Tuesday, August 30, 2016

A NEW APPROACH


Linda and Carolyn
Someplace

When Linda (who would have been 71 today) and I talked to her oncologist after surgery we were told that we should consider her condition a “chronic disease”.  I took that to mean that they could keep it at bay indefinitely.  I was wrong.  What he meant was that he could slow it down, but he couldn’t cure it.

Well, now an effort is being made to truly keep ovarian cancer at bay indefinitely, or at least for a very long time.  The article cited below describes how research workers at Oregon State University as well as the U.K. are testing a new therapeutic technique; they call it “metronomic dosage regimen”.

Take ovarian cancer, for instance.  OVCA chemo traditionally consists of giving the patient the “maximum tolerated dose” of one or more drugs for a brief time, at regular intervals.  The intent here seems to be to kill the damned thing outright; to affect a cure.  However, in advanced OVCA (stages III and IV) this rarely works, and moreover results in massive discomfort.  The metronomic dosage approach would be – in the example discussed – to give a much smaller dose (<33%) at widely spaced intervals – indefinitely.  They suggest using paclitaxel, which attacks cancer cells, and rapamycin, which combats angiogenesis (the ability of a growing tumors to recruit new blood vessels).  These drugs are delivered together by targeted nanoparticles.  The aim here is “to create an environment in which [cancer cells] do not grow easily”.  Complete cure is not ruled out under a metronomic dosage regimen, but it is not necessarily the goal.  Rather, the goal is to place OVCA into the same classification as, say, high blood pressure.  I’ve had high blood pressure for 40 years.

So, let’s fervently hope that this works.  It certainly sounds feasible to me.  My only concerns are that no clinical trial is mentioned, and that the paper was published in a journal I have never heard of.



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