I often feel that the majority of reports on "new" or "targeted" drugs for oral cancer should be like on late night TV infomercials: accompanied by a fast speech or scroll bye even faster in small print: "individual results will vary, these results are not typical"
I was super excited about Erbitux aka Cetuximab aka IMC-C225 after reading all the glowing reports. I made jokes about getting "martha Stewart" cancer treatment (she went to jail over lying about inside tips on selling her Erbitux stock). I had a wicked rash which supposedly meant great progress. Alas, it didn't really work for me and they switched over to the old platinum drug family the second time around
I really hope Erbitux works for your mom. My understanding is that they are just now discovering that Erbitux works very well on some oral cancer patients but not at all on others. Unfortunately they have not yet devised a test to screen out which patient is which. Good luck
Charm