Treatment - Cancer Currents Blog
Cancer treatment related news, with context from leading experts. Includes articles on new therapies, treatment side effects, and important trends in treatment-related research.
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For the first time in decades, people with advanced bladder cancer have more effective treatment options. New clinical trial results mark a pivotal moment following years of little progress, bladder cancer experts believe.
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FDA has changed its 2021 approval of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) along with trastuzumab (Herceptin) and chemotherapy for treating HER2-positive stomach or GEJ cancer. The agency also announced a new approval of pembrolizumab for HER2-negative forms of these same cancers.
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For people with lung cancer and medullary thyroid cancer whose tumors have changes in the RET gene, selpercatinib improved progression-free survival compared with other common treatments, according to new clinical trial results.
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Stereotactic body radiotherapy was effective in people with localized kidney cancer who weren’t able to have surgery to remove their tumor, a clinical trial has shown. No patients had their cancer start growing or died from cancer over the next 5 years.
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Treatment with atezolizumab (Tecentriq) shrank tumors in about 40% of people with alveolar soft part sarcoma, including one complete response, new clinical trial findings show. Some people were later able to stop treatment without the cancer returning.
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Researchers have used a form of CRISPR, called base editing, to engineer T cells and hematopoietic stem cells as part of a potential “universal” CAR T-cell therapy for blood cancers. In experiments in mice, the treatment rapidly eliminated tumors, including in mice with acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
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The cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin (Lipitor) may help reduce the risk of heart failure in people with lymphoma who receive chemotherapy drugs called anthracyclines, results from a clinical trial suggest. Anthracyclines, such as doxorubicin, are used to treat many types of cancer.
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Treatment options for people with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have expanded yet again. On July 20, FDA approved quizartinib (Vanflyta) combined with chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for AML with a specific change in the FLT3 gene.
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Treating craniopharyngioma often requires surgery, radiation therapy, or both. But results of a study suggest that, for many, combining the targeted therapies vemurafenib (Zelboraf) and cobimetinib (Cotellic) may substantially delay, or even eliminate, the need for these treatments.
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FDA approved enzalutamide (Xtandi) combined with talazoparib (Talzenna) for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer with alterations in any of 12 DNA repair genes. The drug combination, which blocks both DNA repair activities and hormones that fuel cancer growth, was more effective than the standard treatment in a large clinical trial.