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Unfortunately this treatment did not work.
As expected, the better insurance you have the better you will do. This is very significant when we start talking about Medicare for all. The most popular "medicare for all" plan really is Medicaid for all. It sounds good with no copayments or deductibles, but when you try to limit costs especially for complex cases like a brain tumor, quality has to suffer.
One fault in the article- it says Medicare patients do not live as long as private insurance payments, but they did not correct for age. Medicare patients are usually older than private insurance patients, especially at the time of the first surgery. Older people in general do not do as well as younger people.
This is one of the most moving speeches about how devastating pediatric brain tumors are and the need to speed up development of treatments.
This is the wave of the future. It combines everything needed to speed up the search for the cure: finding the best treatments for each individual patient, helping them to get access, and analyzing the results so we learn from each patient. Instead of trying to find the right patients for a specific treatment, this turns it around and finds the best treatment for a specific patient.
The Musella Foundation is partnering with xCures and Cancer Commons to run compassionate use programs in a new way where we collect the real world data to help speed up drug approvals and learn best how to use drugs.
Disclaimer: I own stock in xCures, and am a consultant for them.
Our largest grant was a payment of $250,000 towards a $1 Million pledge we made to open the compassionate use program for the experimental drug ONC-201 in the USA, and to track the patients so we learn from every patient's experiences. We are now saving for the next payment, due at the end of this year, as well as another $2 million to open the program in the rest of the world!
This is the opening of the GBM AGILE trial, which will allow drugs to be tested much faster and easier for GBM. New drugs can be added and underperforming drugs dropped to home in on the best treatment or combination of treatments quickly!
I wish them luck!
Impressive early results!
GammaTile is an fda approved treatment which is an implant that slowly releases radiation to the tumor bed. See more details from our recent webinar on it at: https://virtualtrials.com/video2019.cfm?video=201905
This is from our friends at Store My Tumor.Com They provide services to store and freeze your tumor sample from surgery, as well as help you get access to the services that can use this tissue such as specialized testing and even the creation of custom made vaccines!
Great job by the people at the National Brain Tumor Society to get the Glioblastoma Awareness Day passed!
The virtual trial they are talking about is the next generation of our virtual trial registry. It takes the giant leap into offering ideas for treatment options. Our program never suggested anything - just observed what patients did and the outcome. This new program will evaluate each patient and come up with ideas for treatment options that fit their specific profile.
Disclaimer: I own stock in this company and am a consultant for it.
These meeting are to learn about Optune and meet people who are using it! One of them can be done online, the rest are real wolrd. Very much worth attending if you have a GBM or know someone who has one!
This is very impressive. 93% of GBM patients alive at 1 year compared to 65% historical controls. This treatment is a simple vaccine injection that does not require brain tumor tissue. It is just a shot in the arm or leg similiar to a flu vaccine, and has minimal to no side effects. A clinical trial recently opened at the Cleveland Clinic, which will combine a checkpoint inhibitor with the vaccine.
Please help with this. We can not let Medicare set a precedent with imposing such severe restrictions. If they get away with it now, it is only going to get worse for the next treatments in the pipeline – which will probably be much more expensive than Optune.
Sorry - the link in the last news blast did not work so I am resending this article!
Please help with this. We can not let Medicare set a precedent with imposing such severe restrictions. If they get away with it now, it is only going to get worse for the next treatments in the pipeline – which will probably be much more expensive than Optune.
Fascinating article on a new concept in treating cancer. Doesn't mention brain cancer but the same principle probably applies.
The thing that struck me though is the author danced around the obvious solution. He said there were doctors using the concept on their own patients and suggested that we need randomized controlled to prove it works. He missed the obvious solution - what is needed is that all cancer patients need to be tracked in an always on registry so that these "n of 1" trials are analyzed. If 1,000 doctors each try this on 5 patients and do not share the results, we just wasted 5,000 patients' experiences. If they were tracked in a registry, we would have the answer.
The presentation will be webcast live! See details below.
This is mostly for health care professionals. It will be at a much higher level than the type of conferences that we have that are targeting the patients and families. However, it is one of my favorite conferences. We get to see a lot of new ideas and to meet the people doing this exciting work.
A huge thanks to Bruce Blount for organizing this yearly event for us. It was at a gorgeous winery - my wife and I participated and had a great time!
The proceeds from the event will be used to help us fund a very special pediatric brain tumor research project!
Even though this is not for brain cancer, I am sending it in the news blast because it involves the same technology as Optune. This shows it works for other types of cancer! Great to see tumor treating fields is applicable to other body parts!
