mesothelioma treatments

  • | |

    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…

  • | |

    Clinical Trials Offer Options for Mesothelioma

    ByAlex Strauss

    Mesothelioma is a devastating malignancy in the lining of the lungs and other internal organs. It affects about 2,500 Americans annually, most of them industrial workers who came in contact with the toxic mineral asbestos 20 to 50 years ago. Because the prognosis is generally poor for mesothelioma there are a number of clinical trials underway to find more effective treatments. Clinical trials are organized formal studies of a new drug or other treatment protocol in human patients. They can be an important source of hope and help for patients, especially those who may have few proven treatment options. But, in order for clinical trials to be effective, a certain number of mesothelioma patients must be willing to take the…

  • | |

    Possible Second-Line Mesothelioma Treatment Fails

    ByAlex Strauss

    There has been some disappointing news for mesothelioma patients who fail to respond to first-line chemotherapy treatment. A major Phase III clinical study of a potentially promising second-line drug treatment showed no effect on survival. Mesothelioma researchers had high hopes for vorinostat (brand name Zolinza), a histone deacetylase inhibitor that alters gene expression and protein activity inside cells. Earlier studies found that a small number of mesothelioma patients treated with the drug had stable disease that lasted for 13 months. But in the current study – one of the largest mesothelioma trials of its kind – vorinostat offered no statistically significant survival advantage. The study involved 660 mesothelioma patients from 92 sites. The median age was 65. Patients were given…

  • | |

    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…

  • | |

    Mesothelioma Responds Best to Multi-Modality Treatment, Expert Says

    ByAlex Strauss

    Patients with mesothelioma have a better chance of survival when they are treated with multiple treatment modalities rather than chemotherapy alone. That is the advice of renowned mesothelioma expert Dr. Robert Cameron of UCLA. Dr. Cameron is a cardiothoracic surgeon and surgical oncologist who pioneered the lung-sparing surgical technique for mesothelioma known as pleurectomy/decortication and has treated mesothelioma patients for more than 20 years. In an article for the Pacific Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s website, he cautions patients and oncologists against relying too heavily on Alimta/cisplatin, the only FDA-approved chemotherapy combination approved for mesothelioma. “Lost in the hype [over Alimta/cisplatin] is the fact that the FDA’s approval is limited to use with patients who are not eligible for surgery,”…

  • |

    Physicians “Missing Opportunity” with Mesothelioma Patients

    ByAlex Strauss

    Even while they are working diligently to diagnose and treat mesothelioma, too many doctors may be missing a vital opportunity to help mesothelioma patients in another important way. A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and researchers at Stanford University found that only a tiny percentage of mesothelioma patients received counseling from their doctor’s office on the cause of their mesothelioma and the possibility of taking legal action. This, despite that fact that almost all cases of mesothelioma, a virulent cancer of the mesothelial tissue around organs, are known to be caused by occupational asbestos exposure. To conduct the retrospective study, researchers reviewed the charts of 16 patients who had been newly diagnosed with malignant pleural mesothelioma during…

  • |

    Defense Department Combats Mesothelioma

    ByAlex Strauss

    The U.S. Department of Defense is stepping up its efforts to combat the threat of mesothelioma cancer among veterans.  For the fourth consecutive year, the DOD has agreed to provide grant funding to researchers exploring the causes and possible treatments for malignant mesothelioma, a disease triggered almost exclusively by exposure to asbestos. Because as many as a third of the approximately 2,500 cases of the disease reported annually in the U.S. occur among veterans, mesothelioma has been designated by the DOD since 2008 as an eligible disease under the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP).  This year, the program will provide $16 million in grants for the study of a range of cancers, including colorectal, bladder, kidney, pancreatic, mesothelioma and others.  The…

  • | |

    Radiotherapy ‘Comparable to Chemo’ for Mesothelioma

    ByAlex Strauss

    A recent study has concluded that palliative radiotherapy produces a response rate in malignant pleural mesothelioma that is comparable to chemotherapy. A recent analysis of 54 mesothelioma cases at a hospital in Cheltenham, England found that 43 percent of patients who received palliative radiotherapy according to their hospital’s policy, responded to the treatment. Based on the results of their pre- and post-therapy CT scans, 22 of the 54 mesothelioma patients analyzed experienced a partial response and 1 patient had a complete response. Fifty-seven percent reported some improvement in their symptoms. In an effort to help determine which mesothelioma patients are most likely to respond to radiotherapy, the research team correlated treatment responses with the European Organisation for Research and Treatment…

  • | |

    Light-Based Mesothelioma Treatment Shows Promise

    ByAlex Strauss

    There is more evidence that Photodynamic Therapy may be a valuable adjuvant treatment for people undergoing mesothelioma surgery. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a light-based cancer treatment that uses a sensitizing drug and a light to destroy cancer cells several millimeters into the targeted tissue. Although it is not yet widely used for mesothelioma, PDT is considered particularly suitable for tumors on the mesothelium, which tend to be wide but not very deep. To test the effectiveness of PDT, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the surgical outcomes of 28 patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma between 2004 and 2008. The patients were similar in age, sex, stage of disease and histological type of mesothelioma. Eighty-six percent of the patients were…

  • | |

    Mesothelioma Outcomes May Be Improved by New Radiation Therapy

    ByAlex Strauss

    There is evidence that a new type of radiation therapy may have advantages over other methods for treating mesothelioma patients after surgery. A marriage of spiral CT-scanning technology and intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), helical tomotherapy offers enhanced precision and the ability to ‘sculpt’ the radiation dose to conform to the size and shape of the tumor being treated. Because mesothelioma tumors tend to be irregular in shape and spread out across the membranous mesothelial tissue, this sculpting ability may help doctors deliver just enough post-surgical radiation to kill remaining cancer cells without damaging large numbers of healthy cells. In a recent study on the technology at the University of Paris, a group of French researchers analyzed the treatment outcomes…