Most
of my blogs will be written from my own point of view regarding my personal
experience with cancer in my family. As
I have stated in my first blogs, my father has stage 4 kidney cancer. Since
being diagnosed and dealing with the surgeries and treatment, he has not only
“beaten the odds” but has surprised and impressed his doctors by how well he
has responded to the treatments. So,
this week my blog will review an article regarding how some cancer patients
respond to treatments.
Dr. David Solit, an oncologist in
New York, decided to create a study on why some cancer patients beat the odds
and respond to treatment and while other worsened and died. This study started
with a woman who was diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer and volunteered for
a 45-patient study of the Novartis drug Afinitor. During this study, every patient died but her,
they discovered she had two gene mutations that made her receptive to the
treatment. Many doctors have seen this happen where some patients are “super
responders” and had remarkable recoveries from cancer drugs while other
patients have little or no help from those cancer drugs. When cancer drugs only help a small group of
patients, the drugs are abandoned from the trial. However, Dr. David Solit has
began a new research where a sample of the tumor from the “super responders” patients will undergo whole genome sequencing.
The mutations that are different from normal cells are analyzed for one that
would be considered suspects. The women with the advanced bladder cancer had
two genes that stood out, TSC1 and NF2. The combination of these two genes led
her to survival of her bladder cancer. TSC1 mutation being linked to the
bladder cancer, Dr. David Solit discovered a “biomarker” that will help
identify a possible appropriate drug for patients that have a type of cancer
with this mutation. The next part is to design a test for the TSC1 mutation and
use the test to screen patients.
Since many drugs have been abandoned
because of how few patients respond, there may be a way to resurrect these
drugs, if the genetic links are established. Avastin was approved to treat
cancer, but in 2011 the FDA withdrew its approval because it was not effective
enough to justify its risks. Many cancer research facilities are testing tumor
samples from exceptional responders from past drug trials for genetic analysis.
This study will help doctors know if the tumor outsmarted the drug.
This seems like a great study in
finding out why some cancer drugs helps some and others it helps very little or
not at all. There are a few questions that arise out of this study. Should some
of these drugs that have been abandoned, be used again in new trials? Is the
risk of these abandoned drugs too high? Will this study cause false hope and
cause too much patient lose?
As seen in my first blog, I am all
for testing new drugs in order for the patient to gain some success. However, no
matter the case, someone may die from this study and that is not something to
take lightly. I lost my Grandma to cancer
and I just hope that her case, they were able to find something that helped the
doctors save another life.
Here
is the article if you would like to look into this new drug study:
I think this is a great idea! My mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 28 and bone cancer at 35, she was told countless times she had less than a month to live but continued to prove the doctors wrong. She participated in many drug studies over the years and is now in remission. Understanding how the cancerous cells are functioning and responding to certain treatments in these "super responders" could help tremendously.
ReplyDeleteI am glad to hear that about your mom! I do agree that studies like this can help tremendously to improving drugs that are already available.
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