Osteosarcoma Essay

One critical need in osteosarcoma is to improve diagnostic methods in order to detect it at an early stage before it matures to a stage where surgery is necessary. An issue with this, however, is that the primary symptoms that lead to the discovery of bone cancers (in general) are the onset of pain and swelling. Thus, finding a suitable testing method would mean that the diagnostic method must happen before the patient is even aware of the problem.

Fortunately, osteosarcoma is rare and it can be cured with surgery (combination of surgery and new technologies in prothesis has benefited the patients by improving their lifestyle); however, when it’s undergone skip metastasis, surgery becomes an unusable method for removing cancer. Generally,

Even though 70% of this cases can be cured by traditional methods of completely removing the tumour by surgery and chemotherapy, there are still no promising treatments for unresectable osteosarcoma. According to a study funded by the Italian Sarcoma Group to treat unresectable osteosarcoma, a proposed solution is to use sorafenib and everolimus. Sorafenib is typically a molecular-targeted therapy used for the treatment of late-stage kidney cancer which cannot be treated by surgery. The phase I trials initiated by the Italian Sarcoma group involved usage of Sorafenib which showed signs of anti-tumor activity. However, these promising results were only short-lived with 46% PFS (Progression Free Survival) for 4-months and 29% PFS for 6-months. The failure of this treatment was attributed to the mTOR pathway and thus was improved by using mTOR inhibitor everolimus. Everolimus is also used to treat late stage kidney cancers, but it’s also effective for pancreatic, breast, and brain cancers also the study of the combination of this drug at several different doses. The study found that the drug combination showed short-term promising results of 45% of PFS for 6 months, however, it did not reach their target of 50% progression-free 6-month