Non-Traditional Therapies

Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that affects the membrane of the body’s organs called the mesothelium. This form of cancer usually affects the lining of the lungs. The primary cause of mesothelioma is exposure to the building material called asbestos.

Asbestos has not been used in decades due to its potential danger; however mesothelioma can take a very long time to fully manifest. Mesothelioma’s latency period can be anywhere from 10 to 70 years. This means that it may take up to 70 years after exposure to asbestos for mesothelioma symptoms to affect someone. There are somewhere between two and three thousand new cases of mesothelioma reported each year.

As of yet, there are no cures mesothelioma. However, many treatments are available to maintain a quality of life.

There are many different forms of treatment available to help slow the progression of mesothelioma.

Surgery is one option. The goal is to remove as much of the malignancy as possibly. This will not cure the disease, but drastically slow its progression. Surgery is rarely the most effective form of treatment, but it can be combined with other methods.

As with most forms of cancer, chemotherapy is an option. This form of treatment is more common than surgery. Chemotherapy is a process that uses drugs and other chemical agents to fight cancer.

A third form of mesothelioma treatment is radiation therapy. This process works on the idea that radiation can damage the DNA structure of the irradiated cells. This damage ideally will prevent the cell from reproducing, thus slowing the spread of the cancer.

These approaches are typically used in conjunction to maximize efficiency. Like all forms of cancer treatment, this process can be expensive, time consuming, and stressful for both the individual and those around him/her.

Mesothelioma is currently without a cure, but this may not always be the case. Many new forms and approaches to treatment are constantly being developed and refined. They currently vary in effectiveness, but should not be overlooked.

Photodynamic therapy uses energy from light to destroy the cancer cells. This treatment is still in the experimental stage for mesothelioma, but has shown some promising results for other forms of cancer.

In the procedure, the cancer patient first takes a photosensitizer drug. This causes the person’s cells to become sensitive to certain wavelengths of light. The photosensitizer is designed to collect in the cancerous cells but not in the person’s normal, healthy cells. Once this process has been completed, doctors insert fiber optic cables into the patient’s body. This is most commonly done through open chest surgery. This is done so that the correct frequency of light can be focused on the cancerous cells.

If this is all done correctly, then the focused light will react with the photosensitive drug, causing it to produce a toxic oxygen molecule which will kill the cancer cells in the area.

There are some drawbacks to this method. The lasers typically can only penetrate about three centimeters, so this method is usually limited to cancers that are close to the surface. Also a possible side effect of photodynamic therapy is that the photosensitizer can cause the entire body to become more sensitive to sunlight. It is advised that those who have undergone this therapy avoid exposure to direct sunlight for up to six weeks.

Gene therapy is an approach currently in clinical trials for many forms of cancer. The major point of this therapy is that it would allow medical specialists to target and destroy tumors while leaving healthy cells intact. This would circumvent the negative aspects of traditional chemotherapy.

Cancers are characterized as a disease in which a group of cells grow uncontrollably, resulting in the growth of a tumor. The main goal of gene therapy is to alter the genetic defects that allow this uncontrollable cell growth. To do this, a “suicide gene” is inserted directly into the tumor. The “suicide gene” causes the cells to become sensitive to drugs that were previously ineffectual. This would allow doctors to destroy the cancer cells and leave the healthy cells unharmed.

Some forms of gene therapy are designed to replace the damaged or missing genes with healthy genes.

Immunotherapy is also known as biological therapy. This approach uses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer cells. This approach is also currently in clinical trials and not yet available to the general public.

In this process, the doctors provoke the response of the body’s own immune through the use of chemicals called biological response modifiers (BRMs). These BRMs prompt the immune system to recognize mesothelioma cells as harmful and begin to fight their growth. This can prevent the cancer from spreading into other systems of the body.

There are currently four types of immunotherapy in trials. These include:

• Antiangiogenics – This drug inhibits the flow of blood to the tumors, limiting their ability to grow and spread.
• Interleukin 2 – This protein is naturally part of the immune system. It is used to enhance a healthy immune system.
• Interferon – This approach stops the growth of cancer cells as well as boosts the immune system.
• Monoclonal Antibodies – These proteins are used to kill harmful, foreign bodies. They can be programmed to discern abnormal proteins in the cancer cells.

With more research, immunotherapy could be an effective form of mesothelioma treatment because it would destroy the harmful cells while leaving the healthy cells intact. Also, some approaches would allow a boost in the body’s immune system as opposed to weakening it as caused by some of the current treatments.