We are now "Susan At Antonino Salon" specializing in Human Hair, Human Hair/Synthetic Blend and Synthetic wigs. I am an Oncology Nurse and Breast Cancer Survivor offering products for women undergoing Chemotherapy and Radiation Treatment since 1994. “The Fit of Custom Made. The Value of Custom Tailored.”
CALL or TEXT 248-544-4287 for your FREE consultation on Monday and Tuesday from 10 AM to 4 PM. We are located within Antonino Salon, 191 Townsend, Birmingham, MI 48009.
Wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving! I love this holiday! Always filled with family, good stories, good food and very good times. I...
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
CUSTOM TAILORED WIGS - CREATING THE ESSENCE OF YOU
I had just finished
chemotherapy and we took our family to Disney World to get away. I had purchased a
wig off the shelf – that was in 1993 and was I ready for some fun. So we were
having a blast on It’s A Small World and other easy rides. The girls wanted to
go on Splash Mountain. All was going great until the last big drop down the
water slide and WHOA…My daughter’s lightning fast reaction grabbed my wig as it
was flying off my head. And, Custom tailored wigs were born.
You will first meet with
Susan, Oncology Nurse and Breast Cancer Survivor, who will gently discuss your
specific needs including price range style of wig, timing, wig care
instructions including tips on how to keep your wig healthy and long lasting.
Then you will consult with our cosmetologist to find that perfect wig. We are
here to help you during the loss of your hair. Depending upon your chemotherapy
drug and cycle will determine how long you will be experiencing hair loss. That
will help you decide what is right for you - Synthetic, Human Hair/Synthetic
Blend, Human Hair.
Our passion is all about
personal service including Custom Tailoring your wig to fit your head for your
comfort and security. We also offer Custom Color for Human Hair clients.
Please call 248-544-4287 for your FREE
consultation to explore solutions that are right for you. We look forward to
your visit. Susan's @ Antonino is by appointment only on Monday and Tuesday
from 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM.
Scientists Develop New Laser That Can Find and Destroy Cancer Cells in the Blood
Cancer cells can spread to other parts of the body through the blood. And now, researchers have developed a new kind of laser that can find and zap those tumor cells from the outside of the skin.
Though it may still be a ways away from becoming a commercial diagnostic tool, the laser is up to 1,000 times more sensitive than current methods used to detect tumor cells in blood, the researchers reported June 12 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
To test for cancer spread, doctors typically take blood samples, but often the tests fail to find tumor cells even if they are present in a single sample, especially if the patient has an early form of cancer, said senior author Vladimir Zharov, director of the nanomedicine center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
If the tests do come back positive, that typically means there's a high concentration of circulating tumor cells in the blood; at that point, the cancer has likely spread widely to other organs and it's often "too late to effectively treat patients," Zharov added. [Top 10 Cancer-Fighting Foods]
Years ago, Zharov and his team came up with the idea of an alternate, noninvasive method to test larger quantities of blood with a greater sensitivity. Taking the familiar route, they tested it in the lab, then on animals and recently brought it to clinical trials in humans.
The new technology, dubbed the Cytophone, uses pulses of laser light on the outside of the skin to heat up cells in the blood. But the laser only heats up melanoma cells — not healthy cells — because these cells carry a dark pigment called melanin, which absorbs the light. The Cytophone then uses an ultrasound technique to detect the teensy, tiny waves emitted by this heating effect.
They tested the technology on 28 light-skinned patients who had melanomaand on 19 healthy volunteers who didn't have melanoma. They shone the laser onto the patients' hands and found that within 10 seconds to 60 minutes, the technology could identify circulating tumor cells in 27 out of 28 of those volunteers.
Finding and killing tumor cells
The device didn't return any false positives on the healthy volunteers, and it didn't cause safety concerns or side effects, they said. Melanin is a pigment that is normally present in the skin, but skin cells aren't harmed, Zharov said. Even though the skin produces melanin naturally, this laser technique doesn’t harm those cells. That’s because the laser light exposes a relatively a large area on the skin (so it's not focused enough on individual skin cells to damage them), while the laser energy is more concentrated on the blood vessels and circulating tumor cells, he added.
Unexpectedly, the team also found that after the treatment, the cancer patients had fewer circulating tumor cells. "We used a relatively low energy" with the primary purpose of diagnosing rather than treating the cancer, Zharov said. Yet, even at that low energy, the laser beam seemed able to destroy the cancer cells.
Here’s how it works: As the melanin absorbs the heat, the water around the melanin inside the cells begins to evaporate, producing a bubble that expands and collapses, mechanically destroying the cell, Zharov said.
"Our goal is by killing these cells, we can help prevent the spreading of metastatic cancer," he said. But he hopes to conduct more research to optimize the device further to kill more tumor cells, while still being harmless to other cells.
They also haven't yet tested the device on people with darker skin, who have higher levels of melanin. Even so, only a very small percentage of African Americans get melanoma.
The team hopes to expand the technology to find circulating tumor cells released by cancers other than melanoma. These cancer cells don't carry melanin, so to detect them, the researchers would first need to inject the patients with specific markers or molecules that would bind to these cells so that they can be targeted by the laser. They have so far demonstrated that this technique could work on human breast cancer cells in the lab.
Promising treatment may reach far more breast cancer patients
Daiichi drug may outsell Roche’s Herceptin, spark dealmaking
A class of drugs is emerging that can attack cancer cells in the body without damaging surrounding healthy ones. They have the potential to replace chemotherapy and its disruptive side effects, reshaping the future of cancer care.
