Evidence continues to accumulate suggesting that extrapleural pneumonectomy preceded by radiation therapy is a safe and effective treatment for appropriate malignant pleural mesothelioma patients. The latest data showing this to be the case comes from researchers who spoke at the annual meeting of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery in Seattle. The researchers — from Toronto
Monthly Archives: May 2015
PARD3 is a gene that is supposed to prevent mesothelioma tumors from developing. Yet, somehow, the tumor suppressor ends up itself being suppressed so that mesothelioma and other lung cancers can get started and keep growing. This finding was reported in the journal Cancer Research by researchers at Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute near Barcelona, Spain.
A new understanding of the structure of DNA may someday allow your doctor to tell if you’re going to be stricken by mesothelioma long before it happens — perhaps as much as a decade ahead of time. Super-early warning would be a massive advantage because it might give you time to make medical decisions and lifestyle
One of the challenges scientists face when trying to develop an effective gene therapy for mesothelioma is figuring out how to get lab-modified immune system cells to the site of the mesothelioma tumor. It’s not enough to simply inject or infuse you with the good guy cells. The therapeutic agent also has to be able
One of the first mesothelioma diagnosis tests you’ll be given when your doctor suspects you’ve got the deadly cancer is thoracentesis. This test cytologically analyzes a sample of the pleural fluid in your lungs to see whether it contains telltale traces of mesothelioma. Unfortunately, the mesothelioma diagnostic yield of thoracentesis isn’t usually as bountiful as
Extended pleurectomy/decortication yields greater improvement to a patient’s quality of life if the surgical procedure is performed when significant mesothelioma symptoms are present, as opposed to when there are none. These new findings come from University of Chicago researchers. The researchers also found that the quality-of-life improvements derived from extended pleurectomy/decortication — EPD — lasted for many
A problem for doctors who perform mesothelioma surgery is that it can be frustratingly difficult to identify the border between the tumor and the healthy cells surrounding it. As a result, your mesothelioma surgeon may end up cutting away too much tissue around the tumor’s edges — and, in the process, cause you to lose a
The immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab shriveled pleural mesothelioma tumors, or at least caused them to stop growing, in fully three-quarters of the mesothelioma patients treated with it. So say researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who presented this observation at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research
