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Trial Closes with Another Anti-Angiogenic Drug in Advanced NSCLC

February 28, 2008 - 11:15 pm

  Just last week I described in a prior post the news that a large trial of Nexavar (sorafenib) had been reported as negative in first line advanced NSCLC, and with some evidence of an increased risk of death on the novel agent in combination with chemo in the subset of patients with squamous cell […]

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Exercise in Lung Cancer

February 26, 2008 - 10:32 pm

   Several users on a recent thread have raised questions about whether exercise after surgery or chemo and radiation is harmful, beneficial, or has no effect on outcomes among people with lung cancer.  Unfortunately, this field has so few answers that it’s easy to imagine doctors filling in the void with half-truths or less.  I explained that I […]

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Why See An Oncology Social Worker? by Leah deRoulet

February 24, 2008 - 8:43 am

   Hello again!  Some of you may have wondered why any patient would choose to see an oncology social worker.  I thought I would take this opportunity to explore the top reasons why patients come to see me in the first place.  These are not in any particular order, except for the first one, so […]

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A Primer for Patients on How to Quit Smoking by Guest Expert Dr. Carolyn Dressler

February 22, 2008 - 8:11 pm

I asked Dr. Carolyn Dressler, a terrific expert on nicotine addiction and smoking cessation, to write a general post on how to approach quitting.  She’s actually a lung surgeon who also obtained a Masters in Public Health and now works as Branch Chief for the Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Program for the Arkansas State Governent.  […]

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“SNPs” Help Explain Variability of Outcomes with Chemotherapy

February 20, 2008 - 9:37 pm

   Getting back to the issue of differences in side effects and efficacy of treatments based on differences in individuals and populations, let’s continue the story of how different populations appear to have significant differences in how the do on the same treatment regimen.  In a recent prior post I described the SWOG-Japanese research collaboration […]

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Nexavar (Sorafanib) with Chemo in Front Line Advanced NSCLC Fails to Improve Survival

February 18, 2008 - 4:16 pm

  I’ll get back to the storyline of our growing understanding of the differences of individuals based on pharmacogenomics very soon.   But I wanted to give people some breaking news that just came out.  The first line ESCAPE trial of chemo with the anti-angiogenic and multi-kinase inhibitor nexavar (introductory post here) or placebo is apparently negative […]

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Results with Chemotherapy in Different Racial Populations

February 16, 2008 - 4:56 pm

   While the differences in anticipated clinical benefits from EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors like tarceva and iressa are well known (summarized in prior post), less well appreciated is the potentially significant differences in results with garden variety standard chemotherapy.  These differences are likely to be very relevant as the US has a harder time getting […]

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Racial Differences in Response to EGFR Inhibitors

February 13, 2008 - 9:12 pm

    The issue of population-based differences in response to lung cancer treatments was essentially introduced with the EGFR inhibitors, so it’s appropriate to introduce racial differences overall with this work.  Mention of more favorable results with EGFR inhibitors iressa and tarceva emerged with the earliest clinical studies and have since become a well established truism.  […]

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Intro to Pharmacogenomics: Trying to Understand Differences in Treatment Outcomes

February 10, 2008 - 10:15 pm

   Infused throughout the website is a constant recognition that “patients are different”, but while we know this intuitively, we’re really not moved to a point of individualizing treatment on the basis of this.  There are many lines of clinical research that are moving in that direction, and one of the key elements is pharmacogenomics, […]

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Picoplatin for SCLC: A New Platinum for Salvage Therapy?

February 8, 2008 - 11:07 pm

   Member Wendy asked me about a drug called picoplatin that I had heard of but really didn’t have much familiarity with.  This gave me an occasion to flesh out some background on this agent, which is being developed as a potential therapy for patients previously treated for lung cancer.  Developed by Poniard Pharmaceuticals in South […]

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