Liver Cancer can be a true menace for patients who suffer from this disease. Hard to detect in early stages, difficult to treat, and often deadly for patients in advanced stages. The great news is that doctors are working tirelessly around the globe and have developed three new advances that we believe you should be keeping an eye on today.
New Trial for Sterostatic Ablative Liver Cancer Treatment
Feb 26, 2022 – Currently, for liver cancer patients who can’t go through surgery, the most standard treatment technique is ablative body radiotherapy. This is where radiation is heated to extreme temperatures and is injected directly into cancerous tumors using a needle. The problem is that these treatments are not always successful with cancer likely to reoccur in over 30 percent of cases. Others can’t even receive this treatment at all due to the size and location of their tumors.
Stereotactic ablative radiotherapy seeks to solve this by targeting the tumors in question non-invasively, in the form of high radiation beams across multiple sessions. These treatments have proven successful for other cancer patients, and while still only experimental, could be a lifeline for patients suffering from liver cancers that can’t be treated with surgery, or typical radioactive therapy.
Researchers able to Restore Function to a Gene that can Suppress Liver Cancer
Feb 9, 2022 – In what could be a groundbreaking change in how liver cancer is treated, researchers from Masschesuts General Hospital, and Brigham and Womans’ Hospital have been able to manually reactivate the p53 master regulator gene using MRNA particles. In a treatment very similar to the Covid 19 vaccine, these mRNA particles were able to turn on the genes responsible for destroying cancerous tumor cells that had long been deactivated by cancer in the first place.
This new technique, in combination with Immunocheckpoint blockers, another new drug developed for liver cancer patients, could revolutionize the prognosis of thousands of people who do not respond to current cancer treatments, changing the outlook for many who have lost hope.
Cancer treatment can be filled with empty promises and dashed hopes, and while these advances will not change Cancer treatment overnight, it brings hope that cancer could be treated and cured for more people in the near future.
\