Most Cancer Treatments Do Little to Help Mesothelioma Patients, However Gene Therapy May Be a Hope
Cancer doctors choose what course of treatment to pursue with each patient. There are many options. There is no regular treatment option for malignant mesothelioma victims. This is because of the relative rareness of the disease, the high mortality rate and low treatment success rate, and the few scientific studies to provide meaningful statistics.
The prospects for mesothelioma patients have been grim, 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. Researchers are looking for ways of aiming radiation directly at the tumor in hopes that this will result in less damage to healthy tissue.
Surgery removes the mesothelial tissue around the tumor. The surgery is difficult and challenging, with unknown effects or benefits to patients. The usual chemotherapy cocktails effective on other cancers are not effective on mesothelioma, and different combinations of chemotherapy drugs have been tried without a lot of success. Like radiation, researchers are focusing their work on controlling the physical location of the treatment with an emphasis on the pleural cavity.
The high-mortality rate for mesothelioma patients means cutting-edge techniques for cancer are tried out. These include biologic therapy such as the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs such as thalidomide. The new drug pemetrexed (brand name Alimta) has shown good results in extending life with mesotheliomas..
Considered by oncologists is where the tumor is located, what stage the mesothelioma is in, and the age and health of the patient. Two exotic ways of attacking mesothelioma are gene therapy and photodynamic therapy. Clinical trials using these techniques are being offered to some of those who have mesothelioma.
