The 57 year old had worked in construction in the 70′s and 80′s, installing underground water and sewage pipes, which were made of concrete asbestos.   Due to the nature of his job he had to cut the pipes so that he could install them in and around the Sacramento Valley of Chico, which resulted in asbestos being sent flying all around him klike a snow storm, therefore massively increasing his chances of exposure to the asbestos and the subsequent development of the fatal disease, mesothelioma.

The payout was a whopping $7,500,000.

The man’s identity remains unknown as he has chosen to remain anonymous.

CBP501, a new treatment for the rare cancer known as mesothelioma has been designated as Orphan Drug Designation.

The US Food and Drug Administration has a mission to help the development of drugs that can be used to further the treatment and diagnosis of rare diseases. Providing a drug with ‘orphan’ status means that there is funding available for the further advancement of that drug.

The company behind the drug is a Japanese company called CanBas (http://www.canbas.co.jp/eng/index.html)

The combination is aimed at patients who have advance malignant pleural mesothelioma and would not be considered as suitable candidates for surgery.

CBP501 increases the efficacy of cisplatin when administered in combination.

The drug is being tested in conjunction with existing chemotherapy treatments, pemetrexed and cisplatin.  The study is described as ‘ongoing’ but they are not currently looking to recruit any new patients for trials of the combination.  For more information, refer to the CanBas website.

University of Maryland Medical Center say protein essential for mesothelioma growth can be completely inhibited

H. Richard Alexander, Jr, M.D. has been working with his colleagues at University of Maryland Medical Center to identify the role that protein appears to be playing in the growth of mesothelioma.

In particular, Alexander has been concentrating on abdominal mesothelioma (Peritoneal Mesothelioma) which until now has had no real effective treatment.

They have been developing strategies that combine the use of surgery and medicines, such as chemotherapy, whereby they aim to remove as much of the mesothelioma tumour as possible and then follow up with the medicines.  This process has worked very well for some patients, but they had noticed that it hadn’t been quite as effective for all sufferers of the very rare disease that kills several hundreds of people in the US each year.

Over the years they have collected and studied the tumours that were removed during the surgical procedures, and studied them very carefully and closely using highly sophisticated molecular techniques.  Enabling them to get in much closer than a microscope in a lab, the team made the discovery that proteins are present in high numbers where abdominal mesothelioma is also present, and that these proteins are in fact essential for the growth of the cancer.

They have said that they already have at their disposal, compounds that can “completely inhibit the function of the proteins to which the mesothelioma appears to be addicted”.

What is also encouraging is that they have also discovered that the protein is abundant in many other forms of cancer and so this breakthrough for mesothelioma could indeed lead to further breakthroughs for cancer itself.

The firefighters of Everett have a victory of sorts to celebrate, having won a mesothelioma compensation settlement, perhaps not on the terms that they originally set out for, but a victory none the less.

The 50 fire fighters have been battling the claim for four and a half years, and although they originally filed a lawsuit for a substantial financial compensation claim, believed to be in the region of 9 million US dollars, they have settled for the city paying for their healthcare and have dropped the financial claim.

Everett Fire Dept. say they were exposed to asbestos in 2007 when they went in with chainsaws cutting up a building while on a drill, pretending to be fighting a real fire.  Afterwards they learned the buildings did in fact contain asbestos, which can lead to mesothelioma.

The agreement covers the 50 fire fighters for any medical tests that are need to check for the presence of mesothelioma or other asbestos related damage, for the rest of their lives.

This settlement does not however cover several fire fighters who are now retired, but who also may have been exposed to asbestos.

For more on the Everett Fire Department check out their official website at www.iaff46.org

America’s largest insurance company, Travelers Cos, has given a significant and clear indication that it does not agree that asbestos related lawsuits and claims are on the decrease by putting a whopping 25% extra into it’s claim reserves this year compared to the previous year.

Travelers are not alone either.  Both AIG (AIG.N) and Hartford Financial (HIG.N) have also commissioned increased reserves for asbestos related claims such as mesothelioma.

What’s more, Met Life said back in August 2011 that although asbestos related claims had been falling over the past 7 years, there had been an increase of 11% this year.

A brand new state if the art research lab dedicated to Mesothelioma has just opened, with it’s sole purpose to discover new treatments for malignant pleural mesothelioma.

The Pacific Meso Center at Santa Monica Boulevard in LA is the very first such research center in the world, and is a division of the not for profit Pacific Heart, Lung & Blood Institute.