A gene therapy approach is designed to treat mesothelioma by correcting the genes that allow a cancerous tumor to grow, potentially controlling tumor size and spread. Like immunotherapy, gene therapy clinical trials are currently underway. While a relatively new treatment, and still very much in the experimental stages, it is showing great promise and effectiveness in tests and clinical trials.
The goal of gene therapy is to get at the root cause of a disease. Because genes hold the instructions for making proteins and other building blocks necessary for cell function, if a gene’s instructions are incorrect or missing, the “ingredients” for a healthy cell and person may be lacking. Instead of dealing with the errant effects of faulty genes after the fact, gene therapy attempts to deliver the proper instructions to your cells, avoiding the negative affects altogether….. (more…)
Lymphomas are a group of cancers in which cells of the lymphatic system become abnormal and start to grow uncontrollably. Because there is lymph tissue in many parts of the body, lymphomas can start in almost any organ of the body.
The lymphatic system is made up of ducts or tubules that carry lymph to all parts of the body. Lymph is a milky fluid that contains lymphocytes. These, along with monocytes and granulocytes make up the leukocytes, or white blood cells, the infection-fighting and reparative bodies in the blood.
Small pea-shaped organs found along the network of lymph vessels are called lymph nodes; their main function is to make and store lymphocytes. Clusters of lymph nodes are found in the pelvic region, underarm, neck, chest, and abdomen. The spleen (an organ in the upper abdomen), the tonsils, and the thymus (a small organ beneath the breastbone) are also part of the lymphatic system. Lymphocytes are held within the lymphoid tissue until they join the flow of lymph through the node. There are two main types of lymphocytes: the T cell and the B cell….. (more…)
Biopsy-based study tilts field toward personalized treatment, more efficient clinical trials
The first lung cancer clinical trial to guide targeted therapies to patients based on molecular signatures in tumor biopsies is a step toward personalized care and more effective, efficient clinical trials for new drugs, study leaders reported today during the American Association for Cancer Research 101st Annual Meeting 2010.
Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center presented the results of the study that used an innovative statistical model to match four drugs to specific molecular signatures, or biomarkers, in the tumors of 255 stage IV non-small cell lung cancer patients who had received between one and nine previous treatments.
“New drugs that target molecular pathways help a small percentage of lung cancer patients, but right now there’s no way to determine who those patients are before treatment,” said Edward Kim, M.D., associate professor in M. D. Anderson’s Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology and principal investigator on the Biomarker-Integrated Approaches of Targeted Therapy for Lung Cancer Elimination (BATTLE) clinical trials.
“BATTLE evaluated tumor biomarkers in hopes that we can treat lung cancer, which kills more people than any other type of cancer, like we treat breast or colon cancer, using validated biomarkers to guide treatment and improve survival,” Kim said. The National Cancer Institute estimates that 219,440 new cases of lung cancer were diagnosed in 2009 and 159,390 people died from the disease.
Kim said BATTLE also points the way to more precise clinical trials that will require smaller numbers of patients to test a targeted therapy rather than large trials open to all-comers. “Lung cancer research has been plagued by large, Phase III clinical trials that showed minor effects or even failed to enroll enough patients to finish,” Kim said.
“Two lung cancer tumors might appear identical under a microscope and have the same staging, but they behave differently,” said Waun Ki Hong, M.D., head of M.D. Anderson’s Division of Cancer Medicine and principal investigator on the BATTLE grant from the U.S. Department of Defense. “The name of the game now is to treat based on the molecular defects in the tumor.”
The Phase II clinical trial found evidence that each of the four drugs targets specific molecular signatures better than the other three. The drugs used in the trial were erlotinib (Tarceva-), sorafenib (Nexavar-), vandetanib (Zactima-) and erlotinib with bexarotene (Targretin-). Each drug is designed to target specific molecular pathways; currently, none has a validated biomarker to guide its use…. (more…)
A new study of almost 700 patients from The Mount Sinai Medical Center shows that prostate cancer patients who had robotically assisted prostatectomy enjoyed significant benefits over patients who had a traditional open radical prostatectomy, including decreased surgical and recovery time, less blood loss during surgery and significantly shorter hospital stays. The study, by David B. Samadi, MD, Chief of the Division of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, will be published later this month on the website of the Journal of the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons (JSLS), and then in print following that.
Comparing 575 patients who had robotic prostatectomy with 106 patients who had open prostatectomy, the robotically assisted procedures were associated with 45 percent shorter median anesthesia time, 51 percent shorter surgical time, and 96 percent less estimated blood loss. Overall hospital stays were also 67 percent shorter in the robotically assisted cases.
In addition, none of the robotic prostatectomy patients required transfusions or intraoperative red cell salvaging. There were also no rectal perforations – a common complication of prostate surgery – or other intraoperative complications in the 575 robotically assisted prostatectomy patients….. (more…)