The complex biological medicines, called antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), have been in development for decades, and are now generating renewed excitement because of the success of one ADC in late-stage testing, a breast cancer treatment called DS-8201.
The fervor over ADCs is such that AstraZeneca Plc in March agreed to pay as much as $6.9 billion to jointly develop DS-8201 with Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co., the British drugmaker’s biggest deal in more than a decade. The investment was widely seen to be a validation of DS-8201’s potential -- and the ADC class of drugs as a whole -- as an alternative for chemotherapy, the most widely used treatment, for some types of cancer.
DS-8201, which will be filed for U.S. approval by the end of September, is so well-regarded that some analysts already predict it will surpass the $7 billion in annual sales for Roche Holding AG’s breast cancer drug Herceptin, which it aims to replace.
“DS-8201 may become one of the largest cancer biologic drugs,’’ said Caroline Stewart, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, who estimates sales of the drug to eventually approach $12 billion globally -- that’s a level attained by only a handful of biologics, which are drugs based on a living organism. “While the field has advanced and there are several companies focusing on ADCs, Daiichi in particular seems to have developed a unique expertise.”
Analysts say DS-8201 could triple the number of patients who get powerful targeted treatment for breast cancer, the most common tumor in women that kills more than half a million annually. As importantly, its ability to target cancer cells without affecting normal cells is a key advantage over the take-no-prisoners approach of chemotherapy.
Daiichi’s treatment has been seen to double survival time for advanced breast cancer patients to 20 months from 10, former UBS Securities Japan Co. analyst Atsushi Seki said in March. In trials, patients using DS-8201 experienced less nausea and hair loss compared with chemotherapy.
Magic Bullet
DS-8201’s full potential is still years away, as it will take time for data to validate the drug’s efficacy in a wide range of patients. Still, the potential of ADCs is already jolting Big Pharma. Roche, whose Herceptin loses patent exclusivity in the U.S. this year, has added ADCs to its portfolio with its Kadcyla breast cancer treatment. Pfizer Inc. has Mylotarg, an ADC that treats myeloid leukemia.
About 56 pharmaceutical companies are developing ADC candidates, including ImmunoGen Inc. and Seattle Genetics Inc., and they could be targets for acquisitions or licensing deals from global pharmaceuticals anxious for a piece of the ADC pie, according to Cowen Inc.
“ADCs are being positioned as a chemo replacement,’’ Cowen analysts including Boris Peaker wrote in an April note. “There is significant potential for partnership activity.’’
The global ADC market was valued at $1.57 billion in 2017 and is projected to grow 26% every year through 2025 to almost $10 billion, according to a report by Grand View Research.
The concept behind ADCs was envisioned in 1900 by German Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich, who formed the idea of a “magic bullet” in which a single toxic molecule would be delivered to attack a diseased cell without damaging surrounding healthy cells.
The actual use of ADCs began in 2000, but the interest in the sector cooled down as many failed to live up to expectations. The therapies belong to a broader category of cancer immunotherapies that include Merck & Co.’s Keytruda and Novartis AG’s CAR T-cell therapy Kymriah that harness the immune system to kill tumors.
Another Level
Daiichi Sankyo’s drug takes ADCs to another level. Its advantage is that it carries eight payloads stably to cancer cells, double the number of the industry standard, said Toshinori Agatsuma, head of oncology research at Daiichi Sankyo who led a team that discovered the therapy.
“Currently available ADCs are far from being perfect technically because the payload linked to antibodies aren’t properly delivered to cancer cells,’’ said Agatsuma. “We wanted to challenge and improve that. We were a latecomer in biotech, but I knew it was an area where we could catch up, compete and win.’’
About 2.1 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year, according to the World Health Organization. Some 18% of cases are driven by a protein called HER2, and their first treatment is chemotherapy alongside Roche’s Herceptin and Perjeta, a related drug. While DS-8201 is currently in testing for later-stage cancer, the plan is to go up against the first-line treatment in the next two years.
“It would be transformative” if the drug were to become the sole first-line treatment, said David Fredrickson, president of AstraZeneca’s oncology business. “If we can eliminate the side effects associated with chemotherapy, that would be a tremendous benefit for women.”
Drugs like Herceptin only target high levels of HER2, and women with lower levels must rely on hormone therapy or chemotherapy. That’s where DS-8201 has the potential to serve far more patients, treating those with both higher and lower levels of HER2.
‘It’s Different’
“We need more evidence, but my gut feeling is that DS-8201 is the most effective among existing medicines targeting HER2 positive patients, including Herceptin and chemotherapy,’’ said Shunji Takahashi, deputy director at the Cancer Institute Hospital of the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, who took a part in an early-stage DS-8201 trial. He noted that interstitial pneumonia is a concern as a side effect, and needs to be monitored.
For Daiichi Sankyo, the development of DS-8201 has helped resurrect the Japanese company after it struggled for years to set a path for growth, weighed down by a failed acquisition of India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. and a shortage of blockbuster products.
“A single drug has a potential to transform Daiichi Sankyo and I didn’t expect it a year ago,’’ SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. analyst Yasuhiro Nakazawa said. “Daiichi Sankyo had a track record of betraying market expectations with previous drug developments. But with this one, I can really feel that it’s different this time.’’