Comments on: Cancer drug companies’ worst nightmare http://bioblog.biotunes.org/bioblog/2010/01/26/cancer-drug-companies-worst-nightmare/ Biology News Biology Blog Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:11:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: biotunes http://bioblog.biotunes.org/bioblog/2010/01/26/cancer-drug-companies-worst-nightmare/#comment-343 biotunes Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:26:51 +0000 http://bioblog.biotunes.org/bioblog/?p=608#comment-343 The genes used can be seen in the link to the Nature abstract in my post. You are right, these are not BRCA genes, but others. This is new so a genetic test is not available yet, but as one of the researchers commented in the article about the paper, the test itself would be easy enough to do (as are most genetic tests). Hopefully, hopefully! this test will be available soon, and it's clear to me it should be automatically done for any woman who is strongly encouraged to take Adriamycin. Here's more information about adriamycin that you might not want to pass on to your wife, since what's done is done: http://bioblog.biotunes.org/bioblog/2009/06/10/there-is-no-cure/ As a side note, my own oncologist says that he is getting away from anthracyclines as time passes because of the availability of other drugs. For example, I (after absolutely refusing adriamycin) ended up on a relatively new one called Abraxane, which is simply Taxol blasted into nanoparticles that are suspended in albumin. This allows much more of the drug to get in the cancer cells because the albumin acts as a "trojan horse", and the result is that you need a much lower dose of the drug, so a lot fewer of your healthy cells are damaged, so a big reduction in side effects (e.g. my white count was not reduced at all on this drug as it was on the taxane Taxotere, which I was given until it turned out I was allergic :-) ). The best of luck to you and your wife - hopefully neither of us has to do this again, so that as far as we're concerned it's moot! The genes used can be seen in the link to the Nature abstract in my post. You are right, these are not BRCA genes, but others. This is new so a genetic test is not available yet, but as one of the researchers commented in the article about the paper, the test itself would be easy enough to do (as are most genetic tests). Hopefully, hopefully! this test will be available soon, and it’s clear to me it should be automatically done for any woman who is strongly encouraged to take Adriamycin.

Here’s more information about adriamycin that you might not want to pass on to your wife, since what’s done is done:
http://bioblog.biotunes.org/bioblog/2009/06/10/there-is-no-cure/

As a side note, my own oncologist says that he is getting away from anthracyclines as time passes because of the availability of other drugs. For example, I (after absolutely refusing adriamycin) ended up on a relatively new one called Abraxane, which is simply Taxol blasted into nanoparticles that are suspended in albumin. This allows much more of the drug to get in the cancer cells because the albumin acts as a “trojan horse”, and the result is that you need a much lower dose of the drug, so a lot fewer of your healthy cells are damaged, so a big reduction in side effects (e.g. my white count was not reduced at all on this drug as it was on the taxane Taxotere, which I was given until it turned out I was allergic :-) ).

The best of luck to you and your wife – hopefully neither of us has to do this again, so that as far as we’re concerned it’s moot!

]]> By: Brian in Idaho http://bioblog.biotunes.org/bioblog/2010/01/26/cancer-drug-companies-worst-nightmare/#comment-341 Brian in Idaho Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:12:32 +0000 http://bioblog.biotunes.org/bioblog/?p=608#comment-341 I came here via tigerhawk and read this post with great interest. My wife was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer 30 months ago. Of all the hard things she had to endure the "red death" (Adriamycin) was the worst. Medicine is imperfect but I wish we had known this then. The test you speak of are not the brac 1 and 2 genes I think. What are their markers? Do you believe it would benefit one such as my wife to be tested? Also what are the effective medicines that are that you referred to for HER2 negative patients? Sorry to curbside you like this but I would appreciate your kind response. Thank you for an interesting post. I came here via tigerhawk and read this post with great interest. My wife was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer 30 months ago. Of all the hard things she had to endure the “red death” (Adriamycin) was the worst. Medicine is imperfect but I wish we had known this then.

The test you speak of are not the brac 1 and 2 genes I think. What are their markers? Do you believe it would benefit one such as my wife to be tested? Also what are the effective medicines that are that you referred to for HER2 negative patients?

Sorry to curbside you like this but I would appreciate your kind response. Thank you for an interesting post.

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