Hello, Mayogirl, nice to meet you, despite I'm sorry for the reason you are here. How great that your sister has got you as her advocate!
Mayogirl wrote:Any guidance on where to start looking for clinical trials would be great.
As Lee has said, a fellow of this board, DK37 --Tom Marsilje--, who is a stage IV patient and a scientist, has put together a CLINICAL TRIALS FINDER FOR MSS- CRC, that curates/ selects data from clnicaltrials.gov. I help him. But the updated link to that finder would be:
http://trialfinder.fightcrc.org/You can read a bit about the history of that finder, and other useful links here
https://coloncancersupport.colonclub.co ... =1&t=57950I'm *assuming* your sister is MSS. If she has not been tested for MS status --MS stable or MS Instable High--, that is absolutely important, because treatments have changed during the last *months*, about what is pertinent right now for MSS or MSI. So be sure to ask her doctors about her microsatellite status --MSS or MSI.
Said all that...
in Ireland there is only one immunotherapy trial for mCRC --both: MSS and MSI-H--, only one but a very promising one, IMHO:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT02060188 Investigational Immuno-therapy Study of Nivolumab, and Nivolumab in Combination With Other Anti-cancer Drugs, in Colon Cancer That Has Come Back or Has Spread (CheckMate142)
If you put 'Ireland' as location in the Late Stage Clinical trial finder, you'll access a record for that trial. If you click over the Trial Title --not over the number--, you'll see an emergent window with information about the trial, that includes scientific literature you can print and share with your sister's doctor.
Also, if anyone has tried other treatments for mets on lungs please let me know. Thanks
As you probably know/ has been told, 8 lung mets are considered unresectable, because too much lung tissue would be lost in a normal surgery, that uses wedge resections.
However, there is a technique only available in Europe, so far, that allows to certain trained surgeons to excise dozens of metastases: LAPM "Laser Assisted Pulmonary Metastasectomy". It is possible only if the disease is confined in the lungs. Several fellows from this board undergone that; for some, it meant added months of life, but they departed later; for a fellow who tried --is trying-- and strategy to prevent recurrence, it is working so far --she's NED --not evidence of disease-- 3 years after surgery with both, the German and the British specialists. You can read about all that in the several pages of these threads:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=43840 and Lung laser surgery + ADAPT and still NED:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=57644 I dare to suggest this because one of the specialists works at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London, which might be accessible to you.
Let me add that this is mainstream medicine, not just some 'alternative'/ experimental technique.
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GERMANY
The inventor of the technique and the machine (laser) used for this is a thoracic surgeon, Dr. Axel Rolle (Coswig, Dresden, Germany)
http://www.ctsnet.org/home/arolleHe receive in 2004 an award for this; you can see him at the hospital and describing the technique in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3VH4fQ9MksHe retired recently but those who him trained continuing working at several hospitals in Germany.
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UNITED KINGDOM
During some years, Dr. George Ladas (UK), other thoracic surgeon, trained with Dr. Rolle and in 2010 he started to use the technique at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London.
This is him:
http://www.rbht.nhs.uk/healthprofession ... nts/ladas/(contact info there)
Some newspaper/press articles about this is the UK:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... stamp.htmlhttp://www.rbht.nhs.uk/media/press-rele ... ?locale=enI don't know of course if your sister would qualify for this, but thought it was worth mentioning.
Best wishes for you!