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talkpolitics
President Nixon signing the National Cancer Act
Over 40 years ago, President Richard M. Nixon launched our national war on cancer, with the passage of the National Cancer Act of 1970. Recently there's been some great news on the cancer front, and this post will outline some of the advances.
Cocktail medication of two experimental drugs ("Yervoy") yields major advances for melanoma
The first phase of a clinical trial for two drugs used in combination for treatment of advanced skin cancer was extremely successful. The two drugs work in a one-two punch: one targets BRAF, a genetic mutation that promotes cancer growth, the other drug breaks down a protein called BEK, which helps prevent any "attacks" on BRAF. Individually, the effect of the two drugs is not nearly as effective, with results not lasting as long. Partipicants in the study reported relief from pain within 3 days of starting treament, and one noted that one tumor was gone within a few days. The drugs have very little side effects, and the cocktail will be moved to the next teir of testing. Nearly 9,000 people a year die from this form of skin cancer. George Sledge, Jr., president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and oncology professor at Indiana University’s Cancer Center in Indianapolis, in an interview. “Metastatic melanoma is desperately awful in terms of prognosis, and we’ve had no real survival advantage in 30 years. This I think is a real sea change.”
Aromasin cuts risk for breast cancer by half
There's a new option for millions of women at high risk for breast cancer. A drug called Aromasin (that is the trade name: the chemical name is "exemestane") more than halved the likelihood of developing breast cancer, without the side effects that have tempered enthusiasm for other drugs, a new study showed. The study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has shown that a class of hormone blocking drugs used to treat post-menopausal breast cancer patients (Aromasin, Femara, Arimidex, etc) can prevent breast cancer in high risk patients. Study participants had at least one high risk factor: being 60 or older, a prior breast abnormality or pre-invasive cancer, or a high score on a scale that takes into account family history and other things. But some participants recorded some harsh side effects including severe joint pain, and hot flashes. "People are going to think very, very hard about it before they are going to take an aromatase inhibitor in this setting," said Dr. Eric Winer, a breast-cancer specialist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He noted the study was not designed to show if women who took exemestane lived longer. Brand-name aromatase inhibitors cost $340 to $420 a month, though some are available as generics. Worldwide, about 1.3 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year and nearly 500,000 women die of the disease. Last year in the U.S., there were about 207,000 new cases and 40,000 deaths from breast cancer. Here is NBC Nightly News coverage with some pretty stunning interviews:
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Now, if only we could make it so that people with these diseases can afford the treatments.
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Date: 10/6/11 00:10 (UTC)With a look like that...
Date: 10/6/11 00:44 (UTC)Re: With a look like that...
Date: 10/6/11 00:46 (UTC)Re: With a look like that...
Date: 10/6/11 10:37 (UTC)Re: With a look like that...
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