| There's new hope for kidney cancer patients as a | | | | difficult for some patients to tolerate over a |
| new so called "smart bomb" could reach the clinical | | | | prolonged period. This is where the new "smart |
| test stages in the next few years. | | | | bomb" technology steps in, it enables the |
| In the UK kidney cancer is the 10th most | | | | packaging of smaller doses of drugs into |
| prevalent cancer and effects about 7000 people a | | | | nanoparticles where they can be targeted at |
| year resulting in about 3500 deaths a year. It's | | | | cancer cells rather than the current method of |
| also been given the title of "silent killer" because it | | | | large doses. |
| doesn't always present with symptoms and in a | | | | Although there seems to be no claim that the |
| number of cases (including mine) it's found | | | | drugs will be any more effective it does mean |
| incidentally. | | | | that the side effects will be dramatically reduced |
| The problem to date is that treatments such as | | | | which you'd hope would give patients more |
| chemotherapy and immunotherapy have limited | | | | strength to fight and the medics more options. |
| impact on kidney cancer, and although huge | | | | They've been testing on mice so far with a drug |
| strides have been made over the past few years | | | | found in soil fungus, but the tests show that |
| generally these drugs will only help to stabilise the | | | | tumour shrinkage was on average 35% and |
| condition. That's not to say that some people | | | | metastases was reduced by 91% compared to |
| don't have a complete response with these | | | | mice that received the formula in the usual way. |
| treatments it's just less prevalent than in other | | | | It's really encouraging to see these new |
| forms of cancer. | | | | developments, maybe in the not too distant |
| The current kidney cancer drugs have a tendency | | | | future there'll finally be a real cure for this silent |
| to be very toxic and the side effects make it | | | | killer. |