Current issues in soft tissue sarcomas

Current issues highlight some of the latest research into soft tissue sarcomas, new therapies becoming available and new drug treatments coming to the market.

Topoisomerase 1 inhibitors may have activity in malignant gliomas Recently presented data from Duke University, North Carolina suggests that topoisomerase 1 inhibitors (specifically topotecan, irinotecan and 9-amino-camtothecin) have activity in in vitro glioma and...
ST1571 in gastrointestinal stromal tumours Gastrointestinal stromal tumours/sarcomas are characterised by the expression of c-kit proto-oncogene product (KIT) and tend to respond poorly to orthodox chemotherapy. ST1571, a signal transduction...
Iphosphamide, Carboplatin and Etoposide chemotherapy is excellent salvage chemotherapy in refractory or relapsed Ewing's and Rha This salvage chemotherapy regimen, devised for patients who had failed adriamycin (doxorubicin based chemotherapy) has been claimed to be the best supportive chemotherapy regimen around at present...
The use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for soft tissue sarcomas The routine use of chemotherapy after surgery for soft tissue sarcopmas is not established therapy. In an attempt to use the chemotherapy mopre successfully, several trials have looked at the use of...
Localised limb osteosarcoma: results of a trial looking at two drug versus three drug adjuvant chemotherapy A European trial looking at a two drug adjuvant chemotherapy regimen (adriamycin and cis-platinum) versus the same drugs plus a third viz. methotrexate showed no advantage to adding the methotrexate...
PET scanning helps stage and tell the grade of sarcomas at presentation PET scanning, a new form of functional scanning, is good at telling not only whether the sarcoma has spread/metastasised, but also whether a sarcoma is of high grade (and hence likely to behave...
Pegylated Liposomal Doxorubicin in refractory sarcoma chemotherapy Doxorubicin is the best established chemotherapy agent in sarcoma therapy. The relatively newly liposomal formulation of the compound has been shown to have similar activity against the cancer but a...
High dose Melphalan and autologous transplantation in children with Rhabdomyosarcoma As soft tissue sarcoma in children is a proven indication for adjuvant chemotherapy, so, if there is any group for whom a strategy of high dose chemotherapy (above marrow death – thus the...
Who should receive adjuvant chemotherapy after definitive surgery for soft tissue sarcomas? The subject of who should receive post –operative chemotherapy for localised soft tissue sarcoma has been a controversial one for over a decade. The subject has been overviewed at the 2000...