oncology – Senator Medical AB

What is Electrochemotherapy for cancer treatment?

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 14:47:06 +0000

Electrochemotherapy (ECT) is a type of cancer treatment that combines the use of chemotherapy drugs with specifically generated electric pulses.

The electric pulse temporarily increases the permeability of the cell membrane, allowing the chemotherapy drug molecules to enter the cancer cells more easily.

Here are four key features of ECT:

Targeted delivery: The electric pulse is delivered directly to the tumor, which helps to limit the exposure of healthy tissue to the chemotherapy drugs. This can help to reduce side effects and improve the overall effectiveness of the treatment.
Synergy with chemotherapy drugs: ECT has been shown to be more effective at killing cancer cells than chemotherapy alone. By increasing the amount of chemotherapy drug that enters the cancer cells, ECT can boost the overall effectiveness of the treatment.
Minimally invasive: ECT is a minimally invasive procedure that does not require surgery. This can make it a good option for patients who are not candidates for surgery or for those who are recovering from surgery.
Localized treatment: ECT is typically used as a localized treatment for small, accessible tumors. It is not a systemic treatment and does not affect the entire body like a systemic chemotherapy would. This can be a good option for tumors that are hard to remove surgically or that have spread to other parts of the body.

The safety and efficacy of ECT has been studied and proven through several international studies and its being brought into increasing number of international cancer treatment guidelines and protocols.

For further information, please do not hesitate to contact me or read more on our website: www.OnMed.se

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

Reference Article

Who can take benefit of Electrochemotherapy? Simply explained!

admin — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 13:39:48 +0000

What is electrochemotherapy?

Electrochemotherapy is a way of getting specific chemotherapy drug into cancer cells.

It is a combination of:

Chemotherapy injected into the tumour or bloodstream
Aan electric pulse to send the chemotherapy into the cancer cells (called electroporation)

A special probe sends an electric pulse to the tumour. The electric pulse changes the outer layer of the cancer cell. This makes it easier for the chemotherapy to get inside the cell.

Who can have electrochemotherapy?

Doctors use electrochemotherapy for cancers that started in the skin or have spread to the skin from elsewhere. These include:

Basal and squamous cell skin cancers
Melanoma skin cancer
Kaposi’s sarcoma
Breast cancer that has spread to the skin
Head and neck cancers that have spread to the skin

Electrochemotherapy has been approved by many of European Health Authorities including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a possible treatment to relieve symptoms for people with cancers affecting their skin. It can help to control symptoms when other treatments are no longer working.

Most people who have this treatment have shown improvement in their symptoms. How much it helps varies from one person to another. You might need more than one treatment to control your symptoms.

Research is looking into finding out more about how well it works and which patients it can help.

Having electrochemotherapy

You usually have electrochemotherapy as a day patient. But occasionally people need to stay in hospital overnight. You will have either a general anaesthetic, so you are asleep, or you might have a local anaesthetic with a drug to make you sleepy (sedation).

You have chemotherapy as either:

An injection into the tumour (intratumoural)
An injection into your bloodstream through a small tube (intravenously)

The type of chemotherapy you might have is either Cisplatin or Bleomycin. You have much lower dose than with standard chemotherapy treatment. This is because the electric pulse helps the chemotherapy get through the cell wall. Lower doses of chemotherapy mean fewer side effects.

Injection into the tumour

You might have this treatment awake with a local anasethetic to numb the area or you might be asleep (general anasethetic).

First you have an injection of local anaesthetic to numb the area. The doctor then injects the chemotherapy and you have the electric pulse immediately afterwards.

Injection into a vein

You usually need to have this while you are asleep, under general anaesthetic.

You have the chemotherapy into a vein. Then eight minutes later, you have the electric pulse to the tumour.

The electric pulse comes from a special machine. Attached to the machine is a probe. The probe is the size of a large pen and has an electrode on it. The doctor puts the electrode against your skin to deliver an electric pulse to the tumour.

Your whole treatment can take between 10 and 60 minutes, depending on how many tumours you have.

Side effects of electrochemotherapy

The main side effect is pain in the area where the electrode touches the skin. This is usually mild and lasts for a couple of days. More rarely some people have more severe pain that can last between two and four weeks. Your doctor or clinical nurse specialist will give you some painkillers if you need them.

