carcinoma

A medication used to slow the growth of kidney cancer may help improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy for mesothelioma. Temsirolimus is a kinase inhibitor, which works by blocking the action of the abnormal protein that signals replication in cancer cells. It is often used to treat advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), a cancer that begins in the kidney. But a team of researchers in Vienna has found that the drug also appears to inhibit the growth of malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) cells, both in cell cultures and in animal models. The researchers used temsirolimus to ‘turn off’ the gene pathway known as mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) in mesothelioma cells. The mTOR pathway is responsible for signaling the growth and…