New therapy turning chemo back on for prostate cancer patients
March 25th, 2010 Posted in prostate chemotherapyAccording to Dr. Rakesh Singal, medical oncologist at the University of Miami Sylvester Cancer Center, the problem with chemo is that many patients do not respond to chemotherapy in the first place, and the patients that do respond stop responding after certain duration of treatment.
Dr Singal discovered a gene that makes chemotherapy to work. He’s testing a drug that would trick the cancer cells into responding to chemo. In trials, patients get the drug called Vidaza daily for five days before chemo. This drug turns the gene on and the chemotherapy starts working again.
Clinical trials of this gene activation therapy for prostate cancer are continuing at the University of Miami’s Sylvester Cancer Center. Researchers say the same approach could one day be used to treat other kinds of cancer that have become resistant to chemo.