Brotherhood of the Balloon

12/26/2025

Merry Christmas to our members and their families! Wishing you all a holiday filled with peace, love, good health, and time with the people who matter most. Thank you for being such a supportive and caring community. ~ Bob and Deb🎄

11/28/2025

Happy Thanksgiving to our members.

We’re grateful for each of you — for your spirit, your willingness to stay informed, and the way so many of you give back through advocacy, education, and support for others. This group reflects strength, generosity, and a shared commitment to helping men make informed choices about their health.

Wishing you and your families a warm, meaningful, and restorative Thanksgiving.

Bob Marckini & Deb Hickey

10/30/2025

AI BREAKTHROUGH IN PROSTATE CANCER DIAGNOSIS:

A new study introduces GleasonXAI, an AI system that helps doctors grade prostate cancer more accurately—and explains WHY it made each decision.

Trained on over 1,000 tissue samples reviewed by top pathologists, this tool could make diagnoses more consistent, transparent, and easier to understand.

Smarter AI isn’t replacing doctors—it’s helping them give men clearer, more confident answers. 💙

*As of now, we strongly recommend getting a second opinion on biopsy slides, since reading pathology slides is still highly subjective—and those results guide every treatment decision.

👇 Here's the study:

An inherently explainable AI trained on 1,015 expert-annotated prostate tissue images achieved strong Gleason pattern segmentation while providing interpretable outputs and addressing interobserver variability in pathology.

10/01/2025

💊 Could a common cholesterol drug help men with advanced prostate cancer live longer?

Researchers analyzed health records from more than HALF A MILLION MEN—making this one of the largest real-world studies to date. The results are striking: men on standard hormone therapy (ADT) who also took statins had better survival rates than those who didn’t.

Metformin, a diabetes drug, didn’t show the same effect on its own. But when combined with statins, the benefit was even stronger.

This finding is important because statins are inexpensive, widely available, and typically prescribed for heart health—not cancer. If confirmed, this could change how doctors approach treatment for men with advanced disease.

View the study: 👇

prostate cancer, androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), Metformin, Impact of Metformin and Statins on Prostate Cancer.

09/30/2025

✨ Hope. 🎯 Precision. ⚡ Speed. Theranostics targets only cancer cells—meaning faster treatment, fewer side effects, and better outcomes for patients who need it most—and it’s transforming cancer care at Loma Linda University Cancer Center. 💙🩺

Loma Linda University Cancer Center is the only facility in the region to offer theranostics, a cutting-edge approach that can allow a patient to learn both their diagnosis and personalized treatment plan in one day.

Unlike traditional cancer treatments that can harm healthy cells, theranostics targets only the cancer itself.

✅ The result? Shorter treatment times and milder side effects.

For prostate cancer patients, this process is especially fast. Radiologist Dr. Eric Peters says, “No other therapy has previously been able to treat certain cancers in this way.”

Learn more about : https://bit.ly/3IoDjEQ

09/25/2025

🚨 A New Era in Cancer Care Begins🚨

Loma Linda University Health, the pioneer of hospital-based proton therapy, is making history once again. They are now equipped to deliver FLASH Proton Therapy—a revolutionary technology that can treat tumors in fractions of a second, sparing healthy tissue and transforming patient experiences.

From treating their first patient in 1990 to now advancing the frontiers of cancer care, LLUH continues to lead the world in innovation, precision, and patient-focused treatment.

This milestone isn’t just about technology—it’s about hope, progress, and the future of cancer therapy. Patients today and generations to come stand to benefit from this leap forward.

🌟 History meets innovation. The future of proton therapy is now.

Loma Linda University Health (LLUH), the institution that created the world's first hospital-based Proton Therapy Treatment Center in 1990, and Mevion Medica...

08/22/2025

👀SNEAK PEEK: October BOB Tales👀

AI is uncovering prostate cancer in tissue samples previously deemed healthy by pathologists! A groundbreaking study from Uppsala University shows AI detected subtle changes in over 80% of samples from men who later developed aggressive cancer.

We'll break it down in our next issue, coming soon!

