Mesothelioma Help Cancer News
Mesothelioma Nurse Recommends Book By a Terminally Ill Doctor
“When Breath Becomes Air” is a New York Times bestseller by Dr. Paul Kalanithi, who at age 36, was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer as he was completing his training to be a neurosurgeon. This book is not just for those among us who have been unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with mesothelioma, or any cancer – it is for all of us. It is a moving account of how Kalanithi’s life and his family’s lives were changed by his diagnosis and treatment.
As he was training and mapping out his life, never did the possibility of dying young enter into his plans. As a doctor in a highly specialized field, he saw other’s lives change every day when diagnosed with illnesses. Like a lot of people who are diagnosed with a devastating illness, he fought to take back the life he had planned.
When diagnosed with any disease, we all want to know the statistics. Many mesothelioma patients over the years have been fixated on the statistics. Many take and hold on to the numbers and can quote them for their particular type of mesothelioma, stage, lymph nodes, survival curve. Sometimes doctors even quote statistics when they are presenting the various options to their patients. As a doctor, Kalanithi knew the statistics and he knew the prognosis.
“Only 0.0012 percent of thirty-six-year-olds get lung cancer… It occurred to me that my relationship with statistics changed as soon as I became one.” What do those numbers actually mean? “The angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.”
The book is thought provoking and remarkable. It is well written, honest and worth reading for everybody. There are so many lessons in this book, so many inspirations. On the back cover Dr. Atul Gawande says, “Dr. Kalanithi’s memoir is proof that the dying are the ones who have the most to teach us about life.”
Intellectually, we all know we are going to die. But for a lot of us, we think it will be later. We assume we have time and options. Faced with neither, though, how will we cope? Are we paralyzed with fear and regret or do we live the best lives we can?
I strongly urge you to read this book, to appreciate the time you have, and to live your best possible life before, during and after a mesothelioma diagnosis.
You can find this book on Amazon.
Dunbar Fall Festival Raises Funds for the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation
Sept. 24 was the Dunbar Community Fest, a wonderful day full of food, fun, and fellowship. Each year my family has a raffle booth there to benefit the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation. We appreciate all of the work that the committee puts in to make the event so successful each year!
We had 24 items to raffle this year, plus t-shirts, and our Dining with Donnie cookbooks for sale. All of the visitors to our area seemed to really enjoy taking their time placing their raffle tickets carefully in the items of their choosing.
One of my favorite parts of this event is listening to the stories that people come to share about my Dad. There were several gentlemen who worked with him who spoke about his funny nature and gentle spirit. There were others who told stories about adventures they went on with my father, and even one who told me that her first date with her husband was to my parents’ wedding!
All in all, it was a great time, even though I missed Dad through it all. He loved being involved in any project that I would undertake, particularly planning an event. He was so proud of the efforts we did together to raise money and awareness for the mesothelioma community, and I know that he was smiling down on us that day!
Thank you to everyone who helped to make Dunbar Community Fest and our raffle table a wonderful success and for your continued support and prayers for my family!
Know more about Mesothelioma and how you can deal with it.
Simple Blood Pressure Drug to Increase Effectiveness of Therapy
In February, MesotheliomaHelp reported that patients who drink cola could increase the effectiveness of the anti-cancer treatment erlotinib, a drug used to treat lung cancer and mesothelioma. Now, researchers report that patients may also increase the effectiveness of the drug by taking a diuretic along with the therapy.
Researchers from Imperial College London and Fudan University in China collaborated in an effort to find a way to increase the effectiveness of treatment by erlotinib, a kinase inhibitor, by tackling the drug resistance lung cancer cells inevitably develop. In an in-lab study on mouse models with human cancer cells harboring the EGFR lung cancer mutation, the team found that by adding a simple diuretic found in blood pressure medicine to erlotinib they “reversed resistance to the drug, and enabled it to kill lung cancer cells.”
“Although these are very early-stage results, and are yet to be applied to patients in trials, they suggest the addition of a very cheap diuretic may extend the amount of time we can use the cancer drug erlotinib,” said Professor Michael Seckl, lead author from the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial, in a Sept. 27 press release from Imperial College London. “This could potentially provide patients with more treatment options and save money in financially challenged health services.”
Malignant pleural mesothelioma is a cancer found in the outer lining of the lungs caused by inhaling asbestos fibers. Pleural mesothelioma is highly aggressive and does not always respond to cancer treatments. Both lung cancer and mesothelioma have proven to develop a resistance over time to the very drugs designed to kill the cancer cells. Finding a way to prevent this resistance can increase survival and improve the patients’ quality of life.
The researchers found that by raising glutahione levels, a natural antioxidant, the resistance to erlotinib was reversed. They then found that the “simple and cheap diuretic” ethacrynic acid, used to treat swelling caused by high blood pressure, raised gluhatione levels leading to increased sensitivity to erlotinib.
Erlotinib, or Tarceva® from Genentech Inc., is prescribed for some mesothelioma patients and in nearly 30 percent of non-small cell lung cancer patients, or 85 percent of all lung cancer cases, according to the researchers.
