On Monday, April 25th, Fight Colorectal Cancer held a free patient webinar that tackled the somewhat complex but fascinating topic of personalized medicine.

Personalized medicine is what the cancer community calls treatments that are tailored to each patient’s genetic makeup. It is the future of cancer care and in some cases, it is already making a big difference in the ways patients are treated.

You can learn about these cutting edge treatments and about emerging findings in an archive of the webinar below.

Our thanks to Carolyn Grande, CRNP, AOCNP for leading the discussion. She a phenomenal educator on this topic and a member of our Medical Advisory Board. She graciously donated her time to bring this information to patients.

Medicine that is tailored to each patient’s genetic makeup is the future of cancer care. In some cases, it is already making a big difference in the ways patients are treated. Learn about these cutting edge treatments and about emerging findings that will be important for future diagnoses and treatments of colorectal cancer. Discussion led by Carolyn Grande, CRNP, AOCNP.

Fight Colorectal Cancer is giving you the opportunity to talk to researchers and medical professionals in April and May through online webinars designed to bring the science of treating colorectal cancer down to the personal.

The latest news from the petri dish
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
8 – 9 PM Eastern

Dr. Yaeger at work in her lab

Dr. Rona Yaeger will discuss the research she has been conducting over the past year with the grant she received as part of Fight Colorectal Cancer’s Lisa Fund research program.

Dr. Yaeger’s research focused on inhibiting the AKT pathway in colorectal cancer cells. She conducted basic research to determine how inhibitors to the pathway might affect cells of patients who have mutated KRAS and are resistant to EGFR inhibiting drugs. Dr. Yaeger has also been conducting a phase II clinical trial with an AKT inhibitor for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who have normal (wild type) KRAS.

If you are interested in learning more about the future of cancer treatments, or if you’ve ever donated to the Fight Colorectal Cancer Lisa Fund, do not miss this webinar!

Read the rest of this entry »

We are getting more sophisticated in evaluating biomarkers. It is a serious challenge to develop a biomarker which is validated and can be used with confidence in the clinic. We have only ONE biomarker which is kras mutation a marker to predict resistance to EGFR inhibitors

I just reported in my previous blog that not all of the mutations are equal.  Some of them act like wild- type (normal), and patients with these mutations should be considered for Erbitux therapy. Patients with wild-type KRAS  have a higher chance of response from Erbitux, but that does not predict response.

There have been a lot of efforts to increase the predictive value of wild-type KRAS for response. Many potential candidates have been studied. These include PTEN, EGFR ligands, BRAF and PI3K mutations. Most of the studies revealed controversial findings. Some found an associations and other did not.

Why is that? Read the rest of this entry »

Colon cancer has undergone significant changes and has seen increasing treatment options. With more and more drugs available and approved for colon cancer we are facing difficult decisions deciding what is the right treatment at the right time.

For patients with newly diagnosed colon cancer we have two chemotherapeutic regimens: a combination of infusional 5-FU with irinotecan (FOLFIRI) or with oxaliplatin (FOLFOX). Both regimens have shown similar efficacy and similar extent of toxicity however there are differences in the quality of toxicity.  More often FOLFOX has to be stopped because of its neurotoxicity than because it stopped working. Read the rest of this entry »