Immunotherapy

[BeautyThroughBeast]

My good friend Debbie wrote a very informative article about immunotherapy that's in this month's NJ Monthly magazine. If you're interested in updates after you read the article, let me know

njmonthly.com/articles/heal...

Chiara

[Mariannem]

Thanks for sharing. It highlights that it is difficult to enter into a clinical trial. Also, discusses that access to clinical trials is limited and has geographic limitations. I am glad to see that immunotherapy may be potential benefit to triple negative breast cancer. Well written article. Please share articles in the future.

[BeautyThroughBeast in reply to Mariannem]

Will do, I'm glad you enjoyed this article

[Hidden]

Thank you for posting this story. I have a lot of faith in immunotherapy as a potential treatment for cancer and hope that scientists can overcome the obstacles.

In 2007 and 2008, I too had lung metastases and eradicated them via minimally invasive surgery (VATS) and radiofrequency ablation, along with the targeted drug, Herceptin. I had taken that drug when I had stage II cancer in 2003. The cancer also metastasized to my brain in 2008.

This angle of using a local treatment along with systemic therapy was first proposed by Dr. Samuel Hellman, professor emeritus of radiation oncology at U Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. In 2016, he was considered by OncLive to be one of oncology's greats, which is one of their annual events.

Dr. Hellman first proposed his idea in the 80s. Then he and Dr. Ralph Weichselbaum, also of Pritzker, wrote an article in the mid 90s, in which they referred to oligometastatic cancer, or limited metastatic spread. They proposed how radiation combined with systemic therapy could improve patients' outcome. More information about their ideas can be found here:

Hellman S., Weichselbaum RR, Oligometastases. J Clin Oncol. Jan 1995;12(1):8–10.

And here at the website of the Ludwig Center, U Chicago:

ludwigcenter.uchicago.edu/p...

Needless to say, their idea is mostly shunned by medical oncologists since at this time only retrospective studies show a potential advantage. However, Stephen Chmura, a radiation oncologist at Pritzker, is now conducting a second clinical trial that he has narrowed down to only those living with MBC:

clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show... (under clinicaltrials.gov NCT02364557, if the link doesn't work).

There is also a Canadian trial, SABRE-COMET:

clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show... (under NCT0446744)

Only time will tell whether combining local and systemic therapies will help prolong our lives.

[Partia]

That was very inforThatve. She's a great writer. I would love to see more!!

[BeautyThroughBeast in reply to Partia]

Debbie is a great writer. You can follow her writing at medium.com/@debgalant

[Partia in reply to BeautyThroughBeast]

And I meant informative lol!!😏

[Tap321]

Please share in the fuyte articles. Very interesting! Also gives much hope.

[BeautyThroughBeast]

I'm glad you benefitted from he article.