Avastin Approved By FDA For Lung Cancer Combination Treatment
Featured ArticleMain Category: Lung Cancer
Also Included In: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 12 Oct 2006 - 12:00 PDT
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The FDA has approved the use of Avastin for lung cancer combination treatment with carboplatin and paclitaxel chemotherapy for first line treatment. Avasting is now approved for the most common lung cancer - locally advanced, recurrent or metastatic, non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
One third of all cancer deaths in the USA are of this type.
Avastin is the first therapy, approved by the FDA, designed to inhibit angiogenesis - the process by which new blood vessels develop and feed a tumor. The drug is also approved, in combination with intravenous 5-fluorouracil-based chemotherapy, for first- or second-line treatment of patients with metastatic carcinoma of the colon or rectum.
The most serious adverse events linked to Avastin are:
-- arterial thromboembolic events
-- congestive heart failure
-- GI perforation
-- hemorrhage
-- hypertensive crisis
-- nephrotic syndrome
-- neutropenia and infection
-- reversible posterior leukoencephalopathy syndrome
-- wound healing complications
Avastin (bevacizumab)
Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today
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16 Feb. 2012. <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/54013.php>
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Targeted Therapies Can Be Improved By Assays
posted by Gregory D. Pawelski on 13 Oct 2006 at 11:48 pmTarget treatment directly to the tumor cells, sparing healthy cells the worst of chemotherapy's damage. A push in oncology toward protecting patients against drugs and treatments, although successful for some patients, won't work for most others.
Oncologists prescribe patients one standard empiric chemotherapy regimen after another, until they find one that works. This often can expose patients to the side effects of chemotherapy, without showing any cancer-killing results. Guesswork can be done in a laboratory instead.
The tactic of using biopsied cells to predict which cancer treatments will work best for the patient, by taking pieces of tumor tissue, apply different chemotherapy treatments to it and examine the results to see which drug or combination of drugs do the best job killing the tumor cells.
Older technology assay-tests failed because scientists looked to see which drugs inhibited the cancer cells' growth (cell-growth), not which chemotherapies actively killed the tumor cells (cell-death). Cancer wasn't growing faster than other cells, it's just dying slower. The new assay-test technology connects drugs to patients by what "kills" their cells, not by what "slows" them down.
Researchers tested how well women with relapsed ovarian cancer would respond to a combination of a pancreatic cancer drug and an ovarian cancer drug. They found the combination worked on a number of women, and testing cells in petri dishes predicted which women would respond to this combination and which wouldn't. A metastatic pancreatic cancer patient can be treated successfully with a combination of drugs commonly used to fight lung, pancreatic, breast and colorectal cancers.
The problem with standard empiric chemotherapy is that it's like taking a machine gun and shooting everything in the way and hoping you get the cancer cells along with that. If you target the therapy, meaning you're only treating patients who will benefit from the treatments, you'll eliminate patients from having undue chemotherapy side-effects without any benefit.
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