Mesothelioma Research Developments

Recent advances in mesothelioma research bring new hope for better treatments and improved patient outcomes.

In the 1990s, a mesothelioma diagnosis was a death sentence. These asbestos exposure victims rarely lived more than a year after diagnosis. The imaging and other diagnostic tests in use were primitive by today’s standards. So, when doctors located mesothelioma tumors, the cancer had spread into the lungs, which means it was already in Stage III. Even today, few treatment options are available at that point.

Twenty years later, to use another criminal law analogy, mesothelioma was an LWOP (life without parole) sentence. As techniques and technology improved, the survival rate inched up. But these victims had nothing to look forward to, except a very painful and tragically shortened life.

New developments from a deeper understanding of the disease

Today, in the mid 2020s, some exciting breakthroughs are on the horizon which may mean that a mesothelioma diagnosis could become like probation. If probationers step out of line, they face long prison sentences. Otherwise, the sentence is manageable. Likewise, these medical breakthroughs could transform mesothelioma into a manageable disease, although remission is a constant danger.

Medical breakthroughs aren’t cheap. Furthermore, medical breakthroughs aren’t widely available. Since only a few doctors handle such cases, these physicians can basically name their own price. An asbestos exposure lawyer is a critical partner in this environment. Without the financial resources that an asbestos exposure lawyer can obtain, the most promising medical breakthrough is just a segment on a TV news show.

In a word, asbestos causes this rare and aggressive form of lung cancer. When a tumor develops in the mesothelium (membrane layer that surrounds the lungs), instead of in the lung itself, cancer is even more dangerous.

However, in more than one word, several kinds of asbestos exposure could cause mesothelioma. These exposure modes include:

Direct Occupational: 

Former shipbuilders, construction workers, and asbestos miners are the most common direct occupational asbestos poisoning victims. The Navy extensively used asbestos in all its ships until around 1980. Construction workers often handled asbestos-laced products day in, day out. Asbestos mining was legal in the United States until 2002.

Indirect Occupational: 

Asbestos fibers in shipyards don’t stay in the shipyard, fibers on assembly lines don’t stay in the manufacturing facility, and, well, you get the idea. Asbestos fibers and dust float, usually for at least forty-eight hours. So, they often float to cafeterias, parking lots, and other workplace common areas.

Direct Ambient:

For many years, take-home asbestos victims were the leading category of direct ambient victims. Asbestos fibers cling to surfaces, like clothes and hair, where they infected friends and loved ones at home. In the future, talc-asbestos might be the most common direct ambient (environmental) exposure category. Johnson & Johnson has already set aside several billion dollars to settle these claims, and that might not be enough.

Indirect Ambient: 

For many years, occasional disasters, like warehouse fires, released a few asbestos fibers into the surrounding area. But these occasional disasters pale to 9/11, when an asbestos-laced toxic cloud drifted over much of the Northeast. Some of these victims may be eligible for designated government benefits. But most must see alternative remedies. More on that below.

Other asbestos exposure illnesses include lung diseases, such as asbestosis and pleural thickening. Asbestos fibers also stimulate free radical particle activity. These particles could cause many kinds of cancer, and not just mesothelioma.

Despite the aforementioned therapeutic improvements, mesothelioma still has some underlying diagnosis and treatment issues.

As mesothelioma tumors lurk in the thick membranes of the mesothelium, they often slightly affect physical health. Many victims have slight trouble breathing or are easily fatigued. When they share these symptoms with their doctors, their doctors usually don’t consider cancer as a possibility. 

The trouble doesn’t end there. When tumors pop up on MRIs and other imaging tests, doctors often misdiagnose these tumors as non-small cell lung cancer. NSCLC is a much more common kind of cancer. It’s also much less aggressive than mesothelioma. So, the treatments that control NSCLC usually don’t prevent mesothelioma cancer from growing and spreading.

Improved traditional cancer treatments don’t eliminate these problems. But research and refinement has made these techniques much more effective than they were in the 1990s, even against tough diseases like mesothelioma.

Chemotherapy:

These drugs kill fast-dividing cells, like cancer cells. In the 1990s, and even in the 2010s, powerful chemotherapy drugs had powerful side-effects. That’s still true today, but many pharmaceutical companies now manage these side-effects. So, patients can tolerate higher doses.

Radiation:

Radiation therapy in the 1990s was a bit like the indiscriminate bombing campaigns in World War II. Pilots thought the target was down there somewhere, so it was bombs away, no matter what other homes, businesses, or other structures were hit. Forty years later, in the Persian Gulf War, airplanes used precise targeting. In the same way, precision radiation treatments reduce collateral damage, so doctors can turn up the dial.

Surgery:

Many times in life, if you do the grunt work, which in this case is chemotherapy and radiation, the big test (surgery) is easier to pass. Drugs and radiation now shrink tumors so much that doctors can remove tumors that were inoperable just a few years ago.

These existing therapy improvements are significant breakthroughs. However, they may pale in comparison to some medical advances which are now on the horizon, Some of these treatments are purely experimental. Others are currently available, at least on a limited basis.

Heat Treatments: 

Doctors use radio waves to heat up tiny metal particles that are implanted in cancerous tissue. Gold nanoparticles or carbon nanotubes are the most likely candidate. Several promising preclinical trials have been conducted. A similar method, Tumor Treating Fields, has already reached clinical trial stage in many countries. Quite simply, the doctor electrocutes the tumor.

Telomerase Deactivation Therapy:

Most malignant cells rely on the activity of the protein telomerase for their immortality. So, doctors believe that a drug that inactivates telomerase might be effective against a broad spectrum of malignancies. One drug, inositol hexaphosphate, is already undergoing testing in cancer research due to its telomerase-inhibiting abilities.

HAMLET: 

Human alpha-lactalbumin made lethal to tumor cells is a molecular complex derived from human breast milk that kills tumor cells by a process resembling programmed cell death (apoptosis). The process has been successfully tested in humans with skin papillomas and bladder cancer.

Bacterial Treatments:

Some forms of anaerobic bacteria, such as Clostridium novyi, consume the interior of oxygen-poor tumors. A major problem has been that bacteria do not consume all parts of the malignant tissue. However, combining the therapy with chemotherapeutic treatments can help to solve this problem.

We haven’t even mentioned CRISPR gene editing yet, which may be the most promising on-the-horizon treatment. Doctors use  clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats to detect and destroy DNA from similar bacteriophages during subsequent infections. 

In plain English, genetic mutations cause cancer. Doctors believe that a controlled genetic mutation can cure cancer.