Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Gene therapy for IBC?

What kinds of gene therapy are being looked at for IBC ?
I'm not aware of a gene therapy trial for inflammatory breast cancer. There are ongoing trials for breast cancer in general, but all of them are in the very early stages of development, mostly Phase 1 trial. But nothing specifically for inflammatory breast cancer. When new drugs are developed, the very first step is to establish what is the best way to give the drug, how much should be given, how frequently, and how well patients tolerate that way of administering the drug. The same is true for gene therapy, for gene therapy is, in a way, a drug. So at this stage in the gene therapy trial, they are trying to determine the best way to administer the gene therapy, how frequently, and how much needs to be administered to get the predicted effect. Only later in the second stage do those clinical trials get to be reliable enough so that one knows that the drug or gene therapy is given the best way so one can expect the best possible results. At this point, gene therapy is not considered part of standard treatment of inflammatory breast cancer.

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