Cancer Treatment

The brain-blood barrier is considered  to be a major obstacle for delivering chemotherapy to brin tumors and obtaining durable disease control in patients with high-grade gliomas. Intra-arterial drug injection after selective catheterization of cerebral arteries has been performed in some small clinical trials in order to achieve higher drug concentration in the tumor while minimizing [...]

Dasatinib, also known as BMS-354825, is a cancer drug produced by Bristol-Myers Squibb and sold under the trade name Sprycel. Dasatinib is a promising drug for melanoma and the clinicaltrials.gov websit lists 4 ongoing phase II trials, for example, Dasatinib in Treating Patients With Stage III Melanoma That Cannot Be Removed By Surgery or Stage [...]

Caris Life Sciences'™ molecular profiling test, Caris Target Now®, examines the genetic and molecular changes of a patient's tumor so that treatment options may be matched to the tumor's molecular profile. Caris Target Now purports to help treating physicians create a cancer treatment plan based on the tumor tested. By comparing the tumor's information with [...]

The concept fo cmbining bendmustine, mitozantrone and Rituxan is based on German reports of high activity of this regimen in follicular and mantle cell lymphomas. However, these results require confirmation and there are no guidelines that recommend this combination. A 2009 review condluded: "Overall, bendamustine has demonstrated promising results as therapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphomas and [...]

Dacogen (decitabine) is a new drug, a DNA methyltransferase inhibitors (DMTI), that approved by the FDA for use in all French- American British (FAB) categories for MDS. This drug is now FDA approved for MDS. For acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), less is known. A 2007 review, looked at 33 patients with the World Health Organization [...]

The issue is the status of maintenance with any single agent drug. The maintenance concept has not been proven.  As for Dacogen, Vidaza is not sufficiently studied to be routinely adopted. The most recent phase II study concluded: "5-azacytidine treatment is safe, feasible and may be of benefit in a subset of patients". The Scottish [...]

Dear THB Reader – What do you want first? The good news or the bad? The good news is, cancer deaths are declining. According to the American Cancer Society’s "Cancer Statistics, 2010" report, around 767,000 cancer deaths have been avoided since the 1990s. The bad news? Cancer is still a big problem. American Cancer Society [...]

The issue in is whether the docetaxel/ cyclophashamide regimen has a febrile neutropenia rate of 20% or more when used in the usual manner in adjuvant treatmetn of breast cancer. The issue is solely whether the docetaxel/ cyclophashamide regimen has a febrile neutrropenai rate of 20% or more when used in the usual manner in adjuvant treatment of [...]

Since the EGRF and KRAS on the panel are medically necessary, I consider only these tests medically necessary. The client may consider negotating the total price for the panel based on the two medically necessary components. The test in question is actually a panel of predictive markers. They include markers that are generally accepted, for [...]

Resonse"DX Lung is actually a panel of predictive markers. They include markers that are generally accepted, for exampel KRA and EGFR as well as markers that are still considered experimental for decision making, such as TS, ERCC1, BRAF, EML4-ALK, RRM1. A little clinical information about these tests based on the information from the ResponseGenetics website: The [...]