login
Become a member
Quick Registration
Full Registration Benefits -
Free Homepages for Doctors
Free Homepages for Hospitals
Free Homepages for Medical Conference
Free Homepages for NGO's
Personal Health Record Creation
Access to all Medical Slides
Access to all Jobs & Products Sale
African-Americans Equally Likely to Benefit from Erlotinib and Other Targeted Lung Cancer Therapy
"This study has immediate implications for patient management. Patients with EGFR mutations have a much better prognosis and respond better to erlotinib than those who do not," said Ramsi Haddad, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory of Translational Oncogenomics at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, and assistant professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine.
Haddad''s study, which he presented at the Fourth AACR International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development, also showed that African-Americans were more likely to have mutations on exon 19, rather than exon 21, which suggests they would be even more responsive to erlotinib.
Erlotinib, currently marketed as Tarceva by Genentech, has shown remarkable benefits in non-small cell lung cancer patients with EGFR mutations. Other therapies are in development and the genetic testing is clinically available.
Previous studies had suggested that African-Americans had lower rates of EGFR mutation, which researchers had offered as a possible explanation for their generally poorer prognosis.
However, Haddad''s study was larger than previous reports. His research team observed 149 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including 80 Caucasians and 69 African-Americans.
Using state-of-the-art technology that allowed for simultaneous detection of hundreds of oncogene mutations in clinical samples, they identified EGFR mutations in 20 of these patients, including 12 Caucasians and eight African-Americans. The difference was not statistically significant.
|
|
|
More News on: Lung Cancer, Malignant Mesothelioma, Cancer and Homeopathy, Smoking Risk, Reiki and Pranic Healing, Cancer Facts, Asbestosis , Cancer, Tattoos A Body Art, Cystic Fibrosis
 Comment & Contribute
|
Medwonders Health Network
- Health News Index
|
|
 | Quiz on Cancer Looking for information on cancer? Go through medindia's Cancer quiz. 
|
- News Quick Links
 |
Cancer
Complete Medindia Resources
|
| News Categories: |
| » | Scientists Develop Compound That Triggers Cancer Cell Death |
| » | Iraqi National Hopes to Find Affordable Treatment for His Cancer in India |
| » | New Technique can Help Doctors Detect Pancreatic Cancer |
| » | Colorectal Cancer Risk Factors Probed |
| » | Breast MRI 'Better Than Clinical Approach for Predicting Chemotherapy's Efficiency' |
| More Cancer News | |
|
