New cancer treatment technologies and dangers, Cannabis, Coronavirus

3rd issue

Western medicine Cancer & Coronavirus

Cannabis and Chemotherapy Hormone-Receptor+ Cancer

Western medicine

• Israel: New ‘non-invasive’ cancer treatment ‘targets and destroys’ 80% of tumor cells
“combines the application of low-frequency ultrasound and microbubbles” to destroy 80% of breast cancer cells. ‘Once the ultrasound is activated, the micro-bubbles attach to the cancer cells and explode’
My two cents: It sounds so-very ‘Jetsons’ doesn’t it? Hey, I’m all for cancer treatment that destroy cancer that are non-invasive. Note that this was in the laboratory… I’ll wait to get really excited when it proves to work in humans without harming them. A cool thing is they want to look at crossing the blood-brain barrier to tackle Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and, presumably, brain metastases with this technology.
• Immuno-Guided PET Scans May Improve Cancer Patient Treatment Decisions
“advances in positron emission tomography (PET) scan imaging technologies may provide a more accurate picture of whether or not immunotherapy is working or is likely to work in individual cancer patients.”
My two cents: I’m not a fan of PET scans but I am a fan of targeted immunotherapy, which works with your immune system to defeat your specific cancer with little to no side effects. If this increases efficacy and access… hopefully it is worth it… detoxify after your scans!
• The association between methods of biopsy and survival following breast cancer
“breast cancer patients diagnosed through needle biopsies have significantly lower survival (both overall and disease-specific survival) compared to women subjected to excision biopsy”
My two cents: There are three types of biopsies commonly used in diagnosing breast cancer… FNA (Fine Needle Aspiration), CNB (Core Needle Biopsy), and excision biopsy (lumpectomy, mastectomy, etc.). I had all three BEFORE my mastectomy, when cytokeratin was found in my sentinel lymph nodes. At the time they said that was probably from one of my biopsies, when cells were dislodged. They didn’t recommend radiotherapy and I didn’t have it.
5 years later, I was full of metastatic cancer pretty much everywhere. I always wondered if my metastasis was a result of my biopsies. This study makes that not a crazy notion. It shows that if you have radiotherapy, that would presumably clean up any errant dislodged cancer cells (CTC, or circulating tumor cells) and the statistical difference showing increased risk of metastasis from FNA and CNB biopsies goes away.
• Giving common antibiotic before radiation may help body fight cancer
“The antibiotic vancomycin alters the gut microbiome in a way that can help prime the immune system to more effectively attack tumor cells after radiation therapy. A new study in mice… found the common antibiotic not only helped immune cells kill tumors that were directly treated with radiation, but also kill cancer cells that were further away in the body…”
My two cents: In mice, but hopefully, human trials are coming. Although antibiotics can cause other problems, I’m always fascinated by the repurposing of drugs and drugs that help the body’s own immune system fight cancer. Really curious bout how the antibiotic changes the microbiome in a good way.
• Chemotherapy elicits pro-metastatic extracellular vesicles in breast cancer models
“two classes of cytotoxic drugs broadly employed in pre-operative (neoadjuvant) breast cancer therapy, taxanes and anthracyclines, elicit tumor-derived EVs with enhanced pro-metastatic capacity.”
My two cents: this study is a year and a half old but I keep seeing it referenced and it seems a lot of people are not aware that chemotherapy can actually facilitate metastasis.
• Metastatic Breast Cancer Symptom Management: 5 Things to Know
“Here are five things to know about managing symptoms and treatment side effects in MBC.”
My two cents: Duh. I don’t mean to be flip or disrespectful. It’s just that I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know this stuff… intimately. But then I thought, what about all the people who are just entering their world of hurt? Maybe this info will help them. So, here ya go. But, FYI, nothing doctors prescribed ever helped me side effects. My naturopathic protocol did, though. And to be clear, these are side effects of treatment, not MBC.

Cannabis & Chemotherapy

• Israeli Study on Better Chemo Results for Cancer patients
“cannabis could mean less chemo, better results for cancer patients”
My two cents: In addition to helping to combat nausea and insomnia during treatment, and to actually killing cancer, Cannabis (the non-psychoactive cannabinoid CBD) also increases the efficacy of chemotherapy. Wow, just wow. And it crosses the blood-brain-barrier, something most chemos can’t do. Cannabis is responsible for some of my miracles and I heartily recommend it. Legalize now! So that extensive medical research can be performed it this country to study it’s medicinal properties.

Cancer and Coronavirus

• COVID-19 mortality in patients with cancer on chemotherapy or other anticancer treatments: a prospective cohort study
“After adjusting for age, gender, and comorbidities, chemotherapy in the past 4 weeks had no significant effect on mortality from COVID-19 disease, when compared with patients with cancer who had not received recent chemotherapy .“
My two cents: In the last edition of Cancer in the News, I included a study, Detection Rate of SARS-COV2 Antibodies After COVID-19 in Patients with Cancer, which found that cancer patients in treatment were not producing coronavirus antibodies as much as people who weren’t. This led one to wonder if perhaps chemotherapy weakened one’s ability to fight off the Covid-19. This study finds that treatments are not resulting in increased mortality.
So, maybe more susceptible to get it but not more susceptible to die from it?

Hormone-Receptor+ cancer

• Phase 3 PALLAS Trial of Ibrance plus endocrine therapy in HR+, HER2- early breast cancer
“the trial is unlikely to show a statistically significant improvement in the primary endpoint of invasive disease-free survival (iDFS).”
My two cents: Wish I had better news to report but it looks like using Ibrance with endocrine therapy isn’t significantly effective over endocrine therapy alone.
• Patient-Reported Cognitive Impairment Among Women With Early Breast Cancer Randomly Assigned to Endocrine Therapy Alone Versus Chemoendocrine Therapy: Results From TAILORx
“Adjuvant CT+E (chemotherapy plus Endocrine therapy) is associated with significantly greater CRCI compared with E at 3 and 6 months. These differences abated over time, with no significant differences observed at 12 months and beyond.”
My two cents: Well, I’m not hormone positive, I had chemotherapy and no endocrine therapy, and I had chemobrain. I know you feel as though you’re going crazy at the time and no one believes you so I thought you hormone-positive warrior queens might like to know that there is ANOTHER legitimate reason for your chemo-brain. The good news is that it apparently goes away in a year.

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New cancer treatment
New cancer treatment