Robert L. Coleman, MD: Ovarian cancer is not a very common disease. We see about 22,000 new cases every year, and that number has been relatively consistent for more than 10 years, now. But a statistic that gets missed is, what is the prevalence? Incidence is how many new cases happen in a year. Prevalence is how many people actually have the disease. One of the characteristics that is starting to show up in different population-based statistical reviews is that the prevalence of this disease is actually increasing. How does that happen? How can you have the same incidence, year after year, but the prevalence is increasing? The answer to that question is that patients are living longer with disease.
Everybody always asks, “What’s the unmet medical need?” I always answer that question as, “We need to cure patients.” It’s absolutely clear. There’s no doubt that a patient who is diagnosed with this disease is definitely set up for a tremendous amount of clinical, personal, and financial impacts that are devastating. And so, if I had a switch that I could flip, that would change this disease, it would be that it would never happen. So, the unmet medical need is to find effective therapy. The most important effective therapy is to find the way that we could prevent this from happening at all. That’s where we make our greatest impact.
Many people will also look at statistics and say, “This disease is really lethal.” Well, if you break it down by stage, it’s actually no more lethal or survivable than breast cancer. People are saying, “How can that be?” Well, the difference is, patients with, for instance, breast, and endometrial, and cervical cancer are frequently diagnosed with early-stage disease. The symptom that brings them in is something that they didn’t expect. It isn’t associated with normal activities of daily living. In ovarian cancer, the symptomatology is bloating, pelvic pressure, urinary frequency, poor appetite, and weight loss or weight gain. These things happen all the time, so we don’t have a symptom that says, “Come in and see us when these things happen. We’ll be able to diagnose early-stage disease.” When a patient has abdominal bloating, they’ve already got metastatic disease, in many cases. So, those patients are diagnosed with advanced-stage disease, right off the bat.
Government agencies have created an online portal for the public to report potential anticompetitive practices in health care; there are changes coming to the “boxed warning” section for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies (CAR T) to highlight T-cell blood cancer risk; questions about the safety of obesity medications during pregnancy have arisen in women on them who previously struggled with fertility issues.
Read More
Gene, Light Therapy Combo Shows Promise Against Prostate Cancer Cells in Proof-of-Concept Study
April 18th 2024In their preclinical model, the researchers found efficacy both in vitro and in vivo by using CRISPR-Cas9 to mimic porphyria and combining the technology with light therapy.
Read More
Oncology Onward: A Conversation With Penn Medicine's Dr Justin Bekelman
December 19th 2023Justin Bekelman, MD, director of the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation, sat with our hosts Emeline Aviki, MD, MBA, and Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, for our final episode of 2023 to discuss the importance of collaboration between academic medicine and community oncology and testing innovative cancer care delivery in these settings.
Listen
Many Patients With Psoriasis in Clinical Trials Experience Nocebo Effects, Study Finds
April 18th 2024Half of patients exposed to placebo in clinical trials experienced adverse events (AEs), which may be partially explainable by nocebo effects, according to a recent review and meta-analysis.
Read More