Various studies on mesothelioma have confirmed that developing an effective kinase inhibitor may be the key to developing drugs that kill mesothelioma cancer cells. Other kinase inhibitors used to treat mesothelioma include gefitinib and dasatinib.
“We urgently need new treatments for lung cancer patients, and this research suggests we can boost the effectiveness of an existing drug, rather than switch to another new expensive treatment,” said Seckl. “We are now seeking funding to enable patient trials within the next three years.”
Read the full report in the Sept. 27 issue of Cell Discovery.
Moonshot Initiative Beneficial to Mesothelioma Patients
In January 2016, President Obama announced the Moonshot Initiative to speed the development of cancer drugs and treatments to make cancer a chronic disease. He placed Vice-President Joe Biden, whose son died of brain cancer in 2015, in charge of the program.
As part of how to turn the initiative into reality, Vice-President Biden gave a speech on September 16th at Rice University in Houston. One of the highlights of his speech was to make clinical trials information more available.
Clinical trials are listed on www.clinicaltrials.gov. Changes to make the information on the web site more user friendly have been proposed and are being initiated. Another proposed change is to require investigators to publish summaries about their trials, whether they proved successful or not. This should go a long way towards helping mesothelioma patients who are often told to consider enrolling in clinical trials. However, the process can be overwhelming at a time that is already overwhelming.
The Moonshot Initiative not only calls for additional funds for cancer research, it includes initiatives for providing greater openness and collaboration among scientists. The speech was given at Rice University in Houston in collaboration with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, one of the world’s leaders in cancer research.
The Moonshot Initiative is coming at an exciting time in cancer research. We pray that it will be as successful as the original moonshot over 50 years ago. As the Moonshot Initiative unfolds we will continue to update you.
Blood Samples May be Reliable Monitoring Tool for Patients
In January, Mesothelioma Help reported about a business venture by a San Diego-based company focused on developing a blood test to detect cancers that can be conducted in doctors’ offices. Now, another company reports that liquid biopsies, another term for the blood tests, can be used to monitor lung cancer patients’ response to treatment in real-time.
Researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), report that oncologists have come to rely on tissue biopsies as a way to manage a lung cancer patient’s treatment and to assess their progress. However, “tissue biopsy is much more invasive, and in some cases a risky procedure,” they report.
So the researchers delved deeper into the pros of liquid biopsies to help ease pain for patients and to improve the success rates of treatments for oncologists. What they found is that blood tests can be “a promising tool to monitor lung cancer patient tumors early.”
They reviewed the blood samples of 16 EGFR-positive lung cancer patients undergoing tyrosine kinase inhibitor treatment (erlotinib, gefitinib, or afatinib). Over the course of the two-year study the researchers were able to attribute three major categories of treatment to the changes in the circulating tumor cells: evidence for therapy response, periods of stable disease, and impending tumor progression.
“These findings highlight liquid biopsy’s sensitivity in detecting and reflecting tumor changes in real time, while providing the advantages of being less invasive,” said the authors.
The use of biopsy when determining the efficacy of a treatment was previously discussed by a panel of oncologists on OncLive’s Peer Exchange Series. The oncologists agreed that biopsy results can be used to not only diagnose cancer but to drive a cancer patient’s treatment plan. Anne S. Tsao, MD, Director, Mesothelioma Program, The University of Texas MD Anderson Comprehensive Cancer Center, said oncologists should use biopsies to “shoot for genetic testing and personalized medicine for treatment decisions.”
The DKFZ researchers explained that when tumor cells die after treatment they release their DNA (or cell free DNA, cfDNA), with all its mutations still intact, into the bloodstream. The team found that blood samples, or cfDNA, are as effective as tissue biopsies when assessing prognosis in EGFR-positive lung cancer patients.
Professor Holger Sültmann, one of the lead authors, cautions that more work remains to be done, saying, ‘’This is a ‘proof of concept’, we should really collect and measure cfDNA more systematically in order to learn what the liquid biopsy can do under these circumstances, and to fully comprehend the principles of lung cancer progression.’’
EGFR is a protein found on the surface of some cells to which epidermal growth factor binds, which causes the cells to divide and spread. It is found at abnormally high levels on the surface of many types of cancer cells, including more than 50% of pleural mesothelioma patients. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors work by blocking the activity of the EGFR tyrosine kinase enzyme, preventing the growth of new blood vessels that tumors need to grow, and, potentially, killing cancer cells.
Pleural mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the lungs caused by past asbestos exposure. The cancer is diagnosed in close to 3,000 Americans each year.
See the Sept. 19 issue of Scientific Reports for the study.
Sources
- Scientific Reports
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23489 - German Cancer Research Center
https://www.dkfz.de/en/presse/pressemitteilungen/2016/dkfz-pm-16-39-Liquid-Biopsy-Level-of-mutated-DNA-in-the-blood-corresponds-to-patient-outcome.php
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