Novel Treatments & Drugs
An Italian study has found that the combination of two immunotherapy drugs can create a long-term survival in mesothelioma patients. The two drugs, tremelimumab and durvalumab, were just given orphan drug status to treat liver cancer in the last year. The best results in the mesothelioma study were seen in patients with a high level…
An inhaled vaccine could be used for mesothelioma treatment soon. Research done at MIT is showing that the inhaled vaccine can trigger an immune response for certain infections and possibly lung-based cancers. This is great news for people with mesothelioma. Lung infections typically start on mucosal membranes, so researchers created a vaccine that can bind…
Surgery can be hard on the body, but it can help some mesothelioma patients if done a second time. People could still have a good quality of life and even an extended survival if they undergo the aggressive surgery. This surgery is not common and would not be recommended for everyone, but people who fit…
There is promising new data from the makers of ONCOS-102 that shows that the treatment can help improve the long-term survival of mesothelioma patients. ONCOS-102 was recently given Fast-Track approval by the FDA to speed up its development. ONCOS-102 is a modified adenovirus that infects cancer cells. The new mesothelioma patient data is showing that…
The ONCOS-102 immunotherapy vaccine was given the Fast-Track Designation, which will speed up regulatory approval. The vaccine is used to treat mesothelioma and other cancers. Targovax, which developed the treatment, is taking this as an endorsement from the FDA. Targovax is a small biotech company that mainly works with oncolytic viruses. The company believes that…
Accelerated high dose radiation before surgery created a 65.9 month survival for mesothelioma patients. They were part of a clinical trial in Toronto at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center. The study is named SMART, an acronym for Surgery for Mesothelioma After Radiation Therapy. There were 96 patients who were treated between the years 2008 and…
The ONCOS-102 immunotherapy vaccine is still showing promising results. Information from November shows when patients take the treatment with chemotherapy, it helped patients survive a minimum of 18.2 months. The median overall survival was four months better in the experimental group compared to the control group. Targovax, the maker of the treatment, believes that it…
Mesothelioma is a cancer with a bad prognosis that is primarily caused by asbestos exposure. There is no cure for mesothelioma, so people diagnosed with the disease do not have a great chance of living long past their diagnoses. Clinical trials are people’s best chance of finding a better treatment or even a cure, so…
A new mesothelioma clinical trial is taking place in Oslo, Norway. The trial is looking at the UV1 cancer vaccine alongside immunotherapy. The vaccine is a peptide-based drug that activates a T-cell response, allowing the immunotherapy drugs to work better. This will be the first time that UV1 is being tested on mesothelioma, but it…
Pleural mesothelioma is a devastating cancer of the mesothelium, which is a lining of different organs. The most common type of mesothelioma is pleural, which affects the lining of the lungs while the second most common is peritoneal, which surrounds the lining of the abdomen. New treatments are constantly being developed for the cancer, but…