Measuring medicine: How new technologies could help doctors predict patien...(lapatinib as an HCC treatment in a phase...),Health

Patients took a 1,500 mg oral lapatinib dose daily throughout a 28-day cycle. The median number of cycles during the trial was two with some patients receiving as few as one cycle and some receiving as many as 12 cycles. The researchers performed radiological assessments every eight weeks.

In this study, where 20 percent of all patients had previous treatment before receiving lapatinib, there were no objective responses. However, 31 percent of all patients receiving lapatinib had stable disease; 8 percent had stable disease lasting longer than six months.

The most common toxicities were diarrhea (69 percent) and nausea (54 percent).Three patients had more severe toxicities including diarrhea, rash and acute renal failure. Researchers found no evidence of cardiac dysfunction. Side effects were considered tolerable.

Researchers have found that functional diffusion mapping (fDM), which assesses early changes in tumors by diffusion MRI, can provide an earlier assessment of response for patients with glioma, a notoriously hard-to-treat cancer of the central nervous system.

Diffusion MRI does not necessarily make a better picture of the tumor, but it may be able to assess the response of the tumor to therapy much faster than traditional MRI images, said Brian D. Ross, Ph.D., co-director for the Center for Molecular Imaging at the University of Michigan. In addition, by combining diffusion MRI and conventional MRI, one can get a better measurement of results than could be achieved with either test alone.

Diffusion MRI is a type of magnetic resonance imaging scan that can be performed on any MRI system and which allows for the measurement of the
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