Survive & Thrive with GIST
Ten Tips for Life with a Rare Disease The challenges of living with GIST are many - here are our top ten tips to navigate this journey toward thriving and surviving. 1. Get a [...]
An Exciting Time for GIST Research
Left to right: Laura Occhiuzzi, Pete Knox, Alyssa O’Driscoll, Sarcoma Alliance, Annie Achee, National LeioMyoSarcoma Foundation, Denise Reinke, SARC, and Mitch Achee, National LeioMyoSarcoma Foundation. GIST Research from CTOS 2018 A web-based [...]
Quadruple-Negative GIST Tumors May Be More Likely To Harbor NF1 Mutations As Well
In a pre-print electronic publication of the July 7, 2016 edition of Clinical Cancer Research, a team of Italian researchers examined the link between “Quadruple-Negative” GISTs (those that do not exhibit KIT, PDGFRA, or BRAF [...]
Ignyta Announces Results for Potential New Cancer Treatment
Dr. Alexander Drilon of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center recently reported at AACR on a potential new cancer treatment, Entrectinib, a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) inhibitor developed to target tumors carrying NTRK1, NTRK2, NTRK3, [...]
Update on Blueprint Medicines Clinical Trial for BLU-285
Recently a number of companies have begun to develop therapeutic options that target some of the rarer mutations in GIST. As there are currently no approved treatments specifically for these patients, this [...]
Genetic Alliance Event Invites Collaboration
Genetic Alliance recently held an event in Chapel Hill, N.C. that brought together patient advocates, scientists and representatives from the pharmaceutical industry in a unique “speed-dating” format. Disease advocacy organizations were invited to present briefly [...]
Adjuvant Imatinib Study Updates Results
A recent study further documented the advantage of three years of adjuvant imatinib versus one year in high-risk GIST patients. The study, which is to be published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, was authored by [...]
Former FDA Official Discusses Off-Label Use
In an online article, Peter Pitts, a former FDA associate commissioner, discussed the topic of off-label product claims by pharmaceutical companies. Off-label use in this case refers to using a medication for an intention [...]
Conditional Disease-free Survival after GIST Resection Improves Over Time
In a recent study led by Danielle A Bischof, MD of Johns Hopkins and published in JAMA Surgery, the authors propose a new way of estimating disease-free survival for GIST patients – Conditional Disease-free Survival [...]
Future NCCN Guidelines to Include Evidence Blocks
A recent roundtable discussion at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s (NCCN) 20th Annual Conference opened up a discussion on treatment costs and introduced the proposed use of evidence blocks to compare treatments. Currently, the [...]