• Predicting Side Effects

    Posted by Barbara Dore on July 26, 2007

    Many patients worry about potential side effects before beginning to take imatinib (Gleevec). Martine van Glabbeke and coauthors published a paper with a math model to predict the probability of developing various side effects based on the patient’s condition prior to taking the drug. Dr. van Glabbeke has written a

  • GSI Signs Bad Nauheim Declaration

    Posted by Barbara Dore on July 23, 2007

    GSI Endorses Bad Nauheim Declaration for GIST Patients’ Right to Access Treatment Representatives from twenty three GIST patient advocacy organizations worldwide gathered in conference June 29 -July 1, 2007 in Bad Nauheim, Germany. They drafted and signed an international declaration to promote the access to state-of-the-art GIST treatment and care

  • GSI Reps Attend ASCO

    Posted by Barbara Dore on June 27, 2007

    Sherri Janousky and Carolyn Grobe are attending the American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting June 1-5, 2007 in Chicago. Both residents of the greater Chicago area, they are braving long train rides, sore feet, and heavy loads of handouts to get the GIST treatment news and research being presented at

  • Do Not Interrupt Gleevec

    Posted by Barbara Dore on May 13, 2007

    A French trial investigating the results of interrupting Gleevec in metastatic GIST patients has been published (click for abstract).  Results indicate imatinib treatment should not be interrupted to avoid reactivation of metastases.

  • Free-access GIST reviews

    Posted by Barbara Dore on February 23, 2007

    An entire issue of the journal Clinical Colorectal Cancer devoted to GIST is available free-access online. Entitled "Emerging Trends in the Management of Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors," this November 2006 issue is edited by Margaret von Mehren, MD. Physicians can obtain continuing medical education units by studying the five included papers.

  • Sutent and Thyroid Function

    Posted by Barbara Dore on January 11, 2007

    According to data for patients in the Phase I/II trial of sunitinib (Sutent), 36% developed hypothyroidism during treatment with sunitinib, and the incidence of hypothyroidism increased with duration of treatment. These findings were published in November 2006 by Desai et al in the Annals of Internal Medicine (click for abstract).

  • GIST Summit webcasts

    Posted by Barbara Dore on January 2, 2007

    The Third GIST Global Opinion Leader Summit meeting, “Multi-modality Approaches to Treating Patients with GIST” was held in Prague on October 27-29, 2006, and was supported by an unrestricted grant from Novartis Oncology. The co-chairs for the meeting were Jean-Yves Blay, MD PhD and Peter Reichardt, MD PhD, both well-known

  • Cardiotoxicity from imatinib?

    Posted by Barbara Dore on December 4, 2006

    Could imatinib (Gleevec) affect heart function? A new paper released electronically (prior to print publication) suggests that a small percent of patients taking imatinib may experience reduced cardiac function. Specifically, some patients may experince reduced left ventricular function of the heart, reducing its pumping capacity. Dr. Thomas Force, the corresponding

  • Slide presentation from Dr. Peter Reichardt

    Posted by Barbara Dore on November 19, 2006

    Dr. Peter Reichardt has generously made available the slides he used at his June 2005 presentation at the meeting "New Horizons in Treating Cancer: Third International Conference for Organizations Representing People with CML or GIST," held in Dublin, Ireland. This presentation summarizes the consensus about GIST diagnosis and treatment from

  • Managing Sutent side effects

    Posted by Barbara Dore on October 28, 2006

    A practical paper written by oncology nurse Laura S. Wood, RN MSN OCN has been published online with free access by the journal Community Oncology. The paper, which covers side effects from sunitinib and sorafenib (in trials for GIST), deals with fatigue, hypertension, diarrhea, mucositis, skin conditions, and hair changes.