Doctors cite value of immunotherapy

Lung cancer patients are heavily benefitting from new treatments, Parade magazine reports

A lot of good news has been developing in the past several years about finding and treating lung cancer, according to Parade magazine.

A recent article by Marygrace Taylor suggests that, despite the disease growing for both never-smokers and women, "there's reason to be optimistic."

How so?

"There's been a huge jump in how long people are living with lung cancer," the piece quotes Dr. Nathan Pennell, Cleveland Clinic oncologist, as saying. "It's an extraordinary change."

Dr. Nathan Pennell

The Parade story then goes on to cite the value of such treatments as immunotherapy, which "helps the immune system better recognize and remove cancer cells without necessarily impacting normal cells," according to Dr. Jacob Sands, an American Lung Association spokesman. 

More than 1,000 clinical trials are currently studying how patients "can benefit from checkpoint inhibitors, immunotherapy drugs that block proteins that cancer cells use to stave off attacks from the immune system," Taylor writes.

Pennell adds that "we now know that if you add a checkpoint inhibitor to chemo, people live substantially longer" — and most likely with fewer side effects.

Dr. Jacob Sands

Sands also points to the efficacy of an advanced screening tool like low-dose CT scans, which "catch cancers at earlier stages when they're more likely to be cured."

Another new weapon in the war against lung cancer is stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR), a specialized form of highly targeted radiation "often used to treat patients with early-stage lung cancer when surgery isn't an option."

One recent trial, the article reports, found the treatment "could double survival time without progression of [the] disease."

Finally, advanced bronchoscopy, which uses a lighted tube to examine abnormal parts of the lung just as traditional bronchoscopy does but also utilizes "smaller, more powerful tools" to create 3D maps of patients' lungs and helps doctors access areas that the traditional method can't reach.

More information about innovations in cancer treatments can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at caregivers.

FDA approves 31 new therapies in one year

New screenings and treatments are helping to boost the number of cancer survivors in the U.S.

By 2026, some 20.3 million cancer survivors will be living in the United States — up from 15.5 million a decade earlier.

That, according to a recent article in Parade magazine by Sheryl Kraft, is because innovations in screening and treatment are helping patients beat the odds.

"In just one year," the piece reports, "31 new therapies to treat more than 16 types of cancers were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."

Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical and scientific officer for the American Cancer Society, believes that screening can save lives. "Some estimates say that we can decrease the number of colorectal deaths by 12,000 to 20,000 if screening guidelines were followed."

Dr. Jame Abraham

And Dr. Jame Abraham, director of Cleveland Clinic's Breast Oncology Program, notes that hormone therapy might be all that's necessary to treat 70 percent of women with the most common form of breast cancer. 

"That means a large number of patients can safely avoid chemotherapy," the Parade story quotes her as saying. "We can individualize treatment and make sure we are prescribing the right treatment for the right purpose."

It was tough previously to identify which women with early-stage breast cancer were at risk for recurrence, so many had received unnecessary chemo, radiation and hormonal therapy. But a groundbreaking study known as the TAILORx trial found that many women could be saved from "unnecessary side effects like fatigue, hair loss, nausea, vomiting and anemia," the quote continues.

Another new treatment, immunotherapy, which "works by reprogramming a patient's own immune cells to find and attack those cancer cells through the body," also is being held out as innovative — and the American Society of Clinical Oncology's "advance of the year."

Immunotherapy now is being heralded as "extremely promising for treating triple-negative breast cancer, one of the most difficult-to-treat breast cancers," after having already been shown to have "significant results in young patients with a form of leukemia and adults with multiple myeloma (a type of blood cancer) and lymphoma (a type of cancer involving cells of the immune system)."

Yet another new testing method, CancerSEEK — according to the Parade piece, "a simple blood test, which in its research phase was performed on people already diagnosed with cancer," can identify markers for for tumors containing mutated DNA in the bloodstream. 

These markers are associated with eight common cancer types: breast, lung, colorectal, ovarian, liver, stomach, pancreatic and esophageal.

Lastly, the story cites a less invasive and faster lung-cancer technique called microcoil localization, "which can pinpoint and remove small bits of affected tissue using a needle inserted through the chest wall to remove the cancer at its earliest stage."

Minimally invasive surgery — instead of the currently popular "lobectomy, which removes a portion of the lung by opening up the chest, followed by radiation and chemotherapy."

More details on new techniques and treatments can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.