Treatment

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Myths About Breast Cancer and Pregnancy

Just a few years ago, pregnant cancer patients had to choose between ending their pregnancy or delaying their own cancer treatment until after the birth. Not anymore. Now, patients and their doctors often choose to treat cancer immediately, while monitoring the growth of the fetus.

Myth: Continuing a pregnancy worsens the odds of survival. Reality: Patients who maintain their pregnancies have the same five-year survival rate as women who terminate them.

Looking for a Clinical Trial?

A cancer clinical trial is a carefully controlled research study conducted by
doctors to improve the care and treatment of cancer patients. The purpose of clinical trials to treat leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, myelodysplastic syndromes or other blood cancers is

To improve treatment options, increase survival and

Improve quality of life.

New Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma Treatment Ready for Human Clinical Trials

InNexus Biotechnology Inc., located in Toronto Canada, said they are ready to move their treatment aimed at Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma into human clinical trials. The company showed that their treatment eliminated all lymphocytes with a CD20 marker safely in primates. Why is CD20 important? CD20 is also the target of FDA approved drugs, Rituxan and Zevalin. InNexus are currently working with the FDA to outline the design of their clinical study on humans.

Can Grape Seed Extract Kill Cancer Cells?

It sounds strange but the short answer is yes. Researchers from the University of Kentucky found that applying extract from grape seeds to laboratory leukemia cells forced them to commit suicide. In a 24 hour period, 76% of all lab cancer cells had died after being exposed to the grape seed extract.

How does this work? The researchers believe that the extract activates the protein JNK which regulates apoptosis, or cell death. An important fact is to note is that the extract did not affect normal cells. They do not know why this occurred.

The FDA Approves Mozobil - Helps Boost Stem Cells before Treatment of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma

The FDA Approved Mozobil from Genzyme to be used in patients with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. The purpose of the drug is to boost a person's stem cell count before the patient gets a bone marrow transplant. The approval from the FDA was based on a clinical study where 59% of NHL patients who were on Mozobil collected the target amount of stem cells (5 million per kg of body weight) versus just 20% of NHL patients on Placebo. The drug will be available in the first quarter of 2009.

Researchers at Univ. of Texas find a mechanism that could be beneficial in treating cancer

There was an interesting study that was published recently in Science Magazine. Two researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found a novel regulatory mechanism in cancer cells isolated from an anaplastic large cell lymphoma patient. This discovery could be a beneficial step in treating cancer.

High-Dose Sequential Chemotherapy with Rituxan® is Superior to CHOP-R for Poor Risk Follicular Lymphoma

Researchers from Italy have reported that high-dose sequential therapy with Rituxan results in a higher remission rate when compared to CHOP-R for the treatment of patients with poor risk follicular lymphoma. The details of this multicenter randomized trial were presented at the 2006 meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Rituxan / MabThera Maintenance Therapy

The last article brought up the subject of what to do once a person with low grade b-cell lymphomas reaches remission but has a possibly high likelyhood of relapse.

First of all: don't panic (as with all treatment). I tell that to people who read statistics. While they help the researchers look at lots of people, they do no good to an individual who may stay perfectly healthy and in remission after their primary treatment. If not, then many secondary treatments are often available.

ASH: Rituxan + CHOP Improves Survival of Indolent Lymphoma in Older Patients

For older patients with follicular lymphoma, the addition of Rituxan (rituximab, MabThera) to standard CHOP chemotherapy boosted overall response rates, prolonged time to treatment failure, and improved overall survival, German researchers said at the ASH conference.

Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma Treatment by Type - Now is the time

Back in the dark days of lymphoma diagnosis, all lymphatic cancers were "lymphoma" or "lymphosarcoma", one name for any cancer originating in the lymph system. As better diagnosic tools came about, most importantly histopathology (a microscope and trained person) they started realizing there were different types of cancer in the lymph system. Thus terms like Hodgkin's Disease and the Non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. These were further divided into time into the 35+ types we know now.