Better Pain Management Improves Health Related Quality of Life (hrQoL)

05/30/19 • 47 min

In this edition of The Onco’Zine Brief Peter Hofland talk with Dr. Lisa Stearns, the founder and medical director of Center for Pain and Supportive Care, in Phoenix, Arizona.
An internationally recognized Interventional Pain Specialist, board certified in hospice and palliative medicine and pain management, Dr. Stearns’ passion for changing the face of acute and chronic pain-treatment is evidenced by her ongoing care for her patients and her active research to find a better way to manage pain.
In addition to her work at the Center for Pain and Supportive Care, Dr. Stearns has authored numerous research articles and frequently speaks at medical society meetings around the world to share her knowledge and her passion to help her patients.
Cancer and cancer treatments can be painful. And patients often experience pain from surgery - from tumors pressing on bones, nerves, or organs and from chemotherapy and radiation. But each of these kinds of pain can be controlled and kept at a bearable level.
Dr. Sterns and her co-workers at the Center for Pain and Supportive Care work with cancer patients to develop a unique pain-management and rehabilitation-plan, based on a patient’s type of cancer.
Using a palliative care model Dr. Stearns brings together a team of healthcare professionals to help create the best possible quality of life for her patients and their overall health and wellness.
As a nation we battle an escalating opioid-overdose crisis – driven by synthetic opioids such as fentanyl but also tramadol and other drugs. Based on the latest data, this crisis claims more than 100 lives per day.
In their response to this crisis, the government has enacted tougher new laws and regulations on opioid prescribing. These laws are, however well-intentioned, also restricting access to opioids for cancer patients. At the same time, opioid-use, has an addiction stigma among many patients with cancer.
But, how common are opioid-related deaths in patients with cancer? To answer this question, researchers at the Duke University School of Medicine conducted a retrospective review of death certificate data from the National Center of Health Statistics, which provides information about the cause of death as well as and the contributing factors. The researchers looked at data from deaths due to opioids from 2006 to 2016.
They calculated the opioid death incidence from the estimated cancer survivor population, as well as the total population of the United States. The researchers found that from 2006 to 2016, about 900 deaths were related to opioids in patients with cancer.
However, this was compared with about 200,000 deaths in the non-cancer population.
Opioid deaths in both groups did increase over time, from about 5 to almost 9 per 100,000 people in the general population and 0.5 to 0.7 per 100,000 in the cancer patient population.
The researchers noted that in real, practical terms, the volume of overdose deaths in patients with cancer is very small. It increased from 59 patients in 2006 to 102 patients in 2016. The researchers involved in this study found that deaths from opioid abuse, as the primary cause of death, is about 10 times less likely to occur in patients with cancer.
Healthcare professionals like Dr. Lisa Stearns are committed to help cancer patients with pain management designed to improve the individual’s health related Quality of Life.
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A New Combination Therapy may help Stop Triple Negative Breast Cancer from Spreading

In this edition of The Onco’Zine Brief Peter Hofland talks with Dr. Salman Hyder, Professor in Tumor Angiogenesis and professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center at the University of Missouri, in Columbia, Missouri.
Together with a team of researchers Dr. Hyder found that a combination drug therapy, reduces the spread of triple negative breast cancer to other locations of the body by 50%
A breast cancer cell is like a house with three locks on the front door. Keys, or receptors, allow drugs to unlock the door and kill the cell. However, in triple-negative breast cancer, these keys are absent, thereby resulting in few options for drug therapy.
Until now.
A protein called p53 suppresses and kills cancer in people.
However, in contrast - a defective, mutant form of p53 helps cancer cells grow and multiply.
Triple negative breast cancer lacks ways to treat the cancer with hormone therapies or anti-HER2 targeted therapies. While chemotherapy can work well in Triple Negative Breast cancer – and a patient may even respond better to chemotherapy than some other types of breast cancer - these drugs are toxic, and non-specific.
Research has shown that most people who die as the result of breast cancer, in particular women with triple-negative breast cancer, do so following metastasis, or spread of the cancer to other organs in the body. Triple negative breast cancer lacks ways to treat the cancer with hormone therapies or anti-HER2 targeted therapies.
While chemotherapy can work well in Triple Negative Breast cancer – and a patient with Triple Negative Breast cancer may even respond better to chemotherapy than patients with other types of breast cancer – chemotherapeutic drugs are generally toxic, and non-specific.
Dr. Hyder and his team wanted to see if a new combination therapy could provide a new, non-toxic targeted approach for treatment. In a preclinical study with two previously discovered drugs —one that restores the p53 protein’s ability to kill cancer cells and another that targets the blood vessels in order to kill cancer cells — they observed an effect on metastatic triple negative breast cancer.
And according to the researchers, the results are promising. Dr Hyder noted that the cancer did not spread as fast when both drugs were given separately, and a little more with the combination of the two agents.
The two investigational drugs, APR-246 and 2aG4, are currently in clinical trials. Researchers hope that these findings will help enhance personalized treatment for breast cancer by reducing existing cancer cells and preventing the spread of the cancer to other parts of the body.
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Immuno-Oncology: Augmenting the Immune System’s Natural Ability to See and Eliminate Cancer

In this edition of The Onco’Zine Brief Peter Hofland talks with Mr. Isaac Israel, the CEO of Kitov Pharma, a pharmaceutical drug development company developing new options to treat osteoarthritis pain and hypertension simultaneously, as well as novel anticancer drugs.
The company is developing an investigational drug called NT-219, a novel small molecule drug designed to targets two signal proteins that are part of an anti-cancer drug resistance mechanism.
Based on recent findings, Kitov researchers demonstrated that NT-219 binds directly to the two proteins.
In previous preclinical models where NT-219 was administered in combination with various oncology therapies, outstanding efficacy in preventing acquired resistance and reversing tumor resistance was demonstrated.
Immuno-oncology is increasingly recognized as the future in cancer therapy and many immuno-oncology candidates, including NT-219, have been identified and are currently being tested in preclinical studies or the clinic.
Founded upon the key principles of the immune response, Immuno-Oncology research seeks to understand how the body’s natural defenses, can be leveraged to empower antitumor immunity.
Immuno-oncology is different than traditional cancer treatments.
It works by augmenting the immune system’s natural ability to see and eliminate cancer cells much in the same way it protects us against infection from viruses and bacteria.
As a living, dynamic system, the immune system is able to detect cancer anywhere in the body, which is especially important in treating patients with cancers that have spread or metastasized to other organs.
Recent clinical success has resulted in the approval of a number of novel immuno-oncology therapies, both alone and in combination with other treatments, for nearly 20 types of cancer, including advanced solid tumor and blood cancers as well as cancers with a specific genetic defect resulting in a high frequency of mutation, regardless of tissue type.
In bladder cancer, melanoma, and certain types of lung cancer, these immuno-oncology therapies have received approval by the Unites States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as first-line treatment, replacing or, in the case of combination therapies, improving conventional treatments like chemotherapy.
Immuno-oncology therapies are also FDA-approved to treat some patients for whom prior treatments were ineffective. Today, clinical trials are ongoing to test the benefits of Immuno-oncology agents in many other types of cancer.
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