Most Cancer Treatments Are Not Effective Mesothelioma Patients, However Gene Therapy Could Provide a Hope
Oncologists determine what kind of treatment to pursue to every patient. The options are endless. There exists no one size fits all treatment course for malignant mesothelioma cancer patients. Mesotheliomas lack of agreed-upon treatment is due to low a treatment success rate, rareness, a high mortality rate and a small number of studies providing meaningful stats.
Mesothelioma patients have historically had a bleak outlook, 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. Mesothelioma patients treated with traditional radiation therapy have not responded well to it. In hopes to lessen damage to healthy tissue, researches are studying ways to aim radiation right at the tumor.
Surgery removes the mesothelial tissue around the tumor. It is a grueling surgery with unknown benefits to patients. The usual chemotherapy cocktails effective on other cancers are not effective on mesothelioma, and combinations of chemotherapy agents have been tried, but without much success. Like radiation, researchers are focusing their work on controlling the physical location of the treatment with an emphasis on the pleural cavity.
The death rate for mesothelioma is so high that many of even the most sophisticated techniques in cancer treatment are tried out on patients. These techniques include a biologic therapy called the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs like 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. Two therapies that are extremely cutting-edge in fighting cancer are called photodynamic and gene therapy. Patients afflicted with mesothelioma are benefitting in these clinical trials.
