combo | Common News Update

Sep282018 by adminNo Comments

Vaccine, drug combo promising against HPV-related cancers

Health

Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Combining a tumor-specific vaccine with an immune checkpoint inhibitor shrank tumors in one third of patients with incurable cancer related to HPV, according to a phase II clinical trial. Participants were injected with the vaccine ISA101, which targets important peptides from a cancer-promoting HPV16 genotype of human papillomavirus, and nivolumab, a drug that blocks activation of PD-1 on T cells. The findings were published Thursday in the Journal of the Medical Association Oncology. "That encouraging response rate is about twice the rate produced by PD1 checkpoint inhibitors in previous clinical trials, so these results will lead to larger, randomized clinical trials of this combination," principal investigator Dr. Bonnie Glisson, a professor of thoracic/head and neck...

Arsenic, existing drug combo could treat cancer, study finds

Health

Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Arsenic in combination with an existing leukemia drug successfully targeted the disease in mice, and offers hope of new treatment for diverse types of cancer, according to a study. Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's Cancer Center found that arsenic trioxide, or ATO, when used in combination with all-trans retinoic acid was effective against acute promyelocytic leukemia, or APL. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications. "It's gratifying to see this combination of all-trans retinoic acid and arsenic trioxide that my lab discovered to be curative in the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia translate into possible approaches for the treatment of other cancers," Dr. Pier Paolo Pandolfi, director of the hospital's Cancder...

HIV and smoking a lethal combo for the lungs

Health

MONDAY, Sept. 18, 2017 -- HIV patients who take their medication but also smoke are about 10 times more likely to die from lung cancer than from AIDS-related causes, a new study estimates.Lifesaving antiretroviral drugs have improved life expectancy to the point that patients now have more to fear from tobacco than HIV, said lead researcher Dr. Krishna Reddy."Thanks to antiretroviral medicines, people with HIV are living longer," said Reddy, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor with Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "The bad news is that they're living long enough to get cancer."Based on the new findings, smoking cessation should be a focus of treatment, he and his colleagues said.More than 40 percent of people with HIV are smokers, a rate more than double that of the general p...