Michael

Erbitux shrank my tumor within weeks. Amazing response.
It's the Martha Stewart drug of cancer :){explication, she went to federal prison over selling Erbitux stock on insider info and lying about it to the Feds)
Charm

The NCCN guidelines are on the treatment part of the site. These are written by the biggest and most experienced cancer institutions as a group. Chemo as a mono therapy is only used to prolong life, and in oral cancers is not curative. If you have positive nodes this would not be an option for you. (Especially when you consider that the lymph system is oral cancer's pathway to the vital organs of your body where it does the most of it's deadly work.) Once it has access to this system pathway to spread, using some half measure because of a desire to limit long term issues, would be less than wise in my mind. Erbitux's method of action is to disrupt a cells ability to reproduce, not to kill it, this does have positive benefits, as it gives the radiation an easier task of killing a slower growing population of cancer cells. It is not approved as a monotherapy either.

David, OCF is helping to sponsor with several other funding sources, a small study being done at MDACC, James Cancer Center, and Dana Farber to look at the idea that a lower radiation dose would have the same effect of kill as the current standard dose in an HPV positive population. These very intelligent researchers already know that chemo alone would not be the path to destroy these more responsive cancers, but perhaps lower dose radiation might be. It will be several years before there was an answer to that question.

Man who would want to be that HPV+ test subject? I mean how do they determine how low they can go? If you survive at 50 gys but don't at 45? I'm all for reducing the Tx and hopefully therefore side effects in OC HPV+ patients but ultimately they are risking lives to reduce side effects which in my case and my age are minimal. Guess I need more info on how the study will be conducted but these are just my quick thoughts.

I just e mailed Dr Trotti for his comments.

Thanks. I'll be sure to keep Martha in my thoughts while I'm getting my treatments! Thanks again.

Kelly - Excellent. Thanks for your help.