The diagnosis rate for new cases of mesothelioma may be set to peak here in the United States but that doesn’t mean that the disease is any less dangerous. Each year nearly 3,000 new cases of the deadly cancer are diagnosed in the United States alone, and hundreds of thousands more worldwide. One of the saddest parts of these diagnoses is that they usually occur when the cancer, caused by previous exposure to asbestos, is advanced and incurable stage. By that time, the treatment options left available to victims are limited and most will not survive the year.
But what if doctors could predict how long a person could survive with the disease? It wouldn’t be a cure but it would give families some peace of mind and allow them to plan for their treatment and their eventual end in an informed, orderly, and dignified manner.
A pair of new studies, whose results were accepted for publication in the July online issue of The Lung Cancer Journal, examined the role of a pair of protein markers in depth—not in correlation to early diagnosis, as is often the case with mesothelioma protein marker studies, but in correlation to patients’ survival rates.
Vascular Epithelial Growth Factor, VEGF, is a certain type of protein created by cells within the body to signal vasculogenesis and angiogenesis (the creation of new blood vessels.)
The phase II studies looked at levels of this protein in mesothelioma patients who had been treated with thalidomide alone or thalidomide combined with cisplatin/gemcitabine – common chemotherapy drugs. The primary goal of this study was to uncover ways in which patients could enjoy 6 months of progression-free survival—meaning that their mesothelioma tumors had not spread or grown. However, one of the secondary goals was to find out how levels of this protein correlated to overall length of survival.
Only those patients pre-treated with VEGF and CRP (c-reactive protein) were correlated with survival rates. The data collected by researchers showed that roughly 30% of the study’s participants were able to keep their disease in check for the 6 week duration of the study, but only if they had been treated with either thalidomide alone or in combination with cisplatin/gemcitabine.
As one would expect, the patients who showed decreasing levels of VEGF during the trials had the best results, surviving longer than any of the other victims. This is because decreasing levels of VEGF correlate to fewer new blood vessels growing in the body—including those which feed cancerous mesothelioma tumors.
While this revelation won’t lead to a cure, it will help newly afflicted mesothelioma suffers understand where they stand on the scale of survival. While it may seem morbid, many mesothelioma patients welcome a bit of control in a situation in which they have none. With further research and refinement, these VEGF tests may allow mesothelioma victims and family members to more easily cope with this disease, give them a more accurate time frame in which to conclude their financial and personal business, and possibly aid them in choosing which types of treatment are more suited to their individual needs.