Every year in the month of March we celebrate our patients during a reception at USC.

We invite them for food and wine in the Norris lobby which we convert into a party space. We invite patients and physicians to talk about their experiences and about new developments at our center and the progress we have made in the last year. Read the rest of this entry »

In this month we don’t want to only raise awareness about prevention of colon cancer. We should be aware of the significant progress we have made in the last 10 years treating it.

With the introduction of irinotecan, oxaliplatin, bevacizumab, and cetuximab, overall survival has tripled to more than two years; but this does not tell us the whole story. In the past patients with metastatic disease all died from their disease. This is not true any longer.

With more active therapies, we have cured more and more patients, particularly those whose cancer has only spread to the liver. There are increasing reports that this is also true for lesions found in one site in the lung. Read the rest of this entry »

At ASCO in June 2009  a study was presented showing potential benefit of a novel inhibitor of AKT and MAPK in patients with metastatic colon cancer in second and third line chemotherapy.  An update at the 2010 ASCO GI meeting in January further confirmed these promising results.

This was a randomized phase II study comparing Xeloda alone versus a combination of Perifosine and Xeloda. Read the rest of this entry »

Swedish scientists  reported in the American Cancer Society Journal of Natural Products that cardiac glycosides, which are a family of naturally derived drugs which are used to treat congestive heart failure and arrhythmia, show anti-tumor activity against colon cancer cells. Read the rest of this entry »

I am using milk thistle for many of my patients, particularly the ones with some liver damage through chemotherapy or cancer.

A  new study, published online in the journal Cancer, showed that milk thistle may help reduce the liver inflammation associated with chemotherapy in children with leukemia who undergo aggressive chemotherapies. Read the rest of this entry »