Pharmaceuticals – Senator Medical AB

Four Things Patients with Cancer Should Know About Coronavirus 2020

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 13:56:48 +0000

Here are the four key things that patients with cancer need to know as they prepare for the corona-virus:

Take Preventive Measures Like You Normally Would
Make Sure You Get the Flu Shot
Only Testing Can Determine If You Have Corona-virus
Cancer Drugs Manufactured Overseas Are Okey

Increase of survival & immunoresponse enhancement with ElectroChemotherapy in Lung & Colorectal cancer in mural models-2019

admin — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 09:43:07 +0000

Electrochemotherapy

Is an emerging treatment modality for cancer patients which can effectively reduce tumour burden and induce immunogenic cell death. Electrochemotherapy is most commonly used with bleomycin as the drug of choice, here we examine the efficacy of electrochemotherapy with cisplatin. Electrochemotherapy with cisplatin was found to effectively reduce tumour growth in a range of murine models and induce significant intratumoural recruitment of myeloid and humoral immune cells. Following the observations of immune system mobilisation, we have shown an ability of electrochemotherapy to reduce metastatic potential as determined by tumour burden in the lung, and to exert an abscopal effect by reducing growth at distal untreated secondary tumours.

What drugs are being used most in ElectroChemotherapy? Bleomycin & Cisplatin

Highlights

• ECT with cisplatin is an effective form of therapy showing significant decrease in cancer cell growth in vitro and in vivo.•

• Immune cell mobilisation is visible locally and systemically following treatment.•

• ECT with cisplatin may be useful in reducing the growth of distal untreated growth and controlling metastatic disease.

Read the entire article on this LINK

Reference:

Cancer Letters

Volume 442, 1 February 2019, Pages 475-482

Our LinkedIn Corporate page- Follow us to get latest healthcare industry news immediately & free of charge!

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 08:08:08 +0000

Follow our company page on LinkedIn to see some of latest updates within healthcare industry and medical devices/pharmaceuticals business:

Senator Medical AB

#LinkedIn #Thanksgiving

Economy of Cancer-CANCER IS EXPENSIVE!!

admin — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 15:39:05 +0000

Not a week goes by that I don’t see a blog or Facebook post asking how to help a friend with cancer. People often suggest many tangible things, but rarely money. Given our focus on the financial side of cancer this month, I’d like to clear up some things and provide a suggestion.

There aren’t many one size fits all ways to help someone going through treatment. Cooking meals is nice for some, but others may not be up to or able to eat (mouth sores can really make it hard to get down a meatloaf). Some people would love a snugly pair of pajamas, while for others this is just a reminder of their illness. In the end, asking the person what they need is usually best.

There is one thing that almost all people going through cancer treatment will experience: cancer is EXPENSIVE. You may think having health insurance means patients and families do not need to worry about the cost of care. But even those with “good insurance” will undoubtedly feel the financial hold of cancer treatment. There are so many expenses not covered by insurance, that any financial help would be appreciated by most patients and caregivers. Here are just a few examples of the unexpected costs of cancer:

Surprise! Medicare doesn’t pay the whole bill! It is an 80/20 split – with the patient paying 20% of the bill. At several thousand dollars a chemotherapy treatment, that adds up quickly.
Co-pays, co-pays, co-pays. You know that $25 you pay when you see your PCP for a cold? Multiply that by a lot – every doctor visit, every radiology test, every blood draw and chemo infusion. And don’t even get me started on deductibles!
The cost of gas and parking add up quickly too. If the patient ends up in the hospital for a period, add on daily parking costs for the caregiver and money to eat while there.
Job related costs – maybe the person cannot work and has to take time off without pay. This may be true for the caregiver as well. Perhaps they have to pay for COBRA to maintain their health insurance on top of that.
Dependent care costs – this could be added childcare expenses or for the care of an elderly parent. Maybe the patient is usually the babysitter but can no longer reliably provide this care.

Reference: Oncolink

Which Cancer Therapies Fall Under Immunotherapy Protocols?

admin — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 11:49:05 +0000

Adoptive Cell Transfer Therapy (ACT)

ACT is a type of immunotherapy which helps the body fight disease through the presence of T-Cells. T-cells are lymphocytes which play an integral role in the immune response. T-cells are found in the patient’s blood and tissue, grown in a laboratory environment, and then re-infused into the patient. ACT is also referred to as: adoptive cell transfer, cellular adoptive immunotherapy, and T-cell transfer therapy.

