International Study Suggests Carboplatin Could Be First-line Chemotherapy Drug For Ovarian CancerAugust 14, 2002Results of an international study in this week's issue of THE LANCET suggest that the drug carboplatin could become a first-line chemotherapeutic agent for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Carboplatin was found to be less toxic, although it had no overall survival benefit, compared with other drugs assessed in the study. Ovarian cancer is the sixth most common cancer of women worldwide; around 165,000 people are diagnosed with the disease every year, and five-year survival for women with advanced disease is only around 30%. Treatment involves surgery (eg. total hysterectomy or removal of the ovaries) and postoperative chemotherapy. Previous research has shown that both combinations of the chemotherapeutic drugs cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and cisplatin ( known as CAP) and use of carboplatin produce similar survival and progression-free survival rates. More recently, the taxane paclitaxel combined with carboplatin has become a widely accepted treatment for the disease. The International Collaborative Ovarian Neoplasm (ICON) Collaborators, led by Peter Harper, consultant medical oncologist at Guy`s Hospital in London, and Nicoletta Colombo, Associate Professor in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy, aimed to compare the safety and efficacy of paclitaxel plus carboplatin with a control of either CAP or carboplatin alone. The trial was coordinated by the MRC Clinical Trials Unit, London, UK. 2074 women with ovarian cancer from 130 centres in eight countries were randomly assigned paclitaxel plus carboplatin or control, the control (CAP or single-agent carboplatin) being chosen by the patients' physician before randomisation. Average follow-up was just over four years; the average survival (around three years) and average time to disease recurrence (around a year and a half) was similar among all women studied. Those given paclitaxel plus carboplatin had more serious side effects such as alopecia (hair loss), fever, and sensory neuropathy (loss of sensation in the skin) than other treatments. Peter Harper comments: "The results of ICON3 suggest that, up to 5 years from treatment, single-agent carboplatin, CAP, and paclitaxel plus carboplatin are all safe and show similar effectiveness as first-line treatments for women requiring chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. Of these three treatments, carboplatin might be regarded as the preferred treatment because of its better toxicity profile." In an accompanying Commentary (p 500), Martin Tattersall from Sydney University, Australia, refers to previous research which illustrated how patients with advanced ovarian cancer predominantly opted for chemotherapy which offered marginal survival benefit, rather than treatment which could provide better quality of life because of reduced toxicity. He concludes: "The proportion of women with advanced ovarian cancer who have a normal life expectancy remains low despite claims of major progress in treatment in the past few years.13,14 The creation and nurturing of large collaborative clinical trial groups in ovarian cancer will facilitate rapid accrual of the numbers of patients required to document improved outcomes which are possible with the treatment approaches now under evaluation." | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Related Ovarian Cancer Current Events and Ovarian Cancer News Articles International study supports new standard of treatment for women with advanced ovarian cancer Results of a phase III, international randomized clinical trial demonstrate a new standard of care for treating advanced ovarian cancer that significantly reduces side-effects and post-operative deaths compared to the previously established treatment course. Stanford blood scanner detects even faint indicators of cancer A team led by Stanford researchers has developed a prototype blood scanner that can find cancer markers in the bloodstream in early stages of the disease, potentially allowing for earlier treatment and dramatically improved chances of survival. Study unmasks how ovarian tumors evade immune system Scientists at Johns Hopkins have determined how the characteristic shedding of fatty substances, or lipids, by ovarian tumors allows the cancer to evade the body's immune system, leaving the disease to spread unchecked Jefferson Department of Surgery announces new pancreas tumor registry Charles J. Yeo, M.D., Samuel D. Gross Professor and Chair, Department of Surgery at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, announces the establishment of the new Jefferson Pancreas Tumor Registry (JPTR). Disease diagnosis in just 15 minutes Testing for diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis could soon be as simple as using a pregnancy testing kit. Bio-imaging mass spectrometry techniques reveal molecular details about complex systems Understanding biology at the systems level is difficult, especially when studying complex specimens like tissue slices or communities of organisms in a biofilm. Scientists must be able to identify, quantify and locate the molecules present in the samples. Jefferson scientists deliver toxic genes to effectively kill pancreatic cancer cells A research team, led by investigators at the Department of Surgery at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson, has achieved a substantial "kill" of pancreatic cancer cells by using nanoparticles to successfully deliver a deadly diphtheria toxin gene. Promising new treatment option for women with recurrent ovarian cancer Combining the new drug trabectedin with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin provides clinical benefit to women with relapsed ovarian cancer, according to new results presented at the 33rd Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Stockholm. Risk of breast cancer mutations underestimated for Asian women, Stanford study shows Oncologist Allison Kurian, MD, and her colleagues at the Stanford University School of Medicine were perplexed. Computer models designed to identify women who might have dangerous genetic mutations that increase their risk of breast and ovarian cancer worked well for white women. But they seemed to be less reliable for another ethnic group. Cryopreservation techniques bring hopes for women cancer victims and endangered species Emerging cryopreservation techniques are increasing hope of restoring fertility for women after diseases such as ovarian cancer that lead to destruction of reproductive tissue. More Ovarian Cancer Current Events and Ovarian Cancer News Articles |
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