September 05, 2018, 08:16 AM
Pipe SmokerNew prostate cancer drug: pembrolizumab
“Men with aggressive drug-resistant prostate cancer could see their tumours eradicated by a new treatment.
The 'ultra-mutant' tumours that lead to terminal prognoses could be killed off by a drug that unleashes the body's immune system, research suggests.
Usually, men with this form of the disease – called mismatch DNA repair – live half as long as other men with advanced prostate cancer.
Their tumours cannot correct mistakes in DNA and rapidly mutate to resist most treatments.
But now a study offers them hope, after it found that mismatch repair tumours could respond exceptionally well to a breakthrough drug…”
https://dailym.ai/2Nhyb6ZSeptember 05, 2018, 11:18 AM
sjtillPembrolizumab is brand name Keytruda. Merck, the manufacturer, is putting all its cancer R&D money into more trials of Keytruda for different tumors.
My son’s sister-in-law has lung cancer metastatic to the adrenal glands, we thought she would no longer be with us by now, but with Keytruda her tumors have shrunk drastically and she is doing much better. How long will that last? No one knows, but it has shown truly astonishing results for a number of aggressive tumors, with minimal side effects.
It is an immunotherapeutic agent not chemotherapeutic, so it is not poison to the normal body.
BTW it is also approved for advanced bladder cancer.
September 06, 2018, 09:12 AM
Pipe SmokerGlad to know that your son’s sister-in-law is seeing a benefit from this drug, SJ. It’s probably not the magic bullet, but it sounds as though it’s a significant advancement. The absence of severe side effects is wonderful news too.
September 06, 2018, 11:07 AM
rduckworI'm glad this is showing promise for a number of malignancies, but I worry about all the monoclonals on the market these days.
Some of them seem to have rather severe potential side effects for rather insignificant illness.
RMD