A group of Italian researchers has developed a new therapy for the treatment of pleural mesothelioma, a type of cancer against which traditional therapy often have no effect.
Pleural mesothelioma is a cancer that affects the pleura, which is the membrane that surrounds the lungs. The cause of this cancer is mainly due to exposure to asbestos fibers. The course of this disease is often ominous and many patients respond poorly to therapy or anything traditional. Because of these characteristics in Italy more than a thousand people a year die from this cancer. At the World Congress recently held in Chicago on mesothelioma have been presented data on a discovery made by a group of researchers from the Italian Group for Mesothelioma in collaboration with the Cancer Institute of Genoa. The study was conducted at the University of Eastern Piedmont and funded by AIRC. Researchers have developed a new treatment using imatinib (a drug already used for the treatment of some forms of leukemia and two rare cancers) plus chemotherapy able to selectively target mesothelioma cells. In addition to being highly effective, this therapy has proven to be too low toxicity (always a problem to keep in mind especially in anti tumor). These encouraging results have already led to make a clinical pilot study in Italy and the extension of the same to some British centers. The confirmation of the effectiveness of this type of treatment opens up new perspectives that could revolutionize realistically in a few years, the prognosis of patients with mesothelioma.
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