In the meantime, view the full study to learn how AI is changing the game in diagnostic accuracy! 👇

Diagnostic needle biopsies that miss clinically significant prostate cancer (PCa) often sample benign tissue near hidden cancers. Such benign samples might still display subtle morphological signs of cancer elsewhere in the prostate. This study examined if artificial intelligence (AI) could detect t...

08/19/2025

BIG STRIDES IN PROSTATE CANCER RESEARCH:

Back in 2019, scientists discovered that the NSD2 gene helps prostate cancer spread quickly. Now, researchers have learned that NSD2 may actually fuel the disease from its earliest stages.

Here’s why this matters...

▸NSD2 is found only in cancer cells—not in healthy ones. That makes it an exciting target for new treatments.

▸Lab studies show that shutting down NSD2 (and its partner, NSD1) can stop cancer cells in their tracks while leaving healthy tissue unharmed.

The compound used in these studies isn’t ready for people yet, but the findings bring us one step closer to smarter, more precise therapies. In fact, the FDA recently cleared a different NSD2-targeting drug to begin a Phase 1 trial in men with advanced prostate cancer—an important step forward in bringing this research from the lab to the clinic.

Here's the original study. 👇

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-024-01893-6

08/07/2025

👀 Another SNEAK PEEEK before we send out the September issue of BOB Tales!

HIDDEN HORMONES: How Urinary Tract Bacteria May Fuel Prostate Cancer Growth: A groundbreaking study from the University of Illinois has revealed a surprising link between urinary tract bacteria and prostate cancer progression. Researchers found that certain bacteria can transform corticosteroids—often used in treatments like prednisone—into hormones called androgens that encourage prostate cancer cell growth.

This challenges previous ideas about hormone therapy and opens new doors for treatment. The study highlights the importance of the body’s microbiome in cancer care. Targeting bacterial hormone production could lead to better therapies.

A fascinating step forward in understanding—and potentially controlling—prostate cancer progression.

👇 Here’s the study

Commensal bacteria have been implicated in the modulation of steroid hormones, including circulating androgen levels in the host. However, the microbial genetic pathways involved in androgen production have not been fully characterized. Here we identify a microbial gene encoding an enzyme that catal...

08/06/2025

🔥 SNEAK PEEK: September BOB Tales 🔥

New research is shedding light on how chronic inflammation in the prostate may trigger and fuel cancer growth. While inflammation usually helps the body heal, when it lingers—due to infections, injury, or other irritants—it can create an environment that encourages abnormal cells to grow and mutate.

Want to know more? Check out the latest findings in our upcoming newsletter!

Read the research here: 👇

Prostate cancer is the most common malignancy among men, and progression to metastasis and the emergence of therapeutically resistant disease confers a high mortality rate. Growing evidence implicates inflammation as a driver of prostate cancer development and progression, resulting in increased can...

07/28/2025

NEW STUDY: Proton Therapy May Be Easier on the Immune System

Good news for proton therapy patients! A recent study shows that shorter, more targeted proton treatments are gentler on your immune system—especially your lymphocytes, the white blood cells that help fight off illness and disease.

Only 8% of men treated with a 5-session course of proton therapy experienced immune suppression. But among those who received radiation to the pelvic lymph nodes, a whopping 84% saw a significant drop in immune cells.

What does this mean?

The more focused the treatment—and the less radiation to surrounding areas like pelvic nodes—the better preserved your immune system may be.

This matters.

A stronger immune system could mean a better ability to fight cancer during and after treatment.

Another reason to feel good about choosing proton therapy. 🙌

Radiotherapy can be both immunosuppressive and immunostimulatory. Radiation-induced lymphopenia (RIL) is an ongoing challenge in cancer treatment. We investi...

07/07/2025

BIG NEWS IN PROSTATE CANCER TREATMENT 🎯

A major study found that a short course of radiation—just 5 treatments over 1–2 weeks—works just as well as the longer, traditional schedule (which can take up to 7 weeks) for men with low- to intermediate-risk prostate cancer.

This approach, called SBRT (stereotactic body radiotherapy), is safe, effective, and much more convenient.

Talk to your doctor to see if it’s an option for you—and always consider getting more than one opinion. Knowledge is power!

Learn more here. 👇