Sharon Belvin's nightmare with cancer began in 2004, when she was just 22. Belvin was an avid runner, but said she suddenly found she couldn't climb the stairs without "a lot of difficulty breathing." Eventually, after months of fruitless treatments for lung ailments like bronchitis, she was diagnosed with melanoma - a very serious skin cancer. It had already spread to her lungs, and the prognosis was grim. She had about a 50-50 chance of surviving the next six months. "Yeah, that was the turning point of life, right there," she says. What Belvin didn't know at the time was that a revolutionary treatment for melanoma had begun testing in clinical trials. An immunologist named Jim Allison, now
More than 35,000 oncologists, researchers, life science executives, and other stakeholders flocked to the world’s largest cancer conference between June 3 and 7 to discuss the most exciting new advances in the field. The annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) wrapped up on Tuesday afternoon. Cancer immunotherapies, or treatments that use the body’s immune system to fight cancerous cells, were once again the most hotly anticipated drug class at the conference.
The world of cancer treatments is an explosive area, especially as treatments get more targeted. The IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics expects cancer treatment costs to hit $150 billion by 2020, up from $107 billion in 2015. Enter a new potential side effect: debilitating cost.
New drug 'retrains'immunesystemtofightaggressive bladdercancerDate: June 5, 2016 Source: NYU Langone Medical Center / New York University School of Medicine