Category: Treatments

Experimental Therapy Targets Mesothelioma Cancer Cells to Commit Suicide

• Nancy Meredith
• Cancer, Mesothelioma, Research, Treatments

 A frontier in treatment of mesothelioma and other cancers is the use of a type of gene therapy that induces cancer cells to self-destruct.

In a recent article in the Journal of Genetic Syndromes and Gene Therapy, Dr. Marek Malecki of the University of Wisconsin and Phoenix Biomolecular Engineering Foundation reports that cancer suicide gene therapy while not without risks remains one of the most promising experimental therapies for treating many types of cancer. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the chest cavity caused by exposure to asbestos.

The success of the gene therapy hinges on delivering the suicide genes to the cancer cells. That is accomplished by identifying unique or overabundant proteins that serve as flags of the invading army of malignant cancer cells, giving away their location. Researchers have identified a number of biomarkers that may serve as chemical signals of malignant mesothelioma cells.

The identification of biomarkers allows doctors to deliver therapeutic drugs with more precision, avoiding collateral damage to healthy cells. Chemotherapy drugs by comparison affect all cells and have side effects including nausea and toxicity. Surgery to remove operable mesothelioma tumors inevitably removes healthy tissue as well as cancerous tissue and affects a patient’s quality of life.

That is why targeted therapies such as suicide gene therapy hold promise. To induce cancer cells to self-destruct, doctors inject a genetically modified virus into the tumor to deliver the suicide genes which prompts them to produce a special enzyme. The patient then receives another drug that transforms the enzyme into a toxic compound that prompts the rapidly dividing cancer cells to commit suicide.

Researchers have observed promising results of suicide gene therapy in initial clinical trials involving mesothelioma and other types of cancer. While the treatment has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it holds the potential to eliminate cancer cells without harming healthy cells, minimizing side effects suffered by patients.

New Report: Incidence Of Mesothelioma More Than Doubled in Ireland Since 1990s

• Nancy Meredith
• Asbestos Exposure, Cancer, International News, Mesothelioma, Treatments

A new report on cancer trends by Ireland’s National Cancer Registry says the incidence of mesothelioma among men in Ireland has doubled since the 1990s and will continue soaring during the next decade. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the thin lining of the lungs and abdominal cavity.

Despite large year-to-year variations in the number of cases of pleural mesothelioma diagnosed on the Emerald Isle, the report says the incidence of pleural mesothelioma among men has more than doubled since 1994 from an average of 13 cases per year in 1994-96 to 36 cases in 2009. The researchers project the number of cases will increase to 68 cases of mesothelioma per year in men by 2020.

Most people encountered asbestos on the job. Approximately 97 percent of men and 82 percent of women diagnosed with mesothelioma inhaled asbestos fibers in a workplace.

Pleural mesothelioma develops in the lining of the chest cavity and is by far the most common form of the disease. Ninety four percent of the cases of mesothelioma in men and 75 percent of the cases in women in Ireland were malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is largely linked to chronic exposure to asbestos in male-dominated jobs. Of the mesothelioma patients in Ireland whose occupations were documented, half were construction workers, electricians, carpenters, metal workers and woodworkers. More than five times as many men as women were diagnosed with mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is more prevalent among construction workers and workers in occupations exposed to asbestos in the United States as well.

While asbestos was used heavily in the United States starting during 1940s, asbestos was mostly used in Ireland from the 1960s to the 1980s. Ireland began phasing out the use of asbestos in the 1990s and its use was generally banned under European Union regulations in 2000. Because of the long latency period of 20 to 40 years between asbestos exposure and appearance of mesothelioma, researchers in Ireland project the incidence of mesothelioma will peak in 2020.

The majority of pleural mesothelioma patients were between 60 to 80 years of age when diagnosed. Chemotherapy has become an increasingly common form of treatment for mesothelioma. Almost 60 percent of male and female patients with mesothelioma received chemotherapy from 2005 to 2010.

