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The New Lung Cancer Treatment – A Breath of Fresh Air and the Rise of New Hope

Updated: 7 days ago

Cancer – is an illness, when diagnosed, has the potential to drop your heart into the deepest pit of your stomach. When the medical condition was diagnosed initially, the world was clueless about how to cure it.

However, science has massively excelled in the past half a century, and medicine has focused on finding the right cure for this disease. While there are many types of cancer – lung cancer might be of interest today.

Lung cancer – as the name suggests, is cancer in your lungs. However, there isn't just a single type of lung cancer, but the disease is present in divisions of many, and the question about its cure is still looming in many heads. Curing cancer isn't an easy job, but the world has come a long way. So, the question today stands, can lung cancer be cured?

Can Lung Cancer be cured?

One of the crucial questions anyone is concerned about regarding cancer of any type is the cure. So, the question is, can lung cancer be cured?

Well, the answer to it isn't something we can give on the spot. While the world for sure has advanced and brought about many treatment methods for cancer patients, the outcome of the treatment depends upon the patient health, type of cancer, and what stage it is on.

However, this doesn't mean science stopped fighting. Scientists are constantly researching, performing endless hours of testing, and concluding hypotheses that they believe will be beneficial. Their hard work is paying off, though, and the good news is that there might be some new lung cancer treatments in 2022 making their way. Want to know more about it? Hop on below.

The New Lung Cancer Treatment – A Breath of Fresh Air and the Rise of New Hope

Surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation are some treatment names we all are well aware of. However, there are instances when these treatments don't work, or the patient isn't healthy enough to bear through them. So, what do you do in such a situation?

Well, science strives harder. Human life is precious, and we all know that. Hence, to save a precious life and give them hope for a new start, some new lung cancer treatments made their way through. Some of the exceptional advancements in treatments we have seen in the recent years are:

1. Gavreto (pralsetinib)

Gavreto is a prescribed medication that is used in the treatment of many types of cancers that are caused by abnormal rearranges during transfection (RET). Hence, it has shown some impeccable impacts on the treatment of RET non-small cell carcinoma.

Approved by Food and Drugs administrations (FDA), United States, Gavreto works as a kinase inhibitor which means its functionality is similar to a chemotherapy drug. The primary purpose of the drug is to treat lung cancers that have spread or metastasized in adults. However, while the medication has shown significant benefits in adults, its use for children under the age of 12 is still not precise.

While Gavreto has shown massive benefits, the medication is still used to treat one of the world's most lethal diseases, hence has its drawbacks. While the medicine showed more improvement cases during trials, it also showed lung inflammation in a handful of patients. Thus, before prescribing this particular drug, your health care professional will perform all the required tests for your safety.

2)Zepzelca (lurbinectedin)

Zepzelca is a medication used to treat patients with conditions of non-small cell carcinoma. However, you might be thinking several medicines do this, so what makes this unique?

Well, Zepzelca is quite different from all the medications launched before. This medicine is used explicitly on patients whose cancer has spread to other parts, and platinum-based chemotherapy showed no improvement in their conditions.

Zepzelca was approved by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States on June 15th, 2020, and since then, many trials have been done. The medication has significantly improved in those with metastasis lung cancer with post-chemotherapy history.

However, people with kidney or liver problems and those pregnant or planning to conceive should always notify their doctor before the treatment.

3)Tepmetko (tepotinib)

Tepmetko is a MET indicator used to treat non-small cell lung cancer in which the tumors have developed an abnormal mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) gene. The medication was approved in Japan on March 25th, 2020, by PMDA and is the first orally consumed MET inhibitor indicator used for treating line-agnostic treatment of NS-cell lung carcinoma.

However, while it has shown significant results in the trial and error phase, Tepmetko still might have several side effects in some people. The medication might show abnormal liver blood test results, muscle and joint pain, shortness of breath, and several other setbacks.

Hence, before prescribing this drug, your doctor will run several tests to assess your effectiveness on this particular drug.

4)Randomized Phase II: Combination of Ramucirumab and Pembrolizumab

The survival rate of non-small cell carcinoma happens to be 8 to 36 percent on average. However, with the newest combination drug, which has been in the works since 2019, scientists hope to increase the survival rate successfully.

The Ramucirumab drug is a vascular endothelial growth receptor inhibitor, while the Pembrolizumab is an immunotherapy drug that manages the immune system checkpoint.

The study was efficient on 136 patients who failed any prior therapies, and testing the RP drug showed a 31 percent increased survival rate compared to patients on standard treatment.

However, like any other treatment, this particular therapy also showed adverse effects on the few from the experimental group. Hence, proper testing is crucial before the administration of this drug.

How Do We Know These Drugs are Effective?

While science is a massive puzzle, it plays no games with human health. All the drugs sent into the market are a product of immense research and many trials and errors before they make it on the shelf of any hospital pharmacy.

Hence, while these new lung cancer treatments are still not as popular as other forms of treatment, it won't take long before their results make them one of the most popularly used forms of medications. However, nothing can be said now, and all we can do is remain hopeful of finding the best cures for the disease that many worldwide are fighting against.

For a patient who is running out of hope, waiting for a drug to be approved can be interminable. Some patients with life-threatening diseases cannot afford to wait. To satisfy an influx of unsolicited patient requests from patients outside the US and to make its FDA-approved product available to patients in countries where it is not licensed, we set up a Named Patient Access program for patients with this need. In almost all countries, any patient (the Named Patient) with a life-threatening, long-lasting, or seriously debilitating illness has the right to access and purchase medicines outside his or her own country that are potentially life-saving or able to improve quality of life. Every country has its own specific rules and regulations surrounding the access and import of innovative medications, and there are many different programs and regulations set up for this purpose. These include the Named Patient Import for a small amount that is only for personal use purposes.

With the development of technology and communication, emerging medical technologies are no longer out of reach, the opinions of the world’s top doctors are at your fingertips, and the newly approved drugs in the world can also be obtained in time. In this era of information interconnectivity, patients don’t need to travel abroad to get diagnosis and treatment and obtain new therapeutic drugs on the spot; they can consult a US-based doctor online. They can still enjoy the latest frontier of medical research and development and obtain new opportunities for survival.

Medebound HEALTH is on the mission to provide quality care in the patients’ home countries.

Here, we present lung cancer consultation cases from Medebound HEALTH :