Well, I guess PVSRIPO is relevant to cocktail approach. What I thought was the most promising in the CBS report is that when they added chemo later to one the treatment had failed on, it actually had a complete response. The immunotherapy made tumor more vulnerable to chemo. I'm surprised they were all surprised by this. This just confirms the future must be a cocktail approach and not a silver bullet.
Grace and Peace,
Danny
Danny,
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the term "chemo" that they keep using in this story isn't even a chemotherapy at all. When they say that they added "chemo", they actually added Avastin, which isn't a chemotherapy at all. Then, they say the tumor "melted" away after the addition of "chemo". Well, Avastin does tend to "melt" tumors away for a time.
I'll be very interested to see new, non-cherry picked data with the next trial that they run. They won't be able to select the best of the best patients.
For example, one story I heard of someone who went to Duke was that they were accepted to the Polio trial, but told that they didn't have a surgery opening for 5 weeks. 4.5 weeks later, they did another MRI and the tumor had grown too much, resulting in a tumor that was too large for treatment, and they were removed from the trial.
Not only does that kind of action ruin that person's life, it also creates an extreme level of bias in the trial because those with aggressively growing tumors are essentially removed from the field of patients.
Kendall