Colorectal Cancer News in Brief: October 2

Briefly: More colorectal cancer patients experience severe rash from Erbitux than other cancer patients, and significantly more men and younger people have severe rash than women and patients over 70.

Where you live in the United States makes a big difference in your risk of being uninsured from more than 40 percent of people living in Houston to a little more than 3 percent of those in Worchester, MA.

A new method of testing cancer drugs directly on fresh tumor tissue may speed drug development by reducing the need for the earliest human testing. Continue reading…

Posted by Kate Murphy on October 2nd, 2009
Posted in: Research & Treatment News | 1 Comment »
Tags: cetuximab, Erbitux rash

Early Tumor Shrinkage Points to Good Erbitux Outcomes

Patients with advanced colorectal cancer whose tumors have gotten smaller six weeks after starting treatment with Erbitux had a much longer time before their cancer got worse and almost twice the overall survival as patients whose tumors didn’t shrink.

Patients in the BOND study had already gotten worse on standard chemotherapy and were receiving either Erbitux® (cetuximab) alone or in combination with irinotecan.  CT scans  for about a third of them showed at least a 10 percent decrease in the size of their tumors six weeks into treatment. Continue reading…

Posted by Kate Murphy on August 4th, 2009
Posted in: Research & Treatment News | No Comments »
Tags: cetuximab, Erbitux, metastatic colorectal cancer, survival