Merry Christmas!

 

As  you can see, we're all set for Christmas. Our tree is around 9 feet tall, it should be interesting getting it back out of the house after the festivities are over. We're looking forward to spending Christmas at home and have both Katie and my families coming to visit during the next few days. 

 

The timing of my treatment has worked out very well. I was due to have my next chemotherapy on December 25th, I'm very pleased that the hospital don't schedule chemotherapy on Christmas day or Boxing day and I'm now due to go in for cycle nine on the 27th. I had a routine appointment with my oncologist on Thursday; I told him I was hoping to have a glass of wine sometime during Christmas, he checked my latest blood test results and said that it would be ok for me to do that - hooray! 

 

Last week I read the results of a phase II clinical trial that looked at the use of a drug called Sorafenib in the treatment of advanced soft-tissue sarcomas (LMS is a soft tissue sarcoma). The results suggest that Sorafenib may be a useful treatment especially for people who have had a number of prior chemotherapy regimes. Of 35 LMS patients in the trial, 38% experienced a six month period during which their tumours did not progress further following treatment with Sorafenib. Whilst the small sample size means that the results must be treated with caution, they indicate a  similar level of effectiveness to many of the approved LMS chemotherapy agents.
 

Sorafenib is not the only drug for which trial results published in 2012 suggest usefulness in the treatment of LMS, similar findings came out of a phase III trial of Pazopanib. These drugs are not cures but they do provide additional options for patients that have exhausted the exisitng approved systemic treatments of which there are relatively few. It is great to see that today there are new treatments being identified for LMS as for many years there has been very little progress on the treatment of this disease. Here's hoping that there are more developments in the treatment of this and other cancers in 2013.

Merry Christmas to you and your families!