Mesothelioma, Asbestos, and Survival
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Mesothelioma, Asbestos, and Survival

ByAlex Strauss

Mesothelioma is a cancer directly linked to asbestos exposure. Now researchers are discovering that the extent of that exposure can significantly affect how long a patient survives, and they’re finding that some people may be more susceptible to the effects of asbestos than others. Of all the cancers, mesothelioma is among the most deadly—most patients survive for less than one year. Researchers have been trying to prolong patients’ lives, in part by learning more about the disease and how it progresses. Because the vast majority of mesothelioma cases can be attributed to asbestos exposure, knowing how that exposure contributes to disease progression is an important component of research. “One crucial part of trying to advance our understanding of a serious disease like…

Mesothelioma and Active Symptom Control
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Mesothelioma and Active Symptom Control

ByAlex Strauss

Incorporating chemotherapy in a regimen of symptom-relieving treatments (such as steroid medications) doesn’t significantly improve survival or quality of life in mesothelioma patients, according to a study published in the May 17 issue of The Lancet. However, one chemotherapy drug—vinorelbine—is promising enough to warrant further study, the authors say. Because mesothelioma attacks the lining of the lung, it is one of the trickiest cancers to treat. Surgery is complicated because it requires either stripping the lung lining or removing the whole lung, radiation is risky because it can damage healthy lung tissue, and chemotherapy isn’t very effective against this type of cancer, says one of the lead study authors, Richard Stephens, a research scientist with the Medical Research Council Clinical…

Mesothelioma and Chemo Results
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Mesothelioma and Chemo Results

ByAlex Strauss

Patients who have already undergone chemotherapy for mesothelioma without success may benefit from a second round of treatment with the chemotherapy drug, vinorelbine, according to a study in the May 15 issue of the journal, Lung Cancer. Mesothelioma has historically been a very difficult cancer to treat. The “gold standard” therapy has been the antifolate chemotherapy drug, pemetrexed, typically combined with the platinum-based drug, cisplatin. Though some patients undergo another round of chemotherapy if their disease continues to progress, there isn’t much research to guide doctors in treating patients who don’t respond to first-line therapy. “Mesothelioma is often rapidly progressive, so patients often sadly don’t reach the second-line setting,” says Justin Stebbing MA, MRCP, MRCPath, PhD, consultant medical oncologist and…

Mesothelioma and the Immune System
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Mesothelioma and the Immune System

ByAlex Strauss

The presence of an immune cell is associated with better prognosis for patients undergoing extrapleural pneumonectomy for malignant pleural mesothelioma is the conclusion of a recent article published in the Journal of Thoracic Cardiovascular Surgery.1 Canadian researchers tested mesothelioma samples removed from 32 patients (28 men and 4 women). The patients ranged in age from 21 to 74 (median age was 59). The researchers were looking for the numbers of specific types of immune cells. They then compared this data to the survival of the patients to see if these cell counts had any relationship with survival. They found that one specific type of immune cell called CD8+ was associated with better prognosis. The study found that higher levels of…

Peritoneal Mesothelioma and Multi-Modality Treatment
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Peritoneal Mesothelioma and Multi-Modality Treatment

ByAlex Strauss

Combining surgery, localized chemotherapy and gamma-interferon-1b, and radiation can increase survival for patients with peritoneal mesothelioma, according to a recent study in the American Journal of Clinical Oncology. Currently, no standard treatment exists for peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the abdominal lining (peritoneum). Because the disease is typically confined to the abdomen, treatment usually consists of local therapies such as surgery or chemotherapy. In the current study, researchers investigated whether combining surgery with locally delivered chemotherapy, biological therapy (gamma-interferon-1b), and radiation might slow the progression of the disease and improve survival. The study involved 27 patients (average age, 53) with malignant peritoneal mesothelioma. All of the participants underwent surgery in which doctors removed all traces of visible disease—a time-intensive…

Mesothelioma and Chemotherapy
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Mesothelioma and Chemotherapy

ByAlex Strauss

Adding a second round of chemotherapy with the drug pemetrexed can slow cancer progression in patients with pleural mesothelioma, according to a recent study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Malignant pleural mesothelioma, which affects the lining of the lungs (pleura), is one of the toughest cancers for doctors to combat. “The tumor itself is the challenge, as it is practically incurable and hardly treatable,” says Jacek Jassem, MD, PhD, professor of Medicine at the Medical University of Gdansk in Poland. Surgery isn’t appropriate for most patients, and radiation has limited effectiveness. One of the most effective treatments discovered so far is the combination of an anti-metabolite (a class of chemotherapy drugs that interfere with DNA production to halt tumor…

Mesothelioma and Virotherapy
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Mesothelioma and Virotherapy

ByAlex Strauss

A recently published study* suggests that virotherapy may be a viable treatment option for mesothelioma, as well as for other cancers. Virotherapy is the use of biotechnology to convert viruses into cancer-fighting agents by reprogramming viruses to only attack cancerous cells An agent of change for patients with “no real treatment alternatives” “Normally, viruses replicate to increase their number, and by virtue of that process, healthy cells are killed,” explains David T. Curiel, MD, PhD, director of the Division of Human Gene Therapy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Virotherapy is about engineering viruses so that they replicate only in tumor cells – and kill only tumor cells.” In order to engineer an effective virus, scientists must first understand…

Mesothelioma and Molecular Pathways
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Mesothelioma and Molecular Pathways

ByAlex Strauss

A recently published review* looks at some of the molecular signaling pathways currently being investigated in mesothelioma. The challenge of developing disease-specific treatments. The goal is to develop more – and more effective – treatments, says co-author Dan J. Raz, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco’s Division of Thoracic Surgery. “The options for mesothelioma patients have primarily been surgery, conventional chemotherapy, and radiation therapy,” Raz says. “But even when a combination of treatments is used, the outcomes aren’t great.” While several drugs have been approved for treating mesothelioma, there aren’t a lot – largely because researchers simply haven’t been able to conduct many clinical drug trials. This is in part because, with some 5,000 Americans diagnosed with the…

Pleural Mesothelioma and Surgery
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Pleural Mesothelioma and Surgery

ByAlex Strauss

In a 2006 article*, thoracic surgeon David J. Sugarbaker, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital stated that the goal of surgery for pleural mesothelioma should always be the complete removal of all tumor tissue visible to the naked eye. A complex disease, an ongoing debate “Because mesothelioma can take on many forms and involve different parts of the lung, people have been comparing apples and oranges for many years” when weighing the pros and cons of surgeries for the disease, says Sugarbaker. “We’re used to asking, ‘Do we perform a more extensive procedure or a more conservative one?’ when it comes to surgery, but that debate doesn’t apply as much to mesothelioma,” he says. “The goal should always be to…

Mesothelioma and Gene Expression
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Mesothelioma and Gene Expression

ByAlex Strauss

A recently published study has revealed for the first time a connection between malignant mesothelioma and the overexpression of a particular genetic protein. In an effort to better understand this particularly deadly form of cancer on a cellular level, a team from the University of California, San Francisco, Comprehensive Cancer Center sought to identify genetic material in mesothelioma cells that occurs at higher levels than the same material does in non-cancerous cells (that is overexpressed). What the scientists discovered could be an important step in developing treatments that target mesothelioma cells in their earliest stages. A strong and consistent clue “In the biological sense, we don’t know why mesothelioma develops or why it’s so aggressive,” says primary investigator Jae Kim,…