Updated Guidelines Aim to Advance Mesothelioma Research
| |

Updated Guidelines Aim to Advance Mesothelioma Research

The criteria for measuring treatment response in malignant pleural mesothelioma is being revised—again. Researchers are hopeful that the new criteria will improve the quality and value of mesothelioma clinical trials and move researchers closer to a cure. Researchers at the University of Chicago and the National Centre for Asbestos Related Diseases in Australia are proposing new modifications to the “modified RECIST” criteria by which researchers currently assess the response of mesothelioma tumors. In order for mesothelioma clinical trials to be truly valuable—and have any chance of leading to a cure—researchers must be “on the same page” in how they assess the size of mesothelioma tumors and their response to treatment. Because malignant mesothelioma is so rare, there are fewer studies…

Best Tools for Measuring Mesothelioma Treatment Response
| | | | |

Best Tools for Measuring Mesothelioma Treatment Response

When it comes to evaluating treatment response in mesothelioma, functional imaging techniques may do a better job than standard imaging. That is the word from a team of UK researchers who compared different types of imaging techniques in the evaluation of pleural mesothelioma patients for an article in the journal Lung Cancer. Imaging Techniques for Mesothelioma Tumors Functional imaging, which includes techniques like positron emission tomography (PET), dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI, and diffusion-weighted MRI, are designed to tell doctors more than just the size or shape of the mesothelioma tumor. By using certain kinds of injectable tracers, these imaging studies reveal important information about cellular processes like metabolism, which is typically higher in mesothelioma cells than it is in normal cells. “By…