After chemo for recurrent ovarian cancer, oral maintenance therapy with an inhibitor of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) has shown benefits in women with platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer. According to a recent research review publication, the advantage of this special treatment was specifically obvious in patients with the BRCA mutation. BRCA anomalies can be considered either a […]

This post Ovarian cancer treatment with PARP inhibitors after recurrence first appeared on Gynecologic Oncology Institute | Robotic Surgery | Integrative Healing and is written by Dr Steve Vasilev MD

from Gynecologic Oncology Institute | Robotic Surgery | Integrative Healing https://www.gynecologiconcologyinstitute.org/news/ovarian-cancer/ovarian-cancer-treatment-with-parp-inhibitors-after-recurrence/
via Gynecologic Oncology Institute

from Gynecologic Oncology Institute https://gynecologiconcologyinstitute.tumblr.com/post/647486364901949440
via Frank Herd

The Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) annual meeting, held virtually again this year, had investigators report some very interesting new research developments.  A partial list of pivotal data being presented is included below, but listen in to the highlights from the ASSO Post embedded below.  Another important finding is summarized in the following video: Pivotal […]

This post Society of Gynecologic Oncology 2021 Annual Meeting News first appeared on Gynecologic Oncology Institute | Robotic Surgery | Integrative Healing and is written by Dr Steve Vasilev MD

from Gynecologic Oncology Institute | Robotic Surgery | Integrative Healing https://www.gynecologiconcologyinstitute.org/news/uncategorized/society-of-gynecologic-oncology-2021-annual-meeting-news/
via Gynecologic Oncology Institute

from Gynecologic Oncology Institute https://gynecologiconcologyinstitute.tumblr.com/post/646689869401407488
via Frank Herd

The life of a woman with terminal breast cancer has been saved by a pioneering new therapy, say US researchers.

It involved pumping 90 billion cancer-killing immune cells into her body.

Judy Perkins had been given three months to live, but two years later there is no sign of cancer in her body.

The team at the US National Cancer Institute says the therapy is still experimental, but could transform the treatment of all cancer.

Judy – who lives in Florida – had spreading, advanced breast cancer that could not be treated with conventional therapy.

She had tennis ball-sized tumours in her liver and secondary cancers throughout her body.

She told the BBC: “About a week after [the therapy] I started to feel something, I had a tumour in my chest that I could feel shrinking.

“It took another week or two for it to completely go away.”

She remembers her first scan after the procedure when the medical staff “were all very excited and jumping around”.

It was then she was told that she was likely to be cured.

Now she’s filling her life with backpacking and sea kayaking and has just taken five weeks circumnavigating Florida.

Living therapy
The technology is a “living drug” made from a patient’s own cells at one of the world’s leading centres of cancer research.

Dr Steven Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute, told the BBC: “We’re talking about the most highly personalised treatment imaginable.”

It remains experimental and still requires considerably more testing before it can be used more widely, but this is how it works: it starts by getting to know the enemy.

A patient’s tumour is genetically analysed to identify the rare changes that might make the cancer visible to the immune system.

Out of the 62 genetic abnormalities in this patient, only four were potential lines of attack.

Next researchers go hunting. A patient’s immune system will already be attacking the tumour, it’s just losing the fight between white blood cells and cancer.

The scientists screen the patient’s white blood cells and extract those capable of attacking the cancer.

These are then grown in huge quantities in the laboratory.

Around 90 billion were injected back into the 49-year-old patient, alongside drugs to take the brakes off the immune system.

Dr Rosenberg told me: “The very mutations that cause cancer turn out to be its Achilles heel.”

Read More: ‘Remarkable’ therapy beats terminal breast cancer