Checkpoint Inhibitors

Checkpoint inhibitors are drugs that block certain proteins that restrain T-cells from attacking cancer cells. When these proteins are blocked, the T-cells are unleashed to attack cancer cells more effectively.

Monoclonal Antibodies (MABs)

Monoclonal antibodies (MABs) are produced in a laboratory and they can enhance the body’s natural mechanisms to attack cancer cells. There are different types of MABs and they function in various ways to treat cancer including: blocking cell growth, triggering an immune system response, directly attacking cancer cells, etc.

Treatment Vaccines

Cancer treatment vaccines stimulate the immune system to identify and destroy cancer cells that have cancer-specific antigens on their surface. The vaccines can help destroy cancer cells, prevent the return of cancer, and/or halt the growth of a cancerous tumor.

Cytokines

Cytokines are proteins made by the body’s immune cells. Cytokine therapy may help the immune system attack cancerous cells. The two main types of cytokines used to treat cancer are interleukins and interferons.

Reference: Oncology Specialists of Charlotte

Good news! Death rates for breast cancer have been falling on average 1.8% each year over 2007-2016.

admin — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 06:53:20 +0000

Latest cancer statistics show a great progress in 2019

Number of New Cases and Deaths per 100,000: The number of new cases of female breast cancer was 127.5 per 100,000 women per year. The number of deaths was 20.6 per 100,000 women per year. These rates are age-adjusted and based on 2012-2016 cases and deaths.

Lifetime Risk of Developing Cancer: Approximately 12.8 percent of women will be diagnosed with female breast cancer at some point during their lifetime, based on 2014-2016 data.

Prevalence of This Cancer: In 2016, there were an estimated 3,477,866 women living with female breast cancer in the United States.

Read the entire article from National Cancer Institute WEBSITE

Comparative Article from AdLanda: Best Buy Omega 3/Fish oil products to buy in 2019

admin — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 14:13:18 +0000

AdLanda , “Tio i Topp” just published an interesting & comparative article on best Omega 3/fish oil products of 2019

Omega-3 Supplements Guide: What we buy and why

Omega-3 fatty acids are very important for health.

That the best way to get enough is to eat foods that are rich in omega-3 , such as oily fish .

If you do not eat a lot of oily fish, you might want to consider taking a supplement.

However, there are hundreds of different omega-3 supplements available. Not everyone has the same health benefits .

This detailed guide explains everything you need to know about omega-3 supplements .

Omega-3s come in several forms

Fish oil comes in both natural and processed forms.

Processing can affect the fatty acid form. This is important, as some forms are absorbed better than others.

Fish: The fish are omega-3 fatty acids present as free fatty acids, phospholipids and triglycerides.
Fish oil: In conventional fish oils are omega-3 fatty acids are mostly present as triglycerides.
Processed fish oil: When fish oils are processed, either to purify or concentrate them, they become the ethyl esters which are not found in nature.
Reformed triglycerides: the ethyl esters of processed fish oils can be converted back to triglycerides, which are then called “reformed” triglycerides.

All these forms have health benefits, but studies have shown that the absorption of omega-3 from ethyl esters are not as good as other forms.

As a rule of thumb, the absorption of omega-3 in the form of free fatty acids (mostly in food) greater than 50% triglycerides, and absorption of triglycerides is 50% larger than the ethyl esters.

Read the entire article here on www.AdLanda.se

How Viruses Are Being Used to Fight Cancer?

admin — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 15:21:59 +0000

The viruses that cause measles, polio, herpes and the common cold are being genetically engineered to fight certain aggressive cancers.

VIRUSES CAN UNDOUBTEDLY be very dangerous, but while they are well known to cause devastating illnesses, a wide variety of them – including measles, polio, herpes and the adenovirus – have recently been used to treat cancer, especially aggressive types. Oncolytic virotherapy is an emerging treatment, with major institutions investing research and time into fine-tuning this therapy.

In 2015, researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas genetically modified the adenovirus, which can cause the common cold, to help treat Glioblastoma Multiforme, a very aggressive brain tumor. Malignant gliomas are both the most common and most lethal type of central nervous system tumors, with glioblastoma being the most aggressive subtype. The current standard of care involves a combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, but even with this treatment these tumors remain incredibly fatal, and after second-line therapy there is currently no standard of care.

How are viruses being used to fight cancer?