Some people have muscle contractions during the treatment. Your doctor can slightly alter the way they give treatment if this is uncomfortable. You may also feel sick but this is usually mild and you can have anti sickness medicines. Infection in the area you have treatment is rare. Tell your doctor if you notice the area has become redder, swollen, painful or if there is any discharge.

You might notice the colour of your skin changes where you had treatment. It might be darker or lighter. This usually fades with time but can be permanent for some people.

The area where you have treatment can form an ulcer or the skin might breakdown. If this happens you will need a nurse to dress it until it heals. This might take a couple of weeks.

Research into electrochemotherapy

So far, researchers have used electrochemotherapy to control symptoms of advanced skin cancers when other treatments aren’t working.

In the future, researchers hope that electrochemotherapy could become a treatment for early skin cancers. But we need to compare it with the current standard treatments and this can take many years.

Researchers are also looking into using electric pulses to treat cancers in body cavities. These include early bladder cancers and cancers in the chest. This treatment in body cavities is called electromotive drug administration.

Reference: Cancer Research, UK, 2019

Focus shift: Breast Cancer from treatment to prevention

admin — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 08:55:00 +0000

If protective measures were widely adopted, they could significantly reduce women’s chances of ever getting breast cancer.

Efforts to reduce deaths from breast cancer in women have long focused on early detection and post-surgical treatment with drugs, radiation or both to help keep the disease at bay. And both of these approaches, used alone or together, have resulted in a dramatic reduction in breast cancer mortality in recent decades.

The average five-year survival rate is now 90 percent, and even higher — 99 percent — if the cancer is confined to the breast, or 85 percent if it has spread to regional lymph nodes.

Yet, even though a steadily growing percentage of women now survive breast cancer, the disease still frightens many women and their loved ones. It affects one woman in eight and remains their second leading cancer killer, facts that suggest at least equal time should be given to what could be an even more effective strategy:

Prevention

Long-term studies involving tens of thousands of women have highlighted many protective measures that, if widely adopted, could significantly reduce women’s chances of ever getting breast cancer. Even the techniques now used to screen for possible breast cancer can help identify those women who might be singled out for special protective measures.

Reference & entire original article at The New York Times

September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness month

admin — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 08:28:42 +0000

What is Ovarian Cancer?

Ovarian cancer is a disease in which, depending on the type and stage of the disease, malignant (cancerous) cells are found inside, near, or on the outer layer of the ovaries. An ovary is one of two small, almond-shaped organs located on each side of the uterus that store eggs, or germ cells, and produce female hormones estrogen and progesterone.

Cancer Basics

Cancer develops when abnormal cells in a part of the body (in this case, the ovary) begin to grow uncontrollably. This abnormal cell growth is common among all cancer types.

Normally, cells in your body divide and form new cells to replace worn out or dying cells, and to repair injuries. Because cancer cells continue to grow and divide, they are different from normal cells. Instead of dying, they outlive normal cells and continue to create new abnormal cells, forming a tumor. Tumors can put pressure on other organs near the ovaries.

Cancer cells can sometimes travel to other parts of the body, where they begin to grow and replace normal tissue. This process, called metastasis, occurs as the cancer cells move into the bloodstream or lymph system of the body. Cancer cells that spread from other organ sites (such as breast or colon) to the ovary are not considered ovarian cancer. Cancer type is determined by the original site of the malignancy.

What is the general outlook for women diagnosed with ovarian cancer?

In women ages 35-74, ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths. An estimated one woman in 78 will develop ovarian cancer during her lifetime. The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be over 22,280 new cases of ovarian cancer diagnosed this year and that more than 14,240 women will die from ovarian cancer this year.

When one is diagnosed and treated in the earliest stages, the five-year survival rate is over 90 percent. Due to ovarian cancer’s non-specific symptoms and lack of early detection tests, about 20 percent of all cases are found early, meaning in stage I or II. If caught in stage III or higher, the survival rate can be as low as 28 percent. Due to the nature of the disease, each woman diagnosed with ovarian cancer has a different profile and it is impossible to provide a general prognosis.

Reference: NOCC

WHO warning: E-cigarettes won’t help in reducing cancer

admin — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 09:38:53 +0000

No evidence to justify their claim according to World Health Organization (WHO)

Electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products are not helping fight cancer, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says, urging smokers and governments not to trust claims from cigarette firms about their latest products.

The seventh “WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic” said blocking the industry’s interference was critical to cutting the harm from tobacco use.

“The tobacco industry has a long history of systemic, aggressive, sustained and well-resourced opposition to tobacco control measures,” the report said.

