CURE's Top Stories: January 2020

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Take a look back at the top five CURE® stories for January 2020.

Here are the top five CURE® stories for January 2020.

5. Immunotherapy Vaccine Under Investigation

A new medication that aims to treat glioblastoma by using a patient’s own immune system will soon be available via a clinical trial this spring, according to researchers. Learn more in this story.

4. A Mother-Daughter Duo Believes in Hope

In this episode of the “CURE Talks Cancer” podcast, we spoke with breast cancer survivor Felicia Robinson, who recently wrote a book with her daughter on their personal experiences with a life-changing diagnosis.

3. The Falling, Wandering and Crashing of Treatment Side Effects

The bashing, the twitching, the gripping - here, CURE contributor Sherry Hanson explores the various neuropathy-related side effects she’s experienced as a result of her treatment for ovarian cancer.

2. Menopausal Hormone Therapy and Cancer

Women who took estrogen alone experienced decreased rates of breast cancer and death from the disease even after they stopped taking the therapy, when compared to women who took estrogen with progestin. Take a closer look at the data from the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in this piece.

1. Cognitive Dysfunction After Cancer

How do you heal your mind when faced with cognitive impairment after cancer treatment? Take a closer look at the new challenges one woman faces in the aftermath of the disease in this story.

As always, thanks for reading!

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Jessica McDade, B.S.N., RN, OCN, in an interview with CURE
For patients with cancer, the ongoing chemotherapy shortage may cause some anxiety as they wonder how they will receive their drugs. However, measuring drugs “down to the minutiae of the milligrams” helped patients receive the drugs they needed, said Alison Tray. Tray is an advanced oncology certified nurse practitioner and current vice president of ambulatory operations at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Jersey.  If patients are concerned about getting their cancer drugs, Tray noted that having “an open conversation” between patients and providers is key.  “As a provider and a nurse myself, having that conversation, that reassurance and sharing the information is a two-way conversation,” she said. “So just knowing that we're taking care of you, we're going to make sure that you receive the care that you need is the key takeaway.” In June 2023, many patients were unable to receive certain chemotherapy drugs, such as carboplatin and cisplatin because of an ongoing shortage. By October 2023, experts saw an improvement, although the “ongoing crisis” remained.  READ MORE: Patients With Lung Cancer Face Unmet Needs During Drug Shortages “We’re really proud of the work that we could do and achieve that through a critical drug shortage,” Tray said. “None of our patients missed a dose of chemotherapy and we were able to provide that for them.” Tray sat down with CURE® during the 49th Annual Oncology Nursing Society Annual Congress to discuss the ongoing chemo shortage and how patients and care teams approached these challenges. Transcript: Particularly at Hartford HealthCare, when we established this infrastructure, our goal was to make sure that every patient would get the treatment that they need and require, utilizing the data that we have from ASCO guidelines to ensure that we're getting the optimal high-quality standard of care in a timely fashion that we didn't have to delay therapies. So, we were able to do that by going down to the minutiae of the milligrams on hand, particularly when we had a lot of critical drug shortages. So it was really creating that process to really ensure that every patient would get the treatment that they needed. For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.
Dr. Andrea Apolo in an interview with CURE
Dr. Kim in an interview with CURE
Dr. Nguyen, from Stanford Health, in an interview with CURE
Dr. Barzi in an interview with CURE