Standard Cancer Drugs Do Little to Help Victims of Mesothelioma, though Genetic Therapy Could Provide a Promising Alternative
Oncologists and other cancer doctors choose what type of treatment to administer to a patient. The options are endless. There exists no universal treatment option for pleural mesothelioma cancer sufferers. This is due to the cancers high mortality rate, rareness, low treatment success rate, and small number of studies to provide meaningful statistics.
The prospects for mesothelioma patients have been grim, but doctors have recently made progress. Treatments for cancer are traditionally surgery (taking out the tumor and surrounding tissue), chemotherapy (poisoning cancerous cells) and radiation (killing cancer cells with radiation) There are problems with all three. Traditional radiation therapy has not worked well with mesothelioma patients. Researches, concerned about damage to healthy tissue, are looking for ways to aim radiation directly at tumors.
Surgery takes out the mesothelial cancerous tissue around the tumor. It is a grueling surgery with unknown benefits to patients. Most chemotherapy medication that work on other cancers typically do not work on mesothelioma, and different mixtures of these drugs have not been successful. Like radiation, researchers are focusing their work on controlling the physical location of the treatment with an emphasis on the pleural cavity.
Many advanced techniques in cancer treatment are tried on mesothelioma patients because of its high fatality rate. These include biologic therapy such as the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs such as thalidomide. Pemetrexed (Alimta) is a new drug that has shown results in extending life.
Oncologists consider the stage of mesothelioma, the location of the tumor, the patient’s age and state of health at the time. Theres also photodynamic therapy and gene therapy ” two far-out new ways of attacking cancer. Patients afflicted with mesothelioma are benefitting in these clinical trials.
