A drug currently used to treat pancreatic cancer could help women with advanced lung cancer as well, new research has indicated.
Early studies showed that Tarceva was found to extend life in lung cancer patients who are too ill to get any more chemotherapy. The drug was given as a first-line treatment during the research.
An American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago heard that 15% of female lung cancer sufferers who received Tarceva were alive and there was no aggression of their condition a year later. This compared with 5% of women taking a placebo.
Currently, Tarceva is only used after chemotherapy and only about 7% of lung cancer sufferers in the UK are still alive five years after the disease is diagnosed.
A total of 670 men and women with advanced non-small cell lung cancer took part in the Cancer Research UK trial. Tarceva (also known as erlotinib) works by interfering with how cancer cells multiply.
According to Cancer Research UK, which ran the trial with funding from Roche pharmaceutical company which manufactures erlotinib, almost half of the 39,750 lung cancer patients in the UK fall into the category of being too ill for chemotherapy.
Erlotinib works by interfering with how cancer cells multiply.
Dr Siow Ming Lee, trial leader and senior lecturer at the University College London Cancer Institute, said: “These results are a real step forward in the search for an effective treatment for patients with advanced lung cancer.
“We are not yet sure why it was most effective in women but this is positive news for this large group who have few other treatment options.
“Erlotinib should be recommended for women with non-small cell lung cancer who are unsuitable for first-line chemotherapy.”
The drug is licensed in the UK to be used as a second-line treatment after chemotherapy.
Kate Law, Cancer Research UK’s director of clinical trials, said: “This important trial demonstrates which patients are most likely to benefit from this new treatment.
“It is encouraging to see advances being made in lung cancer treatment, especially for those patients who have few alternatives.”
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September 22nd, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Scientists have developed a new therapy for the treatment of skin and lung cancer.
This therapy, developed by at the University of Granada researchers, involves the use of a suicide coliphage-gene (gene E) that can induce death to cells transfected with it.
Their studies have demonstrated that this technique is not only effective in vitro (using tumour cell cultures), but also in vivo through the use of experimental animals in which tumours were induced.
Although further research is required, the results revealed gene E’s intensive antitumour activity, which means that it could be used in new treatments for this type of pathology.
This study was carried out by Raúl Ortiz Quesada, from the Department of Human Anatomy and Embriology, at the University of Granada, and led by professors Antonia Aranega Jimenez, Jose Carlos Prados Salazar y Consolación Melguizo Alonso.
In this study, gene E and gene gef -which are bacterial lysis genes- were employed. This is the first time that this type of genes is used in eukaryotic cells in the treatment of tumours. During the in vitro tests, the researchers studied the effect of these genes on the B16-F10 melanoma line. This line was then used to generate tumours in vivo and analyse their effect.
This is an experimental technique that could be used in clinical tests in the future. This new therapy was also tested on the lung adenocarcinoma A549 line. Then, they studied how these genes affect cell proliferation -both in vitro and in vivo experiments- and their mechanism of action.
To such purpose, they studied the alterations that such genes render on outer mitochondrial membranes, and carried out cell-death tests and cell and tissue morphology analysis through microscopy techniques.
Tumour growth inhibition in cultured cells of gene E and gef within 72 hours was 72pc and 35pc respectively, in comparison to in vivo experiments. Gen E action on melanoma tumours induced in mice was 70-80pc of tumour regression within 8 days of treatment.
Raúl Ortiz Quesada stated that in a near future, when genetic therapies allow to improve the controlled expression of these genes in tumour cells, and reduce the risks involved in their clinical use, “they could be employed as an efficient tool in the treatment of these pathologies”.
The results of this research were published in prestigious scientific journal within the field of Oncology (as Journal of Molecular Medicine) or Dermatology (as in Experimental Dermatology).
October 10th, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Researchers have developed a novel new method to detect lung cancer – by shining light on cells swabbed from patients’ cheeks.
The technique – called partial wave spectroscopic (PWS) microscopy – was able to distinguish between patients with lung cancer from those without.
This was true even if the non-cancerous patients had been lifetime smokers or suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in England and Wales, with an estimated 31,000 new cases being diagnosed every year. In 2007 there were 29,660 deaths as a result of the disease.
The condition is notoriously difficult to detect in its early stages but researchers say they could soon have a new way of screening for the disease thanks to a recent breakthrough.
Scientists from Northwestern University and New York University realised patients with lung cancer have telltale signs of rough and clumped distribution of chromatin (the material that makes up chromosomes) in their cheek cells.
They can uncover them by scattering light over the cells as it bounces back differently than it does from the smoother surface of healthy cells.
The findings appear in the latest issue of the journal Cancer Research.
Lead researcher, Hermant Roy of NorthShore University HealthSystems, said: ‘This study is important because it provides the proof of concept that a minimally intrusive, risk-stratification technique may allow us to tailor screening for lung cancer.’
The recent results are an extension of several successful trials involving the light-scattering analysis technique, including early detection successes with pancreatic cancer and colon cancer.
Leon Esterowitz, programme director at the National Science Foundation that supports the research, said: ‘The results have even larger implications in that the techniques and the ‘field effect’ may be a general phenomena that could be applied to a multitude of epithelial cancers, the most common cancer type.’
Within affected cells, including otherwise healthy cells far from an actual tumour, the molecules in the nucleus and cellular skeleton appear to change.