Some Basic Info about skin cancer
It seems that every day there are some advancements being made in medicine, and more and more of them seem to be related to treating or curing cancer.
Today, more specifically, skin cancer and the drug that was approved today by the FDA have been making headlines. Currently, the Skin Cancer Foundation said that melanoma kills nearly 10,000 people every year and almost fifteen times that much are diagnosed every year as well.
Skin cancer is not incurable, but if caught late it can spread throughout the body. Then, the disease may reach a place where it becomes inoperable.
The skin cancer drug’s fda announcement
The press release was made available yesterday afternoon by Novartis, mostly known for their new drug for heart disease recently approved by the FDA. The new skin cancer drug is called Odomzo, and it is now available for public consumption.
Novartis is a healthcare company based in Switzerland that focuses part of its efforts on pharmaceuticals. The new skin cancer drug is the newest pharmaceutical released by their company.
the drug comes with a small catch, though
The new skin cancer drug is, according to the FDA a sonidegib, which will help treat patients with melanoma that have come back after treatment and those not approved for surgery or therapy. The thing is that the drug will be used for the basal cell carcinoma in the advance part of the illness.
But the benefit is that when taken daily, the new skin cancer drug should help stop the spreading of the disease quite a bit for patients. Trials showed that the small group of testers had tumors that grew smaller and smaller when taking the new skin cancer drug, and some even went away completely.
Keep in mind, some of the side effects are not great – you will still lose hair and such, but one major concern is that there may be some muscle tissue problems that form as a result of the new skin cancer drug. So you should decide for yourself if you want to chance taking the new drug with the side effects.
