Many new cancer drugs are entering clinical practice and clinical trials. Many GIST patients are no longer responding to Gleevec or Sutent and thus are looking for clinical trials. Understanding strategies and grouping these new drugs into classes with other similar drugs may help patients understand some of their choices.
An agreement to secure the entry of Gleevec for Guatemalan GIST and chronic myeloid leukemia patients was reached with the Central American country’s government July 10, following advocacy efforts by Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Alianza GIST and [...]
A new clinical trial combining targeted therapy with immunotherapy has just opened at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). This trial is the culmination of extensive pre-clinical investigations by MSKCC researchers. Although treatment with Gleevec [...]
NOTE: We have some specific information about some drugs on the "Drug Interactions" lists. When we have specific or detailed information about a drug interaction, it will appear on this page. Note that for the [...]
The Sarcoma Foundation of America held its Tenth Annual Gala on April 30 in New York, honoring doctors and survivors from many different corners of the sarcoma world. One of our own longtime Life Raft Group members, Maura Cesarini, was honored, along with seven other recipients, with the 2012 Courage Award.
Today there are four major methods of determining risk of recurrence after initial surgery. These methods are pretty good at identifying low-risk and highrisk tumors. However, there is a fairly large group that fall between low-risk and high-risk. Those with so-called “moderate” or “intermediate” risk tumors are faced with the decision of whether or not to take Gleevec. New guidelines exist that recommend taking Gleevec for at least three years, with many experts advocating longer periods for high-risk patients.
Here is a video from the Life Raft Group called GIST 2010: A Decade of Difference! See how far we have come in just ten years in the treatment and research of [...]
Yesterday, there were a series of news stories reporting on an article published by Cooke et al inCancer Cell. Unfortunately, the coverage gave misleading information which could suggest that patients should not take Gleevec (imatinib) or Sutent (sunitinib).
In presentations at the 2010 American Society of Clinical Oncologists conference (ASCO), Dr. Ronald DeMatteo, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and Dr. Chris Corless, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), presented new data from the Z9001 adjuvant Gleevec trial. As Dr. DeMatteo noted, the presentations were geared towards answering two questions: Who should get adjuvant Gleevec and how long should they get it for? While the presentations went a long way towards answering who should get adjuvant Gleevec, there appears to be much that we do not know about how long they should get it for. Other ongoing trials may help shed more light on this question.
Often, in the LRG email community, members have been known to offer suggestions on everything from what to bring with you to the hospital to managing side-effects. Louise Ladd is one of those people and [...]
