Cancer patients find clinical trials, hope and help



[ad_1]

What's new in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer?

Fred Hutch / SCCA Medical Doctors Drs. Julie Gralow, V.K. Gadi, Jennifer Specht, Kevin Cheung, Hannah Linden and others shared new research findings regarding treatments for people with metastatic breast cancer, including:

  • The new oral medication neratinib has received the orphan drug designation (a class of drugs for rare diseases) by the Food and Drug Administration for breast cancer metastases in HER2-positive patients. "If you're a patient with a HER2-positive brain, bother your doctor now," said Gadi. "You could potentially take this medicine. And if the insurance companies argue with you, tell them V.K. Gadi sent you. "
  • HER2-positive breast cancer drug Herceptin can now be administered subcutaneouslyunder the skin, in addition to being administered by infusion, offering patients a more practical option. The creators of the drug Herceptin have just received a Lasker Award for this major contribution to breast cancer treatment.
  • New discoveries of Young-PEARL Study, a small phase 2 trial in Korea, has shown that a precision medicine approach allows better progression-free survival compared to a traditional chemotherapy approach in ER-positive, HER2-negative premenopausal metastatic patients .
  • In addition, just in, a newly approved drug to target PIK3CA mutations with a blood test approved to find it. "We are working on easier ways to understand what the tumor is doing with its genes so that we do not continue to do tumor biopsies, but we can do liquid biopsies, which collect blood," said Gralow.

Patient advocates then shared their own efforts to do just that.

Christine Hodgdon of Baltimore presented her clinical trial and MBC news database, TheStormRiders.org, where patients can search for ongoing trials or promising new drugs. BreastCancerTrials.org, introduced by program director Elly Cohen, allows patients to search for trials and also translates the scientific descriptions of ClinicalTrials.gov into a more user-friendly language for the uninitiated. Patients were also encouraged to enroll in MBC Connect, a registry of open-label MBC patients, and the MBC Project, an open-ended partnership-led patient research initiative designed to accelerate the trial of patients. understanding of the disease.

Connect with info and others

Above all, connected people – with information, resources, potential trials and with each other. Barista Sandra Partida, 45, a triple-negative breast cancer patient from Bellevue, Washington, was thrilled to make a new friend with the same subtype of cancer.

"There were cancer support groups in Bellevue, but no one was triple negative," she said. "Today, I found a woman who lives in Bainbridge [Island, also in the Seattle area] which is triple negative. We will meet. "

Other patients left with possible treatments or specific questions for their oncologists.

"I'm pretty good at it," said 68-year-old Peggy Bissell of Bow, Washington, who is currently on her ninth line of treatment with the MBC. "I've had a lot of bad news over the years, but it's been very helpful to me."

Even patients in the UK have lobbied for the government's national health service to connect and take note via Twitter.

Linden, the lobe expert, congratulated the conference for helping to "close the loop" between patients and the data they need.

"People give their time to participate in a trial but they may not know the results," she said. "Or how this essay will impact others in the future. This conference is giving this information back to the patients, closing this loop for better information on breast cancer and clinical trials.

"It's such a good opportunity. We must continue to do that. "

[ad_2]

Source link