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Introduction: Advances in treatment have transformed cancer from a fatal to a chronic illness. This requires healthcare professionals, particularly nurses, to have advanced knowledge and collaborative skills. However, challenges persist in implementing patient-centered care in the context of evolving treatment complexity. Objectives: This study aimed to clarify nurses' support practices in providing cancer pharmacotherapy at a university hospital in Japan and compare these practices based on nurses' years of experience. Methods: A questionnaire survey was conducted from February to April 2023 among 430 nurses involved in provision of cancer pharmacotherapy at a Japanese university hospital. Nurses were asked about the types of support they provided during care for patients undergoing cancer pharmacotherapy. Nurses' cancer pharmacotherapy support practices were extracted using factor analysis, and differences in support scores by years of experience were examined. Results: Responses were received from 184 nurses (42.8% response rate). Three support factors were identified: "Providing patient-centered cancer pharmacotherapy," "Management of continued cancer pharmacotherapy treatment," and "Assessment of and response to physical symptoms." Scores for "Providing patient-centered cancer pharmacotherapy" were significantly lower than those for the other two factors (p <.001). The group with ≥10 years of nursing experience had statistically significantly lower practice scores than those with 4–9 years of experience. Conclusions: Enhancing nursing education and interprofessional collaboration are crucial to overcome barriers to patient-centered cancer care. Continuous learning opportunities are essential to adapt to evolving cancer treatment protocols and ensure delivery of patient-centered care, particularly for experienced nurses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Oncological departments have been profoundly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. To determine if there has been a decrease in cancer treatment in the COVID-19 era, we analyzed data from 47 studies that reported on the numbers or variations in cancer treatment between the pandemic and pre-pandemic periods. We found a significant reduction in the number of oncological surgery, radiotherapy, and systemic therapies for cancer patients. These findings suggest that increased cancer-related mortality may occur, requiring public health strategies to limit this. Importance: The COVID-19 pandemic has put a serious strain on health services, including cancer treatment. Objective: This study aimed to investigate the changes in cancer treatment worldwide during the first phase of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. Data Sources: Pubmed, Proquest, and Scopus databases were searched comprehensively for articles published between 1 January 2020 and 12 December 2021, in order to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis conducted following the PRISMA statement. Study Selection: Studies and articles that reported data on the number of or variation in cancer treatments between the pandemic and pre-pandemic periods, comprising oncological surgery, radiotherapy, and systemic therapies, were included. Data Extraction and Synthesis: Data were extracted from two pairs of independent reviewers. The weighted average of the percentage variation was calculated between the two periods to assess the change in the number of cancer treatments performed during the pandemic. Stratified analyses were performed by type of treatment, geographic area, time period, study setting, and type of cancer. Results: Among the 47 articles retained, we found an overall reduction of −18.7% (95% CI, −24.1 to −13.3) in the total number of cancer treatments administered during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the previous periods. Surgical treatment had a larger decrease compared to medical treatment (−33.9% versus −12.6%). For all three types of treatments, we identified a U-shaped temporal trend during the entire period January–October 2020. Significant decreases were also identified for different types of cancer, in particular for skin cancer (−34.7% [95% CI, −46.8 to −22.5]) and for all geographic areas, in particular, Asia (−42.1% [95% CI, −49.6 to −34.7]). Conclusions and Relevance: The interruption, delay, and modifications to cancer treatment due to the COVID-19 pandemic are expected to alter the quality of care and patient outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this context, we introduce a multi-objective optimization problem (MOOP) to simultaneously minimize the objectives of cancerous cells density as well as the approved drug amount in order to optimize the medical remedy of a tumor. The main aim is gaining a proper pattern for medical supervision to sick people with malignant cancer. To this end, a comparison is made between the two important and useful methods of nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) and multiobjective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO). The gained Pareto's Curve here yields a series of optimal protocols. A desired optimal technique is then selected from these optimal protocols for drug supervision, relating to an under consideration criterion. The results show that in both criterions, the convergence and expansion of Pareto optimal fronts of the performance of the NSGA-II method is better compared to MOPSO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interaction between cancer cells and their microenvironment is an indispensable link in cancer progression that occurs on the interfaces between them and presents typical biointerfacial behavior. Recently, the cancer cell/microenvironment interface has begun to attract more attention because of its fundamental roles in cancer growth and metastasis, which is promising for the efficacy of anti-cancer drugs and other important effects. In this review, we focused on mechanical coupling of the biointerfaces and their application in cancer early diagnosis, the pharmacology of anticancer agents and the design of the anticancer drug carriers. Newly developed strategies for cancer therapy based on mechanical coupling, such as correcting cell mechanics defects, tunable rigidity for drug delivery and topography-coupled-mechanical drug design, and drug screening, provide a proof of concept that cell mechanics offer a rich drug target space, allowing for the possible corrective modulation of tumor cell behavior. Biomechanopharmacology is therefore important to recognize the biomechanical factors and to control them not only for improvement in our knowledge of cancer but also for the development of new drugs and new uses of old drugs., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.org.)