Tony Snow does not have Liver Mets but does have Adominal Metastasis

The survivability rates posted previously does not include information on promising new Radioimmunotherapy regimens that have not been available for the past 5 years and thus not reflected in the statistics I posted.

Further research into Colorectal Cancer Adominal(Peritoneal) Metastasis, which were found and removed from Tony Snow recently, reveals that unfortunately the Prognosis is poor for the much admired good American Conservative and family man.

Improved survival in patients with peritoneal metastases from colorectal cancer: a preliminary study
British Journal of Cancer (2004) 90, 403-407.
doi:10.1038/sj.bjc.6601586

H Mahteme¹, J Hansson¹, Å Berglund², L Phlman¹, B Glimelius², P Nygren² and W Graf^1
1Department of Surgical Sciences, Akademiska Sjukhuset, Uppsala, Sweden
²Department of Oncology, Radiology and Clinical Immunology Akademiska Sjukhuset, Uppsala, Sweden
Correspondence to: Dr H Mahteme, E-mail: Haile.Mahteme@kirurgi.uu.se
Received 26 March 2003; revised 7 September 2003; accepted 13 November 2003



Patients with peritoneal or local metastases from colorectal cancer have a poor prognosis. However, aggressive treatments by debulking surgery and infusional intraperitoneal (i.p.) chemotherapy have been tried and appear to benefit selected patients. We assayed the effects of debulking surgery and i.p. chemotherapy with respect to survival and compared the results with matched control patients treated by intravenous (i.v.) chemotherapy. In all, 18 patients with peritoneal and/or local metastases from colorectal adenocarcinoma underwent debulking surgery followed by 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) 550 mg m^-2 day^-1 i.p. and leucovorin (LV) 60 mg m^-2 day^-1 i.v. The chemotherapy was started the day after surgery and was given daily for 6 days and repeated monthly for totally eight courses. The control patients, matched for age, gender, performance status and metastatic site, were randomly selected from controlled clinical chemotherapy trials and treated with i.v. 5-FU+LV or i.v. methotrexate+5-FU+LV. There was no treatment-related mortality. The median survival among i.p. patients was 32 months compared to 14 months in the control group. In all, 11 patients who underwent macroscopically radical surgery had a longer survival than those who were not radically operated (P=0.02). These results indicate that patients with peritoneal metastases and/or locally advanced cancers but without distant metastases may benefit from cytoreductive surgery combined with i.p. chemotherapy.

Keywords: colorectal cancer; peritoneal metastases; intraperitoneal chemotherapy

New Experimental Treatments on the Horizon include Radioimmunotherapy:

• Radiotherapy where cytotoxic radionuclides are linked to antibodies in order to deliver toxins directly to tumour targets. Therapy with targeted radiation rather than antibody-targeted toxins (immunotoxins) has the advantage that adjacent tumour cells, which lack the appropriate antigenic determinants, can be destroyed by radiation cross-fire. Radioimmunotherapy is sometimes called targeted radiotherapy, but this latter term can also refer to radionuclides linked to non-immune molecules (see radiotherapy).
  

Currently this is being used in Mice Models and is reported in the Medical Literature:

Intraperitoneal radioimmunotherapy to treat the early phase of peritoneal dissemination of human colon cancer cells in a murine model.

• Kinuya S, Yokoyama K, Fukuoka M, Hiramatsu T, Mori H, Shiba K, Watanabe N, Shuke N, Michigishi T, Tonami N.
• Department of Biotracer Medicine, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kanazawa, Ishikawa 920-8640, Japan. kinuya@med.kanazawa-u.ac.jp
• BACKGROUND AND AIM: In patients with a high risk of peritoneal dissemination of colon cancer, a treatment adjuvant to surgical resection would improve their prognosis. We aimed to determine whether radioimmunotherapy employing radiolabelled monoclonal antibody would work in this situation. METHODS: A murine model of peritoneal dissemination was established in female Balb/c nu/nu mice by intraperitoneal injection of LS180 human colon cancer cells. Radioimmunotherapy with 7.4 MBq of a murine IgG1, anti-colorectal A7 monoclonal antibody, radiolabelled with (131)I by the chloramine-T method was conducted intraperitoneally on days 0, 3, 7 and 14 after cell inoculation, respectively. RESULTS: Radioimmunotherapy at any timing improved survival of mice as compared with those of non-treated mice and mice treated with a daily dose of 30 mg x kg(-1) of 5-fluorouracil for 4 consecutive days. The best improvement was obtained when radioimmunotherapy was conducted on day 0.
• CONCLUSION: These results indicate that intraperitoneal radioimmunotherapy may effectively kill colon cancer cells disseminated in the peritoneal cavity before formation of tumours and, therefore, may work as an adjuvant treatment to prevent peritoneal metastasis of colon cancer.

Monoclonal Antibody Therapy?

• A monoclonal antibody is a laboratory-produced molecule that can be targeted to attach to specific substances on cancer cells. Your body naturally produces antibodies as part of your immune system's response to germs and other invaders.
• The laboratory-produced monoclonal antibodies used in cancer treatment are carefully engineered to target specific defects in your cancer cells.
  
• How do monoclonal antibody drugs work?When a monoclonal antibody attaches to a cancer cell, it can:Make the cancer cell more visible to the immune system. The immune system attacks foreign invaders in your body, but it doesn't always recognize cancer cells as enemies.
• A monoclonal antibody can be directed to attach to certain parts of a cancer cell, thus marking the cancer cell and making it easier for the immune system to find.
  
• Cetuximab (Erbitux), a monoclonal antibody approved to treat colon cancer and head and neck cancer, attaches to receptors on cancer cells that accept a certain growth signal (epidermal growth factor).
• Cancer cells and some healthy cells rely on this signal to tell them to divide and multiply. Doctors hope blocking the signal from reaching its target on the cancer cells may slow or stop the cancer from growing.
• Deliver radiation to cancer cells. By combining a radioactive particle with a monoclonal antibody, doctors can deliver radiation directly to the cancer cells. This way, most of the surrounding healthy cells aren't harmed. Radiation-linked monoclonal antibodies deliver a low level of radiation over a longer period of time, which researchers believe is as effective as the more conventional high-dose external beam radiation.
  
• Slip powerful drugs into cancer cells. Powerful anti-cancer drugs or toxins can be attached to monoclonal antibodies. The drugs remain inactive until they're inside the target cells, lowering the chance of harming other cells.
  
• A number of monoclonal antibody drugs are available to treat various types of cancer.
• Clinical trials are studying monoclonal antibody drugs in treating nearly every type of cancer.
• How are monoclonal antibody drugs used in cancer treatment?Monoclonal antibody drugs were initially used to treat advanced cancers that hadn't responded to chemotherapy or cancers that had returned despite treatment.
• However, because these treatments have proved to be effective, certain monoclonal antibody treatments are being used earlier in the course of the disease.
  
• Many of the monoclonal antibody therapies are still considered experimental. For this reason, these treatments are usually reserved for advanced cancers that aren't responding to standard, proven treatments. FDA-approved monoclonal antibodies for cancer treatment
• Bevacizumab (Avastin) Colon cancer/Lung cancer
• Cetuximab (Erbitux) Colon cancer/Head and neck cancer
• Panitumumab (Vectibix)Colon cancer.

My heart felt Prayers go out to Tony Snow and all the other high profile Policitians and their family members both Republican and Democrat. I will review the treatment, as best I can per information in press releases, and review the latest treatments available for the types of Cancer that Senator Thompson and Elizabeth Edwards suffer from in following posts.