Mediastinal nodal staging is recommended for patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Surgical staging has limitations, which results in the performance of unnecessary thoracotomies.

Current guidelines acknowledge minimally invasive endosonography followed by surgical staging (if no nodal metastases are found by endosonography) as an alternative to immediate surgical staging.

Several cancers, including those originating in the breast, prostate, and lung, exhibit a propensity to metastasize to bone, resulting in debilitating skeletal complications.

These sequelae, such as intractable pain, pathologic fractures, spinal compression, and hypercalcemia, greatly erode the patients' quality of life. Bisphosphonates, a class of antiresorptive drugs, are now the mainstay of the treatment of skeletal-related events in myeloma bone disease and many solid cancers with bone metastases.

Current evidence indicates that newer-generation nitrogen-containing bisphosphonates, particularly zoledronic acid, are potent inhibitors of bone resorption. In addition, increased understanding of the pathogenesis of bone metastasis has resulted in the development of several bone-targeted therapies including a monoclonal antibody targeting the receptor activator of nuclear factor (NF)-κB ligand (RANKL).

In this review, clinical evidence regarding the efficacy and safety of currently available bone-targeted therapies including bisphosphonates and anti-RANKL monoclonal antibody in the treatment of bone metastasis due to breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, and multiple myeloma bone disease will be summarized.

Some of the most common cancer types, including breast cancer, prostate cancer, and lung cancer, show a predilection to metastasize to bone.

The molecular basis of this preferential growth of cancer cells in the bone microenvironment has been an area of active investigation. Although the precise molecular mechanisms underlying this process remain to be elucidated, it is now increasingly being recognized that the unique characteristics of the bone niche provide homing signals to cancer cells, and create a microenvironment conducive for the cancer cells to colonize. Concomitantly, cancer cells release several regulatory factors that result in abnormal bone destruction and/or formation. This complex bidirectional interplay between tumor cells and bone microenvironment establishes a "vicious cycle" that leads to a selective growth advantage for the cancer cells.

The molecular insights gained on the underpinnings of bone metastasis in recent years have also provided us with avenues to devise innovative approaches for therapeutic intervention. The goal of this review is to describe our current understanding of molecular pathophysiology of cancer metastases to bone, as well as its therapeutic implications.

Stem cells can be transformed into the pancreatic cells needed to treat diabetes and into complex layers of intestinal tissue, scientists demonstrated in two experiments reported on Sunday.

In one, a team turned immature sperm cells into pancreatic tissue, while another team turned embryonic stem cells into complex layers of intestinal tissue.

Both studies show new ways to use stem cells, which are the body's master cells and which can come from a variety of sources.

A team at Georgetown University in Washington worked with spermatogonial stem cells, master cells that give rise to sperm in men.

Ian Gallicano and colleagues used germ-derived pluripotent stem cells, which are made from the spermatogonial stem cells. They nurtured these cells in the lab with compounds designed to make these cells start acting like pancreatic beta cells, which produce insulin.

When transplanted into diabetic mice, these cells produced insulin, acting like the pancreatic beta cells that the body mistakenly destroys in type-1 diabetes, Gallicano's team told a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in Philadelphia.