Chemotherapy is treatment of cancer with anticancer drugs. Chemotherapy is administered in different ways, depending on the drugs to be given and the type of cancer. Doctors decide the dose of chemotherapy drugs considering many factors, among them being the patient’s height and weight.
Sipuleucel-T in prostate cancer: Indication of added benefit – Sipuleucel-T (trade name Provenge) has been approved since September 2014 for men with metastatic prostate cancer who have few or no symptoms and do not yet require chemotherapy. In the dossier assessment conducted by the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) in January 2015, no added benefit could be derived for sipuleucel-T.
Biomarker predicts effectiveness of brain cancer treatment – Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified a new biomarker that predicts whether glioblastoma – the most common form of primary brain cancer – will respond to chemotherapy.
Drug Combination Extends Survival by More Than a Year in Metastatic Prostate Cancer – Men with newly diagnosed metastatic, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer lived more than a year longer when they received a chemotherapy drug docetaxel as initial treatment instead of waiting to for the disease to become resistant to hormone-blockers.
The mammography dilemma — Complex benefits and harms of mammography require individualized approach – A comprehensive review of 50 year’s worth of international studies assessing the benefits and harms of mammography screening suggests that the benefits of the screening are often overestimated, while harms are underestimated.
Mechanism Behind Blood Stem Cells’ Longevity Discovered – The blood stem cells that live in bone marrow are at the top of a complex family tree. Such stem cells split and divide down various pathways that ultimately produce red cells, white cells and platelets. These “daughter” cells must be produced at a rate of about one million per second to constantly replenish the body’s blood supply.
Prostate cancer: A change in circulating tumor cells detection has high potential in the prediction – A new study reveals that in the prediction of treatment outcome for castration-resistant prostate cancer, a change in circulating tumour cells detection might be more accurate than the change in prostate-specific antigen levels.
Pazopanib shows better quality-of-life in advanced kidney cancer – Two oral targeted drugs — Pazopanib (Votrient) and sunitinib (Sutent) — approved for metastatic kidney cancer worked equally well, but one proved superior in tolerability, the safety profile and many measures of quality of life favored pazopanib.
UCLA researchers find nanodiamonds could improve effectiveness of breast cancer treatment – Recently, doctors have begun to categorize breast cancers into four main groups according to the genetic makeup of the cancer cells. Which category a cancer falls into generally determines the best method of treatment.
US FDA approves new treatment for late-stage breast cancer – Kadcyla (ado-trastuzumab emtansine) – a new therapy for patients with HER2-positive, late-stage (metastatic) breast cancer is approved by US FDA. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death among women. Almost 20 percent of breast cancers have increased amounts of the HER2 protein.
FDA approves Zaltrap for metastatic colorectal cancer – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Zaltrap (ziv-aflibercept) for use in combination with a FOLFIRI (folinic acid, fluorouracil and irinotecan) chemotherapy regimen to treat adults with colorectal cancer.