Mesothelioma Experimental Therapies as Part of the Mesothelioma Research
Over the last century the number of mesothelioma diagnoses have risen steadily, with the numbers expected to peak in the year 2020. Since the days since the first case of mesothelioma was diagnosed, medical treatments and knowledge about the illness have made tremendous strides, and the disease has gone from one that scientists knew little about to one that has a clear cause and several courses of treatment that have been able to offer patients both relief of their pain and an extension of their disease-shortened life expectancy. Advocates on behalf of mesothelioma research have been extremely successful at lobbying lawmakers to invest public funds for mesothelioma research, and as more and more people become familiar with the disease mesothelioma organizations have been able to raise substantial private funds for the advancement of our understanding of this disease.
Since research revealed that asbestos was the single cause of mesothelioma, tremendous efforts have been made towards preventing people from being exposed to this material. More recent research has been devoted to determining exactly what the mechanism is that makes asbestos exposure mutate the mesotheliomal cells. These studies have focused on a number of different areas, including genetics and different forms of treatment.
In terms of genetic research, scientists are trying to determine exactly what it is in a particular person’s genetic makeup and their DNA that turns a normal cell into a mutated one that becomes cancer. From a treatment perspective, there are several different approaches that are being pursued by researchers; many of them are being attempted through mesothelioma experimental therapies. These include:
· Chemotherapy
Though chemotherapy has long-been used in the treatment of mesothelioma, it has had limited success, but recent research into new chemotherapy drugs has shown great promise. There has also been extensive research into using chemotherapy in a targeted way while in the midst of mesothelioma surgery, pouring a heated chemotherapy drug directly into the affected body cavity so that it works directly on the cancer without having a deleterious impact on
the healthy cells throughout the rest of the body.
· Targeted Drugs
Targeted drugs are a new class of drugs that seek out diseased cells and only deliver their dose when they are near those cells. These cells reduce the negative side effects that chemotherapeutic drugs carry.
· Photodynamic Therapy
This is another form of targeted therapy. Photodynamic drugs are impotent when they are first put into the body. These drugs tend travel to cancer cells and collect near them, and are then made potent through exposure to a specific light. This process avoids damage to healthy cells, allowing the medication that kills cancer cells to work in an extremely potent and directed way.
· Other research is being done revolving around the idea of the use of gene therapy, which would send virus cells armed with cancer killers into the body; also under discussion is the use of a cancer vaccine that makes the body turn on cancer cells, killing them but leaving healthy cells intact. As more funding is raised for mesothelioma research, more and more discoveries will be made.