July issue of the journal Health Affairs, tracked treatment patterns before and after the results of a major clinical trial that examined the effectiveness of removing lymph nodes near the breast to prevent the spread of cancer. (Andrews, 7/8)

A few years ago, Elizabeth Jaffee, a professor of oncology in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, probably wouldn’t have imagined that she would team up with an aerospace engineer to advance her research on cancer therapies. Advancements in mapping out genetic sequences had already given biomedical researchers a wealth of information to study tumors and cells — but they didn’t have existing tools to handle that data. So Jaffee reached out to a professor in the department of physics, thinking that the computer system used to analyze complex data from outer space might be able to accommodate the huge trove of information she had on her hands." (Tan, 7/8)