Lots of hype – as there is every year – from this year’s
annual meeting of ASCO meeting, the American Society for Clinical Oncology, the
cancer docs.
And for once, some of this may hype may be justified
although as always time alone will tell.
One neat study that will nearly surely lead to early therapy
changes, though, this one in how advanced prostate cancer is treated, concluded
that early introduction of chemotherapy is the way to go for aggressive
prostate cancers rather than what we do now which is to wait till other
therapeutic modalities have run their course before introducing chemotherapy.
Chemotherapy can of course be very difficult to handle but
if it really does extend life by many months – in this study by an average of
14 - then I’m sure this new data will result in new protocols that lots of men
will choose to follow.
The other hype concerned immunotherapy for cancer, that
is, turning the body’s own immune system against cancer growths, and although
this is also a potentially difficult treatment to adjust to, again there was
data to show marked improvement in prognoses for several difficult-to-treat
cancers such as advanced malignant melanomas, bladder cancer, and cervical
cancer.
Just let’s hope the hype pans out for once.
