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Omaha Steve

(99,489 posts)
Sun Sep 29, 2013, 04:14 PM Sep 2013

Lung Cancer Drug Doing Well in Treatment Trials

Source: http://guardianlv.com

Kimberly Ruble

An experimental cancer drug seems to be doing well in treatment trials against lung cancer in smokers and it may be just what those patients that are so hard-to-treat need, examiners said on Sunday.

Giving comprehensive information from an early-stage test of the drug, called MPDL3280A, in patients with a form of cancer called non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), researchers explained that what they had discovered was great news for sufferers of lung cancer.
Out of over 50 patients with lung cancer tumors treated with the experimental drug, over 20 percent saw their tumors get smaller, stated results presented at the European Cancer Congress which was held in Amsterdam.

Yet most hopeful were the numbers among smokers, where the reaction rate was 26 percent compared with just 10 percent of people who had never picked up a cigarette. This is truly amazing because lung cancer, which is most often caused by a person smoking, is very hard to treat and once it moves to other parts of the body, it becomes incurable.

The drug, made by a company called Roche, is a planned antibody that aims for a protein in tumors which they use as defense mechanisms. They try to trick the body’s immune system’s own T-cells into being inactive and not fighting them back.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://guardianlv.com/2013/09/lung-cancer-drug-doing-well-in-treatment-trials/



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mopinko

(69,984 posts)
2. but, but big pharma doesn't want drugs that cure people.
Sun Sep 29, 2013, 08:55 PM
Sep 2013

they want to keep people to stay sick forever.

 

Liberal_Stalwart71

(20,450 posts)
3. Just sent this to a colleague and friend of mine who's a lung cancer survivor. They caught it very
Sun Sep 29, 2013, 11:09 PM
Sep 2013

early and he's not a smoker. He's also very young. They don't know or understand how he could develop cancer.

Thanks so much for sharing.

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