Order May Impact Mesothelioma Drug Availability
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Order May Impact Mesothelioma Drug Availability

ByAlex Strauss

Mesothelioma patients on certain types of chemotherapy drugs may have easier access to their treatment in the wake of an executive order from President Obama. The President is calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “take action” to combat shortages of certain critical medications. On the list of drugs in dwindling supply is the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, one of the most commonly-used drugs to treat mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a rare but deadly form of cancer triggered by asbestos exposure that affects an estimated 2,500 Americans each year. Cisplatin, in combination with pemetrexed (Alimta) is the FDA approved first line treatment for malignant pleural mesothelioma. At a news conference in Washington last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen…

New Mouse Model for Mesothelioma Drug Testing
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New Mouse Model for Mesothelioma Drug Testing

ByAlex Strauss

Mesothelioma is among the most challenging cancers to treat. Increasingly, doctors are taking a multi-modal approach to treatment including surgery and some combination of adjuvant therapies such as chemotherapy, radiation or other, newer modalities. But it has always been difficult to test the effectiveness of these mesothelioma therapies in the lab since they depend on the test subject having had surgery first. Now, a group of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have come up with a more reliable way to conduct these tests. By grafting human malignant mesothelioma cells into the peritoneal cavities of laboratory mice, the researchers were able to simulate mesothelioma. The mesothelioma cells were allowed to take hold for 14 days, after which time…

Pricey Mesothelioma Drug May be Best Second-Line Treatment
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Pricey Mesothelioma Drug May be Best Second-Line Treatment

ByAlex Strauss

The chemotherapy combination of pemetrexed (brand name Alimta) and cisplatin is typically the first-line drug treatment for patients with advanced malignant mesothelioma. But a new study on the combination published recently in the journal Lung Cancer suggests that a less expensive alternative may be just as effective. Researchers from Oxford, England compared pemetrexed plus cisplatin to the newer combination of raltitrexed (brand name Tomudex) plus cisplatin and found that the two combinations produced nearly identical results in terms of survival in mesothelioma patients. The researchers obtained baseline progression and survival rates using data from an earlier multi-national trial looking at the effectiveness of cisplatin with or without raltitrexed for mesothelioma. They then compared these with the results of various randomized…

Still No Generic Form of Common Mesothelioma Drug
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Still No Generic Form of Common Mesothelioma Drug

ByAlex Strauss

It will be at least another five years before a generic version of one of the most popular drugs used to treat mesothelioma becomes available. Eli Lilly owns the patent on the chemical makeup of pemetrexed disodium, known by the brand name Alimta, which was approved by the FDA in 2004 to treat mesothelioma. Lilly’s patent on Alimta was set to expire in March 2011 but was extended to 2016 after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decided that it had taken an unusually long time for the FDA to approve it. In spite of the extension, late last year, generic drug company Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries, Ltd. challenged the mesothelioma drug’s patent in an effort to win the rights to…

Second-Line Chemotherapy May Benefit Mesothelioma Patients
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Second-Line Chemotherapy May Benefit Mesothelioma Patients

ByAlex Strauss

Mesothelioma patients whose cancer shows at least a partial response to pemetrexed-based chemotherapy may benefit from the same drug again if their cancer relapses, according to a new study. Caused by exposure to asbestos, mesothelioma is a fast-growing cancer of the mesothelial tissue that encases internal organs. Pemetrexed-based chemotherapy has been shown to be effective for some mesothelioma patients. To date, no drugs have been approved for second-line treatment of mesothelioma, when the diseases continues to progress after first line chemotherapy. Now, a study conducted by a group of Italian researchers and published in the medical journal Lung Cancer tested the effectiveness of pemetrexed-based chemotherapy as a second-line treatment for mesothelioma patients. The researchers observed the responses of 31 patients…

Orphan Drug May Help Shrink Mesothelioma Tumors
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Orphan Drug May Help Shrink Mesothelioma Tumors

ByAlex Strauss

The developers of an FDA-designated ‘orphan drug’ for mesothelioma are recruiting patients for a new Phase II clinical trial on soft tissue sarcomas. The drug, called NGR-hTNF is a vascular targeting agent that appears to be able to seek out tumor cells in the body and disrupt their blood vessel formation. An orphan drug is a medicine that has been developed specifically to treat a rare medical condition, such as mesothelioma or liver cancer. The new clinical trial will test NGR-hTNF’s effectiveness against certain soft tissue sarcomas alone or in combination with the drug doxorubicin. In addition to the newly-announced clinical trial, the drug’s manufacturer, Italy-based MolMed S.p.A, has also been conducting Phase III clinical trials specifically in malignant pleural…

New Drug Combination May Improve Mesothelioma Treatment
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New Drug Combination May Improve Mesothelioma Treatment

ByAlex Strauss

A mesothelioma drug approved for use in several European countries has received the backing of the international scientific community. The drug called raltitrexed, whose brand name is Tomudex, was the subject of discussion at the 35th annual European Society for Medical Oncology congress in Milan, Italy. When combined with the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, Tomudex appears to increase the survival rates of mesothelioma patients. That conclusion was backed by studies conducted in 2003 and 2005 by the Netherlands Cancer Institute, the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer, the Lung Cancer Group and the National Cancer Institute of Canada. Malignant pleural mesothelioma is the most common form of an aggressive lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. It can take…

Should the Treatment for Mesothelioma be Individualized? A Frog’s Tale
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Should the Treatment for Mesothelioma be Individualized? A Frog’s Tale

ByAlex Strauss

Onconase®, a new type of cancer drug was tested in malignant mesothelioma patients whose tumors were inoperable. Results were not better than standard therapy although a minority of patients reportedly received a great benefit. The FDA has demanded a further clinical trial and now the future of this drug as a potential mesothelioma therapy may be in jeopardy. This story is not unusual, but it highlights the flaws in the drug approval process for mesothelioma and other cancers. Getting a new cancer drug to market is exceedingly expensive (hundreds of millions of dollars) and can take many years. While criticisms of the approval process have focused on its cost in time and money there has been little critique about one…