Topical therapy can help safely reduce side effect of cancer treatment
Patients with advanced colorectal cancer may be spared from a toxic side effect caused by a type of targeted therapy used to treat the cancer with the help of another drug normally used to treat melanoma, according to a study led by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
For the past decade, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitors have helped prolong the lives of patients with many advanced cancers, including cancers in the lung, head and neck, colorectal, breast, bladder and pancreas. While these targeted therapy drugs are highly effective at keeping the cancer at bay, they can cause patients to develop acneiform lesions, a type of skin rash that looks like acne bumps and frequently leads to impaired quality of life and drug discontinuation.
April 29, 2021
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Pamela Hieronymi, a philosophy professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who researches moral responsibility and free will, pointed to the ethical theory of “contractualism” as a good framework. “We know we all have to find a way to get along, and that we all have to constrain our pursuits in light of other people,” she said. “So contractualism asks: ‘What rules would we all agree to if each person gets a symmetric say?’”
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LOS ANGELES - Patients with advanced colorectal cancer may be spared from a toxic side effect caused by a type of targeted therapy used to treat the cancer with the help of another drug normally used to treat melanoma, according to a study led by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
For the past decade, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitors have helped prolong the lives of patients with many advanced cancers, including cancers in the lung, head and neck, colorectal, breast, bladder and pancreas. While these targeted therapy drugs are highly effective at keeping the cancer at bay, they can cause patients to develop acneiform lesions, a type of skin rash that looks like acne bumps and frequently leads to impaired quality of life and drug discontinuation.
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Patients with untreated advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) cancer lived longer without disease progression with the addition of a fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) inhibitor to chemotherapy, a randomized trial showed.
Median progression-free survival (PFS) increased from 7.4 months with chemotherapy alone to 9.5 months with bemarituzumab. The size of the PFS benefit increased with levels of FGFR2b expression. Median overall survival (OS) was 12.9 months with chemotherapy and not yet reached in patients who also received the FGFR2b inhibitor.
Adverse events (AEs) that occurred more often with bemarituzumab included stomatitis and ocular effects, particularly corneal AEs, reported Zev Wainberg, MD, of the University of California Los Angeles, at the Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium virtual meeting.