Yet, pleural mesothelioma has a poor prognosis. More than 70 percent of mesothelioma patients enrolled in the cancer registray since 1994 died within one year of diagnosis.

Source: National Cancer Registry, Ireland

For Patients With Mesothelioma, Thirteen Relevant Facts About Asbestos Disease in 2013

• Nancy Meredith
• Asbestos Exposure, Cancer, Research, Treatments

A group of nine doctors from New York University, the University of Hawaii and other research universities who specialize in treating mesothelioma patients discussed facts, theories and myths about mesothelioma in an article in the Journal of Cell Physiology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Their findings, made available online in January 2013, are well worth revisiting at the outset of the new year.

Here are 13 bold points from  the article:

• More than 20 million people in the United States are at risk of developing malignant mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure.
• The duration and intensity of an individual’s exposure to asbestos are important variables affecting the likelihood of development of asbestos disease.
• All studies agree that the incidence of mesothelioma among men has continued to rise during the last five decades, while the incidence among women has remained relatively flat. More than 100,000 U.S. citizens are expected to die of mesothelioma during the next 40 years.
• The development of mesothelioma is related to the chronic inflammatory process caused by the presence of microscopic asbestos fibers in the chest cavity.
• Development of malignant mesothelioma has been associated with commercial use of asbestos in the early and mid 20^th century. Prior to the 1950s, malignant mesothelioma tumors were extremely rare.
• Today, malignant mesothelioma is responsible for approximately 2,500 to 3,000 deaths per year in the United States and approximately 5,000 deaths in Western Europe.
• It’s a myth that asbestos has been banned in commercial products in the United States. Countries in the European Union have banned asbestos use, but not the U.S. The continued import of products containing asbestos in the U.S. and potential exposure to asbestos in place means workers exposed to the mineral fibers will continue to be at risk of developing mesothelioma.
• It’s a myth that malignant mesothelioma will soon disappear because of reduced use of the product. The rate of malignant mesothelioma has remained constant since 1994 and is increasing in some countries.
• It’s a myth that mesothelioma is a slow growing tumor. Mesothelioma grows aggressively once the cancer develops and most likely produces clinical symptoms within a few years. There is a long latency period of 20 to 70 years  between initial exposure to asbestos fibers and the development of mesothelioma. The distinction is important. The latency period appears to be influenced by the amount of exposure. Workers in trades with higher exposure to asbestos may have shorter latency periods before the cancer develops.
• Due to the long latency period, researchers estimate that mesothelioma mortality rates will continue to increase 5 to 10 percent per year in most industrialized countries for the next two to three decades despite efforts to get rid of asbestos. In the U.S, the number of mesothelioma deaths is likely to exceed 3,000 per year. Approximately 20 to 25 percent of deaths due to mesothelioma in the U.S. are misattributed to other causes.
• A mesothelioma patient’s survival is influenced by the stage of the cancer upon treatment.
• Stage I is the localized cancer while Stage IV describes advanced cancer that has spread beyond the point of origin. Among 663 patients who underwent surgical procedures for mesothelioma from the 1990 through 2006, the median survival was:
• Stage I mesothelioma — 38 months median survival
• Stage II mesothelioma—19 months
• Stage III mesothelioma—11 months
• Stage IV mesothelioma—7 months
• It’s expected that development of reliable blood tests that can lead to earlier detection of mesothelioma before it has advanced to stage III or IV will increase the percentage of patients who are candidates for surgery and increase overall survival.

New Drugs Rally Immune System to Fight Cancer

• Nancy Meredith
• Asbestos Exposure, Cancer, Research, Treatments

For many years, cancer researchers have questioned why the immune system doesn’t react to cancer cells as invaders and attack them. A deepening understanding of genetic drivers of disease reveals that the cancerous tumors take over the brake control on the immune system.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal underscores the advances being made in new drugs that release the brake and allow the immune system to fight various forms of cancer, including cancers associated with asbestos exposure.

