Novel Treatments & Drugs
An inhalable gene therapy could potentially be approved for use in mesothelioma patients. Researchers in Japan have created two different tumor suppressing drugs that work by targeting genetic mutations. The drugs were created for non-small cell cancer and pleural mesothelioma. They are both doing well in the laboratory. The drugs are known as SFD-p16 and…
Research at Temple University is looking at four different drug compounds, all used for noncancerous conditions, for treating mesothelioma. The research is part of a drug repurposing project, which tests drugs not typically used for illnesses like cancer to see if they work on the disease. Drug repurposing has become more popular over the years.…
Researchers are performing a clinical trial hoping that they can make pleural mesothelioma a more manageable, and even survivable, disease. The clinical trial is being done at Princess Margaret Cancer Center in Toronto. The trial is known as SMARTEST, which stands for Surgery for Mesothelioma After Radiation Therapy using Exquisite Systemic Therapy. Researchers in the…
Promising results from a study on pleural mesothelioma were recently released. The study found when patients were treated with a new combination treatment, patients lived longer and had a better quality of life. The phase I clinical trial utilized a targeted cancer vaccine known as galinpepimut-S (GPS) and the immunotherapy drug Opdivo. SELLAS Life Sciences…
The MD Anderson Cancer Center is conducting a study on an immunotherapy drug that is specifically for rare, advanced tumors. Pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma are both included in the study. The clinical trial is looking for effectiveness and safety of vudalimab. The treatment, also known as XmAb20717, was created by Xencor, a pharmaceutical company located…
Proton beam radiation therapy is growing in popularity for treating mesothelioma and lung cancer. A study in JAMA Oncology looked at the use of this radiation for treating different types of cancer. There were almost 6 million patients in the study and data shows that proton radiation use tripled from 2004 through 2018. Proton radiation…
A phase II clinical trial comparing anetumab ravtansine to the chemotherapy drug vinorelbine did not have promising results for treating mesothelioma like researchers had hoped. Anetumab ravtansine is an immunotherapy drug that is a monoclonal antibody, which is an engineered antibody that can be used to fight cancer. Researchers found that anetumab ravtansine did not…
High doses of hyperthermic intrathoracic chemotherapy (HITHOC) help pleural mesothelioma patients. A recent study found that when HITHOC is administered at a high dose, survival rates improve and periods of being disease free increase. HITHOC is the use of chemotherapy during surgery and is an experimental treatment for different types of cancer including mesothelioma. It…
Mesothelioma is a hard-to-treat cancer. Usually chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy are used, but they do not do enough to save people’s lives. Scientists may have figured out why this is the case and could potentially have found the main causes that affect survival. These include stage of the tumor, lymph node status, and histological…
Researchers are looking at a vaccine to maintain patient health after cancer treatment, which could be effective for mesothelioma in the future. The vaccine is specifically made for each patient based on the individual’s biology. The trial is currently being tested on head and neck cancer. It does not usually take long for mesothelioma to…
