Mesothelioma Researcher - News and research beyond the headlines.
The information you find on this site is updated and published as soon as it becomes available. Our research team is committed to providing the information you need. Some of the subjects covered include cutting edge clinical trials, new treatment options, detailed asbestos related info, legal options and much more.
New combo drug regimen shows promise
Saturday, April 22, 2006
An Italian study (Sequential chemotherapy with cisplatin/gemcitabine (CG) followed by mitoxantrone/methotrexate/mitomycin (MMM) in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma) published in the May 2006 Journal Lung Cancer describes a study of a new 2 phase combination drug regimen that shows good disease control coupled with decrease in trouble breathing and pain, with mild toxicity in Meso patients with inoperable disease.
54 patients with unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma receive...
The Median is not the Message - Wisdom from a 20 year Mesothelioma Survivor
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Steven Jay Gould was a Evolutionary Biologist at Harvard. He was a giant among Evolutionary theorists and a prolific writer. He also survived 20 years past his diagnosis of abdominal mesothelioma. He died in 2002 at aged 60 of a second apparently unrelated cancer beating his 8 month median survival thirty times over. Those 20 years proved to be the most productive of his career.
The essay he wrote about his cancer is a message of hope that all diagnosed with mesothelioma should hear.
LINK
Immunotherapy - What is it and can it be used for Meso Treatment
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Immunotherapy is a collection of technologies that use the patients own immune system to battle cancer. Several approaches have been used and there is a tremendous amount of research going on in this area.
For many years the immune system was understood to be the bodies defense against foreign invaders. Bacteria, viruses, protozoa and even worms are fought using the body's arsenal of immune cells like phagocytes that engulf and kill to other types of white blood cells called plasma cells th...
Growth Factors - Another target for Meso treatment
Sunday, December 25, 2005
A growth factor is a substance that triggers the growth of some type of cells. There are nerve growth factors, bone growth factors and blood vessel growth factors. These small molecules help maintain a healthy balance between normal growth and development of the body and out of control growth.
Cancer is all about out of control growth taking over essential functions. In mesothelioma, a hard rind of overgrowth covers the outside of the lungs and gradually impairs their function.
One area...
New Lab Model of Meso may lead to better understanding of disease
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Since it is unethical to experiment on people with completely random drugs just to see what happens, scientists rely on laboratory models of disease, sometimes this is an animal model like a mouse and sometimes it is a bunch of cells in a petri dish. This outside the body model of a disease is called an in vitro system.
There can be problems with using in vitro systems. What you observe in a test tube may not translate to what happens in a human body. For example, there are many chemicals ...
Apoptosis and Necrosis - Two Paths to Eliminating Cancer Cells
Friday, November 04, 2005
Most normal cells in the body have a defined lifespan. If you put them in a petri dish and manage to grow them, a cell line will divide a certain number of times and eventually die off. Another instance when cells die off is when something goes wrong with the cellular machinery. This error triggers a process of orderly cell death called apoptosis. In apoptosis the cell quietly shuts down, breaks into smaller pieces and is engulfed by white blood cells.
In many cancers including mesothel...
Asbestosis - A sometimes challenged diagnosis
Sunday, October 23, 2005
To the average person, getting a diagnosis of asbestosis, that is non-cancerous lung damage from asbestos should seem straightforward. Unfortunately it can be a long and frustrating path for some, primarily because of the issues of liability and compensation for injury. It is in the asbestos compensation fund member's interest to limit the number of people declared to have asbestosis. To be fair, the diagnosis can be tricky because there is a huge list of chemicals, minerals and diseases that ...
