In a nutshell The study investigated whether cetuximab (Erbitux) and brivanib alaniate (BMS-582664) can improve the quality of life of patients with chemotherapy-refractory metastatic colorectal cancer. Some background Some patients with colorectal cancer have chemotherapy-refractory metastatic cancer (the cancer does not respond to chemotherapy...
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In a nutshell This article evaluated whether the use of a minimally invasive diagnostic technique called laparoscopy before surgery to treat peritoneal carcinomatosis improves the selection of patients who can benefit the most from treatment. The authors of the study found that laparoscopy can be used to select patients for whom surgery may be a...
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In a nutshell The aim of this analysis was to determine the prognostic factors that can lead to the best results of Interferon treatment (as IFN or PEG-IFN) on patients with high-risk melanoma. The results indicate that tumor stage and ulceration were predictive factors for the efficacy of IFN/PEG-IFN therapy. Some background Malignant melanoma is...
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In a nutshell The objective of this study was to identify risk factors predictive for developing peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC) after curative surgery for colorectal cancer (CRC). The data show three situations that could result in a real risk of recurrent PC: synchronous PC, synchronous isolated ovarian metastases and a perforated primary tumor. There...
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In a nutshell This study looks at the use of panitumumab and irinotecan as a combination treatment in patients with KRAS wild-type (non-mutated) metastatic colorectal cancer which has continued to progress while on standard chemotherapy (oxaliplatin, fluoropyrimidines, irinotecan, bevacizumab). Some background Cancer cells can have...
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In a nutshell This review presents the results of clinical trials for two newly approved immunotherapy drugs – ipilimumab (Yervoy) and vemurafenib (Zelboraf) – used for the treatment of patients with metastatic (late stage or advanced) melanoma. Some background Metastatic melanoma (MM) is cancer of the pigmented (colored) cells of the...
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In a nutshell This study presents the results of a phase III clinical trial evaluating the efficacy and safety of the drug trametinib for the treatment of metastatic melanoma patients with BRAF mutations. Some background BRAF is a protein from a chain of proteins in the cell called the MAP kinase pathway. These play a role in cell division and...
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In a nutshell This paper presents the results of a clinical study which looked at the use of a new drug called Bosutinib (Bosulif) for the treatment of breast cancers diagnosed as being stage III or IV. In patients previously treated with chemotherapy, Bosutinib showed promising efficacy in delaying cancer progression. Some background Locally...
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In a nutshell The present study summarized the outcomes of four clinical trials assessing the side-effects reported with sipuleucel-T treatment in patients with prostate cancer. The combined results indicated that this drug is relatively safe with mostly mild to moderate, short-term, and reversible side-effects. Some background As of...
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