This weeks side effects

I am feeling the side effects hard from the latest chemo session, no energy at all and the simpliest thing like walking to the mail box has me having to sit or lay down to catch my breath and to get some kind of energy. This week I have done no housework other than to make dinner for Tom, I just cannot seem to find the energy to do anything. Have been having headaches almost every day except for today so maybe that side effect is going away.

This was in our local paper today, so thought I'd share, seems they are a long way off from "Clinical Trials" but..... who knows.

New method shown to attack cancer tumors


La Jolla scientists’ work on mice still preliminary

By Scott LaFee, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:43 a.m.

Dr. Erkki Ruoslahti

SOLID-TUMOR CANCERS

These are diseases in which abnormal masses of tissue form in the body. They may be benign or malignant. The top 10 cancers in the United States, based on incidence rate, are all solid-tumor types.

1. Prostate, 152.6 (per 100,000 people)
2. Female breast, 119.3
3. Lung and bronchus, 66.8
4. Colon and rectum, 46.8
5. Corpus and uterus, 23.7
6. Urinary bladder, 20.5
7. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, 18.7
8. Skin melanomas, 18.2
9. Kidney and renal pelvis, 15.0
10. Ovary, 12.3

SOURCE: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Solid cancer tumors can resist a doctor’s most powerful weapons, hunkering down to prevent drugs from penetrating far into their masses of diseased tissue. The physician can up the dosage, hoping for better results but also risking nastier side effects.

The battle’s dynamics may change soon.

In a study published yesterday in the journal Science, cancer scientists at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla say they have developed a new method of attack, one that essentially induces tumors to pull medications deep within them. The technique, tested in lab mice, produced significantly better therapeutic results with smaller drug doses and fewer side effects.

“This may be a very important innovation,” said David A. Cheresh, a professor of pathology at the Moores Cancer Center, which is part of the University of California San Diego.

We have plenty of drugs that work. The problem has always been getting the drugs to the right location,” said Cheresh, who is not involved in the project.

In their report, Dr. Erkki Ruoslahti and his colleagues describe injecting the mice with a variety of anti-cancer drugs and a peptide — a chain of specific amino acids. These mice carried grafts of human breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers.

The peptide is key.

During the 1980s, Ruoslahti showed that a peptide called RGD could find and attach itself to receptors on solid-tumor cancer cells. Last year, he published a paper documenting how iRGD, a variant of RGD, not only homed in on cancer cells but also activated their internal transport systems. As a result, the peptide could pass through cell after cell, moving farther toward the tumor’s core.

The study in Science, whose co-authors include Dr. Kazuki N. Sugahara and Tambet Teesalu at the University of California Santa Barbara, said anti-drugs lingering near peptide molecules get pulled into and through tumor tissues as well. Seven to 40 times more of the medications entered tumors with the peptide as compared to those without it.

By their nature and architecture, solid tumors are well-equipped to fend off cancer drugs.

They have poor vascular systems, which reduces their exposure to blood-borne drugs. They are densely fibrous, which serves as a kind of physical armor. And they have high internal pressures, which means “anything trying to get in is basically swimming upstream,” Ruoslahti said.

The iRGD peptide acts like a key, switching on the internal transport system of cancer cells so they pull in anything that’s knocking on certain surface receptors.

Based on early findings, the approach promises to have wide application. Researchers said iRGD penetrates many types of tumors and might be useful in treating most, if not all, solid-tumor cancers. The peptide also was shown to enhance the therapeutic effects of several cancer medicines, including a small molecule drug, a monoclonal antibody and two nanoparticle drugs.

In tests, some mouse tumors that showed resistance to a drug were effectively treated when that drug was delivered with iRGD. Other tumors that only partly responded to a drug were eradicated by the combined approach.

Another encouraging aspect of the research is that iRGD and cancer drugs are effective together without being chemically attached to each other, said Robert Brackenbury, a professor of cancer and cell biology at the University of Cincinnati, who also wasn’t part of study.

That means scientists “can use drugs that have been previously approved for therapy without having to seek approval for a new, covalently-coupled compound,” he said.

The result might be a simpler and shorter path to actual clinical use.

“This could cut years off the testing process,” Ruoslahti said.

Both Cheresh and Brackenbury cautioned that more research remains to be done.

Scientists aren’t sure whether the new treatment strategy will work as well in humans as in mice. Also, iRGD might open up a tumor’s blood vessel walls too much and allow cancer cells to escape into the general bloodstream, possibly spreading the disease faster, Cheresh said.

“It’s still early in the process,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I can see how this approach or something like it could lead to more efficient therapies. It could change the way we treat cancer patients.”