A new study entitled “Cold-Plasma Coagulation in the Treatment of Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma: Results of a Combined Approach”, was published in the Interactive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, an online journal. The study details a new practice being tested by a group of researchers attempting to increase the efficacy of mesothelioma treatments.

Mesothelioma, a terminal cancer caused by the accidental inhalation or ingestion of asbestos fibers, causes death ten to eighteen months from diagnosis on average. The disease can take several decades to develop from the time of initial exposure to asbestos fibers, lending to its difficult diagnosis and contributing to the fact that most patients suffer from its advanced stages before beginning treatments. Due to the long latency period of the disease, annual diagnoses are expected to rise beyond 2015 despite the fact that asbestos bans and regulations continue to tighten.

Mesothelioma, or a malignant tumor of the soft tissue known as the mesothelium, is treated palliatively, meaning that treatment aims to increase a patient’s comfort and extend their survival with providing a curative solution. The vast majority of mesothelioma patients undergo a combination of chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy.

In recent years a technique known as heated chemotherapy has shown some promise in patients undergoing tumor removal surgery. The procedure consists of washing affected tissues in a warm chemotherapy solution, the warmth of which increases effective absorption, in order to destroy malignant cells missed by the surgery. Heated chemotherapy poses some threats as well, however, including damaging the diaphragm and the pericardium – the tissue lining around the heart.

The new treatment method, cold-plasma coagulation, was tested in stage III mesothelioma patients. Stage III describes the state of the disease when malignancy has spread beyond the original tumor into several lymph nodes. Cold-plasma coagulation was used to destroy malignant tissues and cells in the pleura, diaphragm, and pericardium before a regular regimen of heated chemotherapy was applied. The results, say the researchers, proved as safe as prior methods of treatment and may prove to be a beneficial addition to multi-modal treatments in the future.

The authors of the study were cautious with their claims, stating that further trials would be necessary to draw conclusions.

“We consider our trial as a pilot study,” they said, “to evaluate potential survival benefits using this [Cold Plasma] technique, larger trials are mandatory.”

A study was recently published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine outlining Dr. Joachim Aerts’ work in the immunotherapy arena of cancer treatment. The research specifically dealt with the development of a vaccination for mesothelioma, an aggressive and terminal cancer which affects several thousands of Americans each year. The study demonstrated the vaccine’s efficacy in increasing antibodies against the disease, and in some cases decreasing the size of the cancerous tumor.

Mesothelioma is caused by exposure to asbestos fibers. The body’s normal defense mechanisms are unable to expel the microscopic, needle like fibers, and upon ingestion or inhalation they pass through the lungs or intestines and become lodged in a protective soft tissue known as the mesothelium. The asbestos fibers cause tissue scarring which can develop into malignant tumors over the course of years or even decades.

Dr Joachim Aerts and his colleagues have performed valuable research which shows that a cancer patient’s own immune system can potentially be employed to help destroy malignant tumors. Previous tests caused mice with cancerous tumors to develop the antigens necessary to combat their disease.

The new vaccine interacts with patient’s dendritic cells to help produce the antigens to the cancerous tumors in a patient’s mesothelium. Dr Joachim, a lung specialist at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Holland, and the author of the study, hopes that his approach will allow a patient’s own immune system to defeat the disease. If treatments such as this one prove to be successful, the need for conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy that weaken and sicken the patient could be reduced.

According to Dr Joachim, employing a patient’s own immune system in the battle against their mesothelioma is part of a fairly new branch of cancer treatment known as immunotherapy. The new vaccine shows that the concept is viable and takes steps towards providing a less strenuous treatment alternative to current conventions that cause far fewer side effects. Patients with mesothelioma are rarely expected to live more than two years; Aerts hopes that treatments such as this could improve those numbers and provide some new hope for mesothelioma patients and their families.

Aerts addressed some of the possible drawbacks of the new vaccine, mentioning the complication presented by immunosuppressive disorders and the body’s struggle in study participants to deliver the newly developed antigens effectively to the site of the tumor. The scarring of the patient’s mesothelium and the tumor itself often create an environment somewhat isolated from body systems which reduces the treatments efficacy. Despite these concerns immunotherapy for mesothelioma continues to show considerable promise.

A new and promising treatment for mesothelioma, an aggressive and incurable cancer caused by asbestos, is in the early stages of development. Photodynamic therapy, or PDT, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for a variety of cancers, and is currently being tested for use as a mesothelioma treatment.

Mesothelioma is indicated by malignant tumors of the mesothelium, that is, the soft tissue that encases and protects many of our vital organs. The devastating cancer has been linked with exposure to asbestos fibers, and while the disease can take up to half a century to fully develop, all persons that have been exposed to the dangerous substance are at risk.

