PSA 10.50 Free PSA 2.20 as of 8/31/2018 Do I have cancer or prostate enlargement?

Georges Calvez

Interesting

This is interesting and may form the basis of future therapies but it is not as far as I know relevant to current frontline therapies for prostate cancer.

 

Old Salt

Actually,

Allison's research has led to the drug Yervoy (ipilimumab) which is used against (metastatic) melanoma

and Honjo's research has led to both Keytruda and Opdivo.

When these cancer drugs work, the results can be amazing. Unfortunately, they don't work for many patients. The reason(s) are being investigated, obviously.

To my limited knowledge, these drugs haven't been successful to fight prostate cancer, but I am by no means sure about that.

I am reasonably sure that other drugs based on the same concepts are being developed.

 

Max Former Hodgkins Stage 3

BLUEBIRD3291 said:

Cancer - MD Anderson Cancer Center or Kyoto University, Japan
Get cancer treatment at these cancer treatment cancers.
The Nobel committee awarded American doctor James Allison and Japan doctor Tasuku Honjo with the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine. In its announcement, the Nobel committee pointed to the wide-spread effects of cancer and lauded the two doctors for their “discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.” Allison, the committee said, studied a protein at MD Anderson Cancer Center that functions as a brake on the immune system and developed the concept into an approach for fighting cancer. Honjo, a professor at Kyoto University, also discovered an immune cell protein that acts in a similar braking manner, although with a different action.

“By stimulating the inherent ability of our immune system to attack tumor cells this year’s Nobel Laureates have established an entirely new principle for cancer therapy,” the committee said in a statement.

Discoveries

Bluebird,

As with the two Nobel winners you mentioned, advances against cancer are happening all the time. Unfortunately, the trickel-down from discovery to implimentation for usage as an FDA-approved therapy is long and slow.  People in need of a new option think that the FDA should move really fast, but people who have used a new, maybe experimental option and who got serious side-effects, or even died, think that the FDA should have moved much slower. And this latter group has a million lawyers calling them on the telephone, wanting them to sue. So it is a dilemma, always moving back and forth.

I heard a doctor say once on TV that the reason cancer has not been cured yet is that cancer is not one disease, it is thousands of diseases.  Just in Lymphoma, there are over 60 variants of the disease recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO). Drugs that will kill one verison are worthless against the others.  We all long for the "Next Big Thing," but most advances are not what drug company marketing departments, and research university press releases, claim.

There are around 250 FDA approved chemotherapy agents today-- same thing.  Most of these, when new, where the next big thing.  What will cure one disease, has no effect on most others.  New discoveries, and what they will or will not do, takes years, and in some cases even decades, to sort out.  New massive computer software is shortening this wait time, but it is still not something that happens overnight.   Patience is what is most necessary in this game,

max

BLUEBIRD3291

an endorectal coil required for old and low power of MRI
Your MRI exam may possibly involve the use of an endorectal coil, a thin wire covered with a latex balloon, placed inside the tail end of the large bowel, called the rectum. The rectum is located inside the pelvis immediately behind and up against the prostate gland. New 3T MRI does not require an endorectal coil which is too big to have great chance to damage the patient's rectum. Usually, MRI center may have old MRI and new 3T MRI. You may be referred to old MRI or 3T MRI depending on your health insurance and your urologist's referral.