My Tarceva adventure - the sequel

[eblguim]

Hi Gil
I would like to ask you how were you diagnosed since you have no symptoms.
My husband was also diagnosed but they can't do a biopsy and he has no symptoms either. He had a pleural effusion, but since then - about 7 weeks - all symptoms have disappeared and he is pretty much back to his normal self. He has decided not to do anything, just continue to feel better on his own. I was just wondering how does this disease work that you can be sick and "not be sick".

[jlenzmeier]

Can you tell me why Iressa was taken off the market? I have also heard that your body starts to figure out Tarceva over time which makes it less effective. Is there anything in the works to stop that from happening??

Thanks,
Jill

[kris114]

Originally Posted by jlenzmeier

Can you tell me why Iressa was taken off the market? I have also heard that your body starts to figure out Tarceva over time which makes it less effective. Is there anything in the works to stop that from happening??

Thanks,
Jill

There is another drug that is being tested through clinical trials that is being used for people who have had initial success with Tarceva then relapse. Off hand I don't remember the name of the drug, but supposedly the drug has been proven effective in the early trials. Kris

[gilbert2001]

Originally Posted by eblguim

Hi Gil
I would like to ask you how were you diagnosed since you have no symptoms.
My husband was also diagnosed but they can't do a biopsy and he has no symptoms either. He had a pleural effusion, but since then - about 7 weeks - all symptoms have disappeared and he is pretty much back to his normal self. He has decided not to do anything, just continue to feel better on his own. I was just wondering how does this disease work that you can be sick and "not be sick".

Hi eblguim

I first had chest pain and symptoms of pneumonia in Aug-2005. Nodules were first seen in CT but the docs thought it was fungus.

In Feb-2006 I had chest pain again and the CT showed growth.
The chest pain disappeared by itself in a week.
Then I had bronchoscopy, which was negative and Pet scan, which was inconclusive.

In Aug-2006 chest pain came back and the CT showed even more growth. This time the bronchoscopy was positive. The chest pain lasted for a couple of weeks.

The only symptom I have now is coughing, usually when I turn in bed from side to side, but that started after my second bronchoscopy.

Gil

[Janmarie2]

Jill, A drug called HKI 272 is currently in clinical trials ( phase II I think) It is suppose to take over once Tarvea quits working . We looked into the clinicial trials for my mom but she did not qualify for them. Too much chemo in her history.

When Iressa was taken off the market they said it was because it was not doing what they had expected. The reality of it is probably the fact that such a small number of people benefitted from it that the drug company did not stand to make millions or billions of dollars from it. Sad but it all does come down to money. I would like to see the head of the drug company telling those people it did benefit that were at the time 2-3 yrs NED that the drug did not do what they had hoped! I am convinced that the month my mom was on it it was working for her due to the huge improvement she had that month . We were just lucky that Tarceva also worked when they switched to it the next month.

They did rerun clinical trials that "proved" Iressa did not do what it first claimed to do.But if you were the big drug company trying to justify taking a drug that did help a small select group of people wouldn't you stack that clinical trial in your favor to get the results you wanted? That would have been easy as they could have selected people that were less likley to respond to it to have in the clinical trials.

As sad as it seems the bottom line is money and other drugs have been removed too because the profits were not high enough, despite the fact that people or sometimes animals did benefit from them. JanMarie