I've been focused on getting Leo to walk. Through Westside Regional Center he already has therapies in place; physical therapy twice per week, speech therapy twice per week, and occupational therapy once per week - plus I take him to an amazing physical therapist, Nancy Dilger, who has new, state of the art treatments that he is responding too. This week I had scheduled to take him to the Neurologist for a second opinion and then to the Genetic specialist at Cedars. I thought it could overwhelm Leo and Nancy suggested that we talk to Dr. Michele, the Neurologist first then go from there. We had a lovely visit with Dr. Michele, I was smart enough to pack tons of M&Ms as bribes for good behavior...she diagnosed Leo with mild Cerebral Palsy. It was not what we wanted to hear but are thankful to hear it for two reasons. It is not a degenerative disease and because he live a relatively normal life, (she guessed he will be walking "way before age 5"). Plus having a diagnosis means we have a name to it so we can fight insurance for proper care, we can look into other therapies for have worked for other children, and we can better understand what we are dealing with and find hope in others' successes.
I met with Dr. McAndrew on Tuesday also, it was a full day of family health issues...We discussed the results from Houston, or lack there-of in terms of finding out if there was a trial that was right for me. Dr. Moulder said that the genomic profiling revealed that the cancer was the same as before and the most common but the only new information was that the tumor was Androgen receptor positive but that the trial targeting this was not currently recruiting. Dr. McAndrew also noted that I may be eligible for one other trial that she is going to look into for me. She also brought up that since MD Anderson didn't have anything specific to offer me that I could just stay at Tower for all my scans, etc. I am seriously thinking about it.
There are two interesting articles I've read, here is the first. Another regarding young women and breast cancer is in a prior post. More to come. I still have a few blogs to post that resulted from my yoga sessions and provided me with so much clarity. "It is GOOD to be OKAY"....
Love,
Jess
Androgen receptor an additional hormonal target in many breast cancers
Published on June 5, 2012 at 12:33 AMEnzalutamide therapeutic against androgen
Many breast cancers depend on hormones including estrogen or progesterone for their survival and proliferation. Eight years of lab work at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and elsewhere suggest that the androgen (AR) receptor is an additional hormonal target in many breast cancers. Block AR+ breast cancer's ability to access androgen and you block the cancer's ability to survive.That's what the drug enzalutamide does, according to a CU Cancer Center study, presented today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago.
"Preliminary results are promising and show that androgen receptor blockade may indeed be therapeutic," says Anthony Elias, MD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and professor of medical oncology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Elias points out that about 88 percent of estrogen-positive breast cancers, 50 percent of HER2+ breast cancers and 25 percent of triple-negative breast cancers are androgen-positive (75 percent of all breast cancers), making androgen receptors a possible first target for many cancers, or a likely second target for cancers that resist other therapies.
"Targeting androgen receptors may be especially important for patients whose cancers haven't responded to existing treatments that target estrogen or progesterone," Elias says.
The Medivation drug enzalutamide blocks the proliferative power of androgen receptors in breast cancer. In breast cancers that were both ER+ and AR+, the effect of enzalutamide against androgen was similar to the effect of the proven drug tamoxifen against estrogen.
"This is a possible, new first-line target for breast cancer care," Elias says.
Source: University of Colorado Denver
