Cancer Treatments / Symptoms & Support
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We’ve been talking about the potentially relevant molecular markers for EGFR, and the importance of EGFR as a cancer target (see prior post), without really describing what these markers are. There are three main aspects of EGFR biology that have been studied for their potential predictive value in consideration of EGFR inhibitor therapy, whether the [...]
1 Comments The topic of what is EGFR is one that really deserves to have been covered here from the beginning, but somehow I skipped to the drugs and what they do in cancer patients. It’s time to take a step back and discuss EGFR and why it’s been an important target in cancer.
EGFR stands for [...]
There’s a class of drugs that are being studied in fighting cancer, known as mTOR inhibitors. mTOR stands for mammalian target of rapamycin, which is an immunosuppressant drug that also has anti-fungal activity, but which was also found to have anti-proliferative activity (keeping cells from growing and dividing), which suggesed that it could have useful [...]
0 CommentsThe leading side effect of EGFR inhibitors, both the oral tyrosine kinase inhibitors (such as tarceva (erlotinib)) and the IV monoclonal antibodies (such as erbitux (cetuximab)), is rash, dryness, and other skin side effects. While a rash sounds modest to many people compared to many of the leading problems with chemo, [...]
4 CommentsAs I’ve described in various posts about targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), one of the main signals that is important in many lung cancers, there are agents like gefitinib (iressa) and erlotinib (tarceva) that target the internal switch that triggers activity inside the cell, and there are agents like cetuximab [...]
2 CommentsWe’ve been following the development of a drug called Zactima (also known as ZD6474, or vandetanib) for over a year as it continues to be studied in lung cancer, and the work continues. As first discussed in my initial post on this agent, this agent actually inhibits BOTH VEGF and EGFR (in fact, the [...]
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