For Tom Stutz, a 72-year-old retired lawyer in California, taking each breath was a struggle and even doing simple tasks such as eating a meal required help as cancer advanced in his lungs and liver.  In April, Stutz, who was confined to a wheelchair, began taking an experimental drug known as MK-3475 that reactivated his immune system to fight cancer. Today, Mr. Stutz is walking 3.5 miles a day, has parked his wheelchair, and reports feeling terrific, according to The Wall Street Journal article about innovative medical treatments. Doctors informed Mr. Stutz in the fall that his tumors had shrunk by 65 percent.

MK-3475, which has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is under development by Merck & Co. It is among a class of drugs known as PD-1 inhibitors. The drugs disrupt the ability of cancer to hijack the immune system and boosts the immune response to certain cancers. In testing the drug on patients with metastatic melanoma, researchers reported in November that about 9 percent of patients who took the drug has no observable cancer after 12 weeks while half of the study participants had tumor shrinkage.

Merck is currently recruiting cancer patients to participate in clinical trials to study the safety and tolerability of the drug to treat several forms of cancer including non-small cell lung cancer, one of the cancers associated with asbestos exposure. You can find contact information about the clinical trial here.

Medical Milestone: Gene Therapy Drug Approved To Fix Genetic Code Typos

• Nancy Meredith
• International News, Mesothelioma, Research, Treatments

Mark your calendar: A new era in medicine has begun.

The European Union has licensed for sale the first gene-therapy drug in the Western world. Gene therapy is a type of medicine that treats disease by replacing defective genes with functioning genes. It holds great potential for treating diseases caused by defective genes, though it has remained largely experimental and confined to research laboratories to date. One day, patients with mesothelioma may benefit.

The European Commission on Friday granted approval to Glybera, a gene therapy medicine that treats a rare inherited disorder called lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD), according to the BBC News.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20179561

People with the extremely rare disease are unable to produce enough of an enzyme to digest fat properly. Fat levels in the blood may increase dramatically. A person with the enzyme deficiency may suffer life-threatening pancreatitis attacks as well as early onset of diabetes.

The drug developed by a Dutch company, UniQuire, in a single injection that contains a gene that helps the body produce the necessary enzyme.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the European action is a milestone for the field of gene therapy. In an article in the WSJ, Len Seymour, a professor of gene therapy at Oxford University who is unaffiliated with Glybera, said the approval begins to exemplify what genetically coded medicines can do.

UniQure plans to file an application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration next year, seeking regulatory approval for the drug, the company said in a statement. No gene therapy medicines have been approved in the United States so far.

Researchers have been studying the effectiveness of gene therapy in treating various diseases in clinical trials since a landmark discovery in 1989 that an abnormality in one gene caused the disease cystic fibrosis. That led to the premise that doctors could treat a patient’s disease by identifying an abnormal gene mutation and replacing the defective gene with a corrected copy. But scientists have run into many set backs in the development of gene therapy.

While the initial applications of gene therapy are likely to involve rare diseases that may be cured by replacing a single defective gene, researchers also are exploring the potential of gene therapy for treatment of cancer including mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos exposure.

The University of Pennsylvania has an ongoing gene therapy clinical trial for patients who are newly diagnosed with mesothelioma and patients whose cancer has not responded to other treatments. Patients receive a combination of chemotherapy and a new type of gene therapy called immuno-gene therapy that uses a modified common cold virus to trigger the patient’s immune system to destroy cancer cells. The doctors have been encouraged by the response of mesothelioma patients receiving the experimental treatment, Dr. Daniel Sterman an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania said in a news release.

http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2011/12/igt-cancer/

Approximately 2,500 to 3,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year in the United States. Most are older workers, retired workers and veterans who were exposed to asbestos fibers decades ago in a workplace or in military service.

Know more about mesothelioma and how you can deal with it.