When asbestos fibers are either inhaled or ingested, the microscopic, needle like particles are not detained by our body’s normal defenses for inorganic foreign irritants. The fibers pass through the lungs or digestive tract and eventually become lodged in the mesothelium where the tissue begins to react by scarring. This scarring can eventually form dangerous, malignant tumors which can be difficult to detect with conventional methods, contributing to the disease’s difficult diagnosis.

Photodynamic therapy is an exciting development and a promising potential treatment option. The therapy uses a non-toxic, photosensitizing compound to target cancer cells and cause them to become vulnerable to visible light. Affected tissues are then exposed to light – usually during surgery – which destroys the targeted cancer cells. Unlike chemotherapy and radiotherapy, PDT targets cancer cells specifically rather than just areas of the body affected by the tumor. This means that far less damage is done to normal, healthy cells which greatly detracts from the debilitating weakness and general lethargy that normally follows conventional treatments.

More than 3,000 Americans are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year. The disease is infamous for its grim prognoses; patients with a positive mesothelioma diagnosis are often expected to live for no more than about two years. Asbestos, the substance that causes the disease, while banned in most developed nations including the European Union is still used in the United States. Strict regulations, however, are applied to encourage its safe handling in the USA. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of asbestos products are still used freely in developing nations as industrial insulation, fire retardation additives, and strengthening additives in cement and other building materials.

Researchers and medical professionals are constantly working to improve existing mesothelioma treatments and discover new, potentially more effective treatments such as photodynamic therapy.

Various combination treatments are consistently shown to be the most effective method of combating mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer most often caused by exposure to asbestos. Much like other cancers, the three most prevalent treatment options for mesothelioma are chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery. Recently, several studies have shown specific advantages in combining one or more bodies of treatment.

An article published in the European Journal of Surgical Oncology recently reported that in a controlled study cytoreductive surgery, or surgery to remove malignant cancer cells, combined with certain forms of chemotherapy was a more effective treatment option than either surgery or chemotherapy alone. Similarly, a team of researchers in Victoria, Australia recently discovered that a new type of radiation therapy is far more effective at combating mesothelioma in combination with surgery or chemotherapy than it is by itself. Studies that discover which types of treatments best compliment each other are vital in the fight against mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma attacks the mesothelium, a membrane that forms a protective lining around several body cavities including the pleura or chest cavity, the peritoneum or abdominal cavity, and the pericardium or lining of the heart. Sadly, patients diagnosed with mesothelioma are only expected to live between six and eighteen months. More and more the cancer is becoming a serious concern in the United States and abroad due to its growing diagnoses and poor prognosis. Although it is caused by exposure to asbestos, a fibrous substance often used as insulation and fire retardant before the turn of the century, mesothelioma can take decades to develop after a patient is initially exposed to the dangerous fibres. The time that it takes the disease to develop combined with its generic, flu like symptoms make it a poor candidate for early detection and contribute to its shocking prognosis.

The medical community has long suspected the effectiveness of combination therapies for the treatment of mesothelioma, and new studies continue to corroborate that opinion. Lung Cancer, a medical journal, recently published a clinical trial which states that trimodal therapy (surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy in combination) improves survival rates in pleural mesothelioma patients, that is, patients with mesothelioma of the chest or lungs. The trial included 35 pleural mesothelioma patients, all of whom received radical pleurectomy surgery followed by four cycles of chemotherapy, followed by four to six weeks of radiation therapy.

Radical pleurectomy surgery is an alternative to extrapleural pneumonectomy, a surgery where an entire lung is removed from the patient. While radical pleurectomy aims to remove malignant cancer cells much like extrapleural pneumonectomy, it leaves the lungs in tact which tends to result in an improved recovery rate. This study specifically targeted radical pleurectomy patients because of their likelihood to recover from surgery more rapidly. Because of the nature of the trimodal therapy study, it was important that the patients were fit to continue other treatments after surgery.

“The aim of our prospective study was to analyze the feasibility and describe the long-term outcomes of patients treated with RP [radical pleurectomy] as surgical therapy modality in a standardized trimodality therapy concept,” the study states.

The study was a success, improving the patient’s average survival rates by a full year beyond normal expectations. The targeting of radical pleurectomy surgery was a key factor to the success of the treatment, researchers said, stating “[radical pleurectomy] as a surgical strategy allows patients to capitalize on all the aspects that a multimodality treatment approach has to offer without compromising the surgical oncological result and thus we believe RP [radical pleurectomy] is a cornerstone of the promising long-term results achieved in our pilot study. The observed and theoretical benefits of this trimodality treatment approach warrant confirmation in larger multi-center prospective controlled studies.” Researchers worldwide continue to study combination treatment strategies to improve the quantity and quality of life for mesothelioma patients.