“A genomic test” was recently developed “that helped many breast cancer patients safely skip chemotherapy” in a recent trial, reports The Doomslayer. That was among the good news at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual conference, which also included:
- A multiple-myeloma immunotherapy that kept nearly 70 percent of patients progression-free for 18 months, compared with about 27 percent of those on standard treatments.
- A targeted cancer drug that, when combined with standard immunotherapy, cut the risk of cancer progression or death by nearly two-thirds in patients with the most common form of lung cancer.
“The OPTIMA trial demonstrates” that certain women and men with “tumors can safely avoid chemotherapy,” notes a medical researcher at University College London Hospitals.
In the trial, conducted from 2017 to 2025, “4429 patients were randomized, 2215 to the control arm and 2214 to the test-directed arm…Patient characteristics in the PP population were well-balanced; 62% were postmenopausal, 37% premenopausal and 0.8% male.”
A new blood test can detect which bowel cancer patients can receive lifesaving immunotherapy rather than chemotherapy, enabling them to be cancer free after surgery, reported University College London Hospitals.
And a $949 blood test can screen you for up to 50 cancers.
The world’s first blood test for brain cancer may raise survival rates if it becomes widely available.
An mRNA vaccine saves the lives of pancreatic cancer patients. A cancer researcher recently home-brewed a beer that works as a vaccine.
The fact that a life-saving test is developed doesn’t mean it will be available to the public quickly. Many people die waiting for the FDA to approve medical tests and life-saving drugs. The FDA can be rather slow. The FDA didn’t approve a home test for HIV until 24 years after it first received an application. According to an FDA advisory committee, the test held “the potential to prevent the transmission of more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of use alone.” That means thousands of people likely got infected with AIDS as a result of the delay in approving it. As Roger Parloff noted in Fortune, the FDA’s delay in approving the home HIV test was a “scandal.” It caused the deaths of thousands of people.
