Category: Research News

Mesothelioma patients and their doctors often focus treatments on improving the patient’s quality of life.  Treatments aimed to relieve pain and pressure, and to restore lost breathing functions, can afford patients the ability to be mobile and enjoy some routine day-to-day activities.  Now, researchers at the Mayo Clinic are looking at a patient’s quality of …

Researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have been busy in their labs developing circulating tumor cell (CTC) tests that could find a single mesothelioma cancer cell circulating among the billion healthy cells in a person’s bloodstream.  Both tests utilize a compound that attaches to …

Patients diagnosed with mesothelioma, an asbestos-caused cancer, often endure many rounds of chemotherapy while fighting the disease.  Unfortunately, the side effects caused by the potent medicines can be debilitating, often leading patients to halt treatment.  Within the past few months, however, researchers have found several solutions for increasing the effectiveness of chemotherapy and for lowering …

Chemotherapy is considered the most effective single modality for the treatment of pleural mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer caused by asbestos exposure. However, the cancer has proven to be resistant to chemotherapy, and the average prognosis for mesothelioma patients is typically less than one year.  But by combining immunotherapy with chemotherapy, researchers have confirmed …

Mesothelioma sufferers rarely hear “take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” But that might be common in the future if a recent study holds true.Researchers at The City College of New York report they have developed a new hybrid aspirin that may be the latest potent cancer-fighter.  In a study published in the …

Although pancreatic cancer and mesothelioma are very different cancers, the two diseases are both extremely aggressive and require equally aggressive treatments to combat the tumors.  Chemotherapy is a standard treatment for mesothelioma and pancreatic cancer, but physicians have continually been stymied in finding an effective drug for either of the cancers.  Now, researchers believe that …

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania reported yesterday that they have made yet another breakthrough in finding a way to enhance the effectiveness of cancer treatments.  This time using a drug commonly used to treat malaria. The finding comes on the heels of a report from Penn last month …

The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation announced last week that it has awarded $500,000 in grants to the “best and most promising” mesothelioma research projects for its 2011/2012 Mesothelioma Research Grant Awards.  Funding of these projects is critically important for helping researchers find new, effective treatments that could lead to a cure for the asbestos-caused cancer.   …

For years, researchers have studied the make-up of lung cancer and mesothelioma cells in an effort to determine what drives the deadly cancer cells to divide and grow, and what makes them resistant to standard treatments.  Pleural mesothelioma and lung cancer are aggressive and the mortality rate is so high that it is critical to …

The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2012 there will be 226,160 new diagnoses and 160,340 deaths associated with lung cancer.  According to Northwestern University’s Vadim Backman, however, “Early detection is probably the only way for us to win the war against cancer.”  Backman is doing something about it, and he believes biophotonics may be …