Sequential Chemotherapy
CancerConsultants.com has an article about trying to find an effective chemotherapy regimen for mesothelioma. This is such an intractable form of cancer and resists forms of therapy that are effective for other cancers: radiation, surgery, simple chemotherapy. The cutting edge of mesothelioma treatment involves combinaton therapy: more than one treatment.
There’s a study out of Italy where they treated patients with sequential chemotherapy, where one drug (or group of drugs) is given for a while followed by the another group of drugs. In this trial they used cisplatin plus gemcitabine, followed by mitoxantrone, methotrexate, and mitomycin. They got good results. The median survival was 13 months and 63% of the patients were still alive after one year.
Now this is only one study, and the results weren’t miraculous, but they are encouraging and more evidence that combination therapy is generally the best way to go.