Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Rose Bengal and Melanoma
More results from the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology:
“CHICAGO — June 9, 2010 — Chemoablation with an injectable 10% solution of rose bengal disodium (PV-10), an iodinated fluorescein derivative, induces a robust response in a majority of patients with metastatic melanoma, researchers reported at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).”
And what’s interesting about this is that the effects are seen in tumours not directly injected with the solution (so even though it’s injected into the tumour, it seems to work systemically), and that there seems to be a high response rate.
Full article here.
This is another very interesting treatment for metastatic melanoma (which is generally considered incurable). It needs to be tested in a larger trial, and compared with the current standard treatment (which I believe would be a Phase III trial). Many drugs for melanoma have failed Phase III trials (with ipilimumbab being a notable recent exception), so I’m not getting too excited at the moment–but these results are certainly encouraging.
Ipilimumbab and melanoma treatment
The drug has been around for some time, but there hasn’t been much firm data about its effectiveness. However, new results show that ipilimumbab is actually effective at treating previously untreatable melanoma. From an MSNBC article:
“In the double-blinded placebo-controlled trial (the highest standard of clinical research), 676 patients with highly advanced melanoma (stage 4) got either the drug or another treatment regarded as mostly ineffective. Those getting “ipi” lived on average for 10 months compared to six months for those not getting it.
“A 67 percent survival improvement is significant, but that few months of additional survival mask what really happened with the drug. In 20 percent to 30 percent of patients getting the drug, the response was spectacular — the advanced cancer that had spread through their bodies either dramatically reduced in size, or simply disappeared. The other 70 percent to 80 percent of patients had no response at all.”
That’s melanoma for you: “Spectacular results” => 1 out of 3 people didn’t die. The cure for cancer is not going to be found in the same way penicillin was.
