Most Canadian citizens are likely to survive the often fatal disease of cancer because of the country's accessible and reliable health care system, according to a Concord study.

The study, which will appear in the August issue of The Lancet Oncology, revealed that Canada ranked second in patient survival for breast cancer, third for prostate cancer in men and for colorectal cancer in women, and sixth for colorectal cancer in men

An international study, the Concord Report, comparing cancer survival rates in 31 nations for four types of cancer, shows that the U.S. topped survival rates for breast and prostate cancer, while for colorectal cancer, Japan led the men's category and France the women's category.

Canada ranked high in the four categories, indicating the good access rate of Canadian cancer patients to quality health care

Doing a breast self-exam produces an increase in benign biopsies and doesn't improve breast cancer survival, new studies suggest. In fact, researchers say that the practice may do more harm than good.

The results were obtained after two consecutive studies, a 2003 study of more than 120,000 Russian women and a 2002 study of more than 266,000 Chinese women. According to both the studies, the women who did breast self-exams were nearly twice as likely to get breast biopsies, many of which turned out not to show cancer

Biotech drug manufacturer Amgen Inc. is reporting that a new drug under testing has been shown to prevent bone loss in men with prostate cancer.

The drug, denosumab, was clinically tested on more than 1,400 men with non-metastatic prostate cancer undergoing androgen deprivation treatment. It showed that the drug helped reduce the risk the risk of osteoporosis and fracture in men receiving treatments for prostate cancer that can cause bone loss, the company said Monday

A breast cancer vaccine currently being tested in a Phase II trial at various hospitals has yielded positive results and is targeted towards women who've already had metastatic breast cancer.

The therapeutic breast cancer vaccine AE37 uses a peptide antigen of a cancer gene known as HER-2/neu. This gene/protein is present in many types of cells, but it is over-expressed in a high proportion of breast cancers as well as many others