January 6th, 2011 - By Jerry Call, LRG Science CoordinatorThe first ever clinical trial specifically for the PDGFRA D842V mutation has been announced by Arog pharmaceuticals. The phase II trial is scheduled to open in [...]
UPDATE - January 6th, 2011 by Jerry Call, LRG Science Coordinator The first ever clinical trial specifically for the PDGFRA D842V mutation has been announced by Arog pharmaceuticals. The phase II trial is scheduled [...]
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.
The 2010 Gastrointestinal American Society of Clinical Oncology conference was held January 22-24, 2010 in Orlando, Florida. Several of the abstracts/ posters are summarized below. Risk assessment for tumor recurrence after surgical resection of localized primary [...]
The LRG research team continues to investigate a number of key areas. These include research into ways to overcome drug resistance, improve initial response to treatment, clinical trial support, high throughput screening and establishing the [...]
A new target has been found for wild-type and pediatric GIST. GISTs without mutations in either of the two genes commonly mutated in GIST typically respond poorly to Gleevec. Andrew Godwin, Ph.D. of Fox Chase Cancer [...]
KIT exon 11 and exon 9 mutations represent the two most common types of mutations (wild-type GIST is technically not a type of mutation but a lack of mutations) found in GIST patients. About 60 to 65 percent of GIST patients have a KIT exon 11 mutation and about 10 to15 percent have a KIT exon 9 mutation.
Elevated liver enzymes are a rare side effect of Gleevec and can occur in CML and GIST patients. Auto-immune hepatitis appears to be one cause of elevated liver enzymes in some patients where the body’s [...]
Reviews of patients treated at three major cancer centers suggest that Sutent-related heart problems may be more common than initially reported. Reports of heart failure ranged from eight percent in 75 GIST patients treated [...]
Gleevec for metastatic GIST has been one of the great success stories in cancer treatment. It is probably the biggest advance in solid tumors made over the last decade.