“While some strategies are public and others more covert, all have the goal of weakening tobacco control.”

The report said tobacco giant Philip Morris International was trying to position itself as a responsible public health partner via its “Unsmoke” campaign, which encourages people to “change to a better alternative”.

The WHO said the campaign aimed to ensure tobacco remained socially acceptable, while confusing consumers with terms such as “smoke-free products”, which may refer to products with toxic emissions and unknown short-term and long-term health effects.

Philip Morris spokesman Ryan Sparrow said the WHO’s message made it harder to provide safer options for people who cannot quit smoking.

“There is no question that the best choice for smokers is to quit cigarettes and nicotine altogether. The reality is many people do not. We cannot turn our backs on them,” he said. “Organisations like the World Health Organisation need to stop talking at smokers and start listening.”

The WHO report said the industry hoped to win respectability through manipulative messages such as claiming their products were part of a “harm reduction” strategy, even though cigarettes still account for 97 per cent of the global tobacco market.

Vinayak Prasad, program manager of WHO’s tobacco control unit, said development of new products was solely intended to expand the markets of tobacco firms.

“There is no difference between cigarettes and heated tobacco products except that in terms of exposure: the exposure is less and the smoke is not visible,” he said.

Electronic cigarettes, containing nicotine but not tobacco, were promoted as a way to quit smoking. But there was no evidence to justify the claim, and evidence from the United States showed they had increased the prevalence of young people smoking, he said.

“So it’s also a gateway for young people,” Prasad said.

“The answer is it needs to be regulated. WHO has clear guidelines – to get electronic cigarettes regulated. And if you are banning it, fine, but if you aren’t banning it don’t let it (go) free in the market, because the young people are taking it up.”

Reference: WHO, 7news

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

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.

How to choose a cancer specialist?

admin — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 10:01:48 +0000

Its a confusing question, specially if you are under stress or time pressure

Nuclear Medicine and Imaging: Imaging such as MRI, PET CT, CT Scan creates pictures of soft tissue parts of the body that are sometimes hard to see using other imaging tests. MRI is very good at finding and pinpointing some cancers. An MRI with contrast dye is the best way to see the brain and spinal cord tumors. Using MRI, doctors can sometimes even tell if a tumor is or isn’t cancer.

A PET CT Scan can often help with diagnosing and staging as early spread or metastasis as cancer cells containing glucose and light up and show up in a scan. This often helps with diagnosis even in cases where a tumor is not seen in an MRI or a CT scan.

Targetted therapies such as MIBG, PRRT, Alpha Therapy, Radio Iodine Therapy for Thyroid cancer come under the scope of a Nuclear Medicine Specialist.

Pathology and Hematopathology: A pathologist plays a critical role in cancer diagnosis and can confirm if the tumor is cancerous or noncancerous and if cancerous, he can confirm the type of cancer. Chemotherapy, drugs and other treatment protocols are often decided post staging and knowing the tumor type.

A Hematopathologist takes a look at the peripheral smear and the bone marrow and helps in diagnosing blood cancer.

Precision medicine means administering chemotherapy and other treatment protocols based on tumor type and knowing which drug will be able to target the mutation better.

Medical Oncologist: A medical oncologist prescribes chemotherapy, targetted therapy, immunotherapy, and other treatment protocols. He is the one to treat metastatic cancer with radiation oncologists or his own team.

Surgical Oncologist: A surgical oncologist takes care of cancer surgeries and removes the tumor or the diseased part for cancers which can be operated upon.

Within surgical oncology, there are specialists for Head and Neck cancer surgeries, GI( Gastro-intestinal) cancer specialists, Breast Cancer, Gynae-Oncology, Uro-oncologists( who take of urological cancers such as bladder cancer, prostate cancer, and kidney cancer), Ortho-onco surgeons( for bone cancers) and neurosurgeons( brain and spinal tumors)

Radiation Oncologists: Radiation oncologists are the ones to administer radiation such as IGRT, IMRT, SBRT, to cancer patients to help control localized cancers, or cancers spread to the bone, locally advanced cancers or cancers not receptive to chemotherapy

Hemato–oncologists: A hemato-oncologist takes care of liquid cancers, blood cancers such as Leukemia, Lymphomas, Multiple Myelomas. He is the one responsible for doing a bone marrow transplant, often a curative option for many blood cancers.

Reference: see more HERE