Pat Guth contributes news and insightful content for the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance. Bio »
June 14, 2013
Knoxville, Tennessee - Lung cancer strikes nearly a quarter-million Americans each year and kills about 160,000, making it the deadliest cancer in the U.S. That’s why researchers are continually striving to address new treatments for all types of this killer cancer, which strikes both men and women nearly equally.
Now, some oncologists are participating in a Phase II clinical trial aimed at proving that adding something to traditional chemotherapy could assist in attacking tough-to-beat lung cancer tumors. Specifically, many cancer doctors are participating in a clinical trial that adds immune-boosting antibodies to chemotherapeutic drugs. So far, the results seem promising.
“If you have a cell that is requiring oxygen and you interfere with the nutrition, you interfere with the way it gets the cells to grow, that’s it it’ll die," explains Dr. Wahid Hanna of the University of Tennessee Medical Center at Knoxville. With this treatment, he adds, the antibody attaches itself to deadly cancer cells, making the cancer vulnerable to being destroyed by the patient’s own immune system.
In a story aired on WFMZ-TV, Hanna cites the case of a patient who, after six rounds of chemo that included the immune booster, has seen her tumor shrink by more than half. Other results have been similar, and once the patient has completed the combination chemotherapy, they may choose to continue taking the antibody without the chemo, Dr. Hanna explains.
Though the antibody is currently being testing in patients with the very common small cell type of lung cancer, there is hopes that it may eventually be used to help conquer other hard-to-beat cancers including mesothelioma, which attacks not the lung itself but the lining of the lung. Traditionally, mesothelioma has responded poorly to many conventional therapies, so researchers are constantly in search of novel new treatments for the disease.
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