The virus is engineered to leave healthy tissue cells alone and target proteins that exist only in the cancer cells. Once the virus detects the particular protein, it replicates continuously until it fills the cancer cells and causes it to explode. After the cancer cell bursts, the unleashed viruses find their way to other cancer cells and the process continues. If the cancer comes back, the virus will recognize it and attack it. In another approach, once the immune system has encountered the engineered virus, it can identify cancer cells that contain the modified virus and destroy them – that is, a cancer cell that was initially able to escape detection by the immune system can now be recognized and eliminated.

What viruses are being used to help treat cancer?

Duke University has used an oncolytic virus to treat Glioblastoma Multiforme by inserting a live, genetically modified polio virus into brain tumors via a catheter. The adapted virus, without the part that causes the viral disease, penetrates the cancer cells and spark an immune response to attack the cancer cells. The rate of overall survival of patients treated with this at 24 months was 21%, compared to 4% in the general population group.

The herpes virus Talimogene Laherparepvec (also known as TVEC) is used to treat melanoma and is currently FDA approved. It is genetically engineered to help shrink the tumor and then activate the immune system to continue to recognize and destroy cancer cells. Unlike other cancer treatments that use viruses, this oncolytic virus is genetically engineered to includegranulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor to help draw immune cells to the tumor. This can further enhance the response of our immune system to fight these once unrecognizable cells.

Most recently a strain of the common cold virus, cocksackie virus (CVA21), has been used to attack and kill bladder cancer cells by triggering a protein that triggers an immune response. In a study, 15 patients at the University of Surrey in England were given the cocksackie virus one week prior to surgery through a catheter. When the tumor samples were analyzed after surgery there was evidence that the virus had targeted and killed some of the bladder cancer cells in all 15 of the patients, with no significant side effects. Once those cancer cells had died, the virus then infiltrated and attacked other cancer cells, leaving the healthy ones intact.

Read the original article HERE

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Electrochemotherapy in Veterinary Oncology

admin — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 10:43:39 +0000

Cancer cases-Veterinary sector

Achieving local tumor control in veterinary patients with cancer affected by solid neoplasms represents one of the major challenges for veterinary oncologists, frequently due to late referrals or rapid tumor growth.This clinical presentation often prevents the achievement of local control with surgery alone, needing a multimodality approach involving adjuvant therapies, such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or electrochemotherapy (ECT).

KEYWORDS

Bleomycin
Carcinoma
Cisplatin
Electroporation & Electrochemotherapy
Mast cell tumor
Pets
Sarcoma

KEY POINTS

The cell membrane is the major obstacle to be overcome by chemotherapy agents in order to reach their biological targets. This is especially true for lipophobic agents like Bleomycin.
Electroporation is a technique that greatly increases the uptake of such drugs by tumors. The combination of permeabilizing pulses and chemotherapy is called electrochemotherapy (ECT).
Electrochemotherapy has been successfully used in combination with Bleomycin and Cisplatin to treat solid tumors such as carcinoma, sarcoma, and hematologic malignancies such as mast cell tumor.
Novel applications include the treatment of visceral tumors under ultrasonographic guidance and the delivery of molecular compounds such as oligonucleotides, plasmids, and small proteins.

Immunotherapy for cancer-simply explained

admin — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 08:15:22 +0000

“Immunotherapy for cancer” is a new treatment modality that aims to empower patient’s own immune system to fight against cancer.

Despite it initially looks, CANCER is actually a genetic disorder. There are several consecutive series of mutations which must happen in advance of a cancer cell develops.

Typically this requires 6 – 10 mutations in the cells which causes losing cancer regulation checkpoints in the process. Usually the process needs a long time, which should explain why most cancers appear in old ages and even after a long while from quitting the smoking or drinking alcohol.

Our immune system is usually capable of spotting a mutated cell and destroying it before it grows and mutates even further.

In other words, some mutations are simply too complicated for our immune system to be discovered and destroyed. The Immune system then needs an extra “booster”, to enhance their radar for spotting cancer cells. This are where immunotherapy drugs (like Nivolumab, Ipilimumab, Blincyto, etc.) come to the picture and work.

At the moment this is quite a new therapy method and grows increasingly fast (Nobel prize 2018 was about the same!). We as an experienced player in international level within oncology sector are very much interested to enhance permeability of these expensive molecules into cancer cells. This can save a lot by using lower dosage of immunotherapy medicines for having the same clinical outcome.

It can also potentially help to prevent cancer in high risk patient groups. Utilizing electricity and electroporation is something that might be considered as a route for such and we are welcoming international research centers to work hand in hand against cancer.

Having that said, we hope high, because with all these methods we might not be that far from curing cancer.