Mesothelioma is a rare cancer with a poor life expectancy. People diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma usually live for four to 18 months after diagnosis. The poor survival is a result of the aggressive nature of the cancer and that it is usually diagnosed at a late stage when it is[…]
Novel Treatments & Drugs
Allocetra and Cisplatin Combination for Mesothelioma
A new immunotherapy treatment is showing promising results against mesothelioma. The therapy consists of a combination of two drugs: one drug that reprograms macrophages and the other is the chemotherapy cisplatin. Mesothelioma is a cancer that does not respond well to treatment. The best option for patients is a combination[…]
Drug Factories Treatment Being Tested for Mesothelioma
Researchers have found a treatment that can eradicate advanced stage mesothelioma tumors within a few days. The research is being done at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine. The treatment utilizes implants known as “drug factories” and a checkpoint inhibitor drug. Mesothelioma is a tough to treat cancer of[…]
Keytruda as a Second Line Treatment for Mesothelioma
A new second line treatment has been developed for pleural mesothelioma. The treatment was created at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. Research was done as a single-arm, open-label clinical trial combining pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and lenvatinib. The results were presented at the IASCL 2022 World Conference on Lung Cancer in[…]
A New Blood Test That Can Diagnose Mesothelioma Has Been Developed
A blood test could make diagnosing mesothelioma faster, leading to doctors catching the disease earlier in patients. Mesothelioma is a hard-to-treat cancer mainly caused by asbestos. Once diagnosed, not much can be done because it has usually spread and progressed to a point where treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation[…]
Researchers Possibly Found a MicroRNA Biomarker to Diagnose Mesothelioma
Italian researchers have potentially found a new biomarker for mesothelioma. The biomarker is a microRNA signature. This would allow doctors to determine if someone’s cancer is mesothelioma or another type of cancer quickly. Mesothelioma is a notoriously hard to treat cancer and early diagnosis is one of the keys to[…]
An Inhalable Gene Therapy is Being Tested for Mesothelioma
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[…]
Drug Repurposing for Mesothelioma
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[…]
SMARTEST Trial Hopes to Improve Survival Times for Mesothelioma
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[…]
Galinpepimut-S Cancer Vaccine in Combination with Opdivo
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[…]
