Fanged frogs cure cancer! You just wait... It could happen

Article

A friend of mine called me yesterday to tell me about an astonishing discovery. Forty new species, including fanged frogs, super-sized rats, and a grunting fish have been discovered in an extinct volcano in New Guinea. He was marveling at how cool our planet is while I was wondering to myself why these new discoveries couldn't include soft, cuddly new dog species. Maybe these discoveries were best left undiscovered. Then it dawned on me... What if the cure for cancer is contained in one of these new plant or animal discoveries? Could fanged frogs save us all? Many of cancer's most innovative treatments have been derived from plants, sea creatures, etc... Don't believe me? Check out our Summer 2006 cover story "Surf & Turf: Nature's Hidden Medicines." To read more about the 40 new species, go to www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/07/discovery-species-papua-new-guinea

Related Videos
For patients with cancer, the ongoing chemotherapy shortage may cause some anxiety as they wonder how they will receive their drugs. However, measuring drugs “down to the minutiae of the milligrams” helped patients receive the drugs they needed, said Alison Tray. Tray is an advanced oncology certified nurse practitioner and current vice president of ambulatory operations at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Jersey. If patients are concerned about getting their cancer drugs, Tray noted that having “an open conversation” between patients and providers is key. “As a provider and a nurse myself, having that conversation, that reassurance and sharing the information is a two-way conversation,” she said. “So just knowing that we're taking care of you, we're going to make sure that you receive the care that you need is the key takeaway.” In June 2023, many patients were unable to receive certain chemotherapy drugs, such as carboplatin and cisplatin because of an ongoing shortage. By October 2023, experts saw an improvement, although the “ongoing crisis” remained. READ MORE: Patients With Lung Cancer Face Unmet Needs During Drug Shortages “We’re really proud of the work that we could do and achieve that through a critical drug shortage,” Tray said. “None of our patients missed a dose of chemotherapy and we were able to provide that for them.” Tray sat down with CURE® during the 49th Annual Oncology Nursing Society Annual Congress to discuss the ongoing chemo shortage and how patients and care teams approached these challenges. Transcript: Particularly at Hartford HealthCare, when we established this infrastructure, our goal was to make sure that every patient would get the treatment that they need and require, utilizing the data that we have from ASCO guidelines to ensure that we're getting the optimal high-quality standard of care in a timely fashion that we didn't have to delay therapies. So, we were able to do that by going down to the minutiae of the milligrams on hand, particularly when we had a lot of critical drug shortages. So it was really creating that process to really ensure that every patient would get the treatment that they needed. For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.
Yuliya P.L Linhares, MD, an expert on CLL
Yuliya P.L Linhares, MD, and Josie Montegaard, MSN, AGPCNP-BC, experts on CLL
Image of a man with a beard.
Image of a man with gray facial hair and a navy blue suit with a light orange tie.
Image of a woman with black hair.
Related Content
Image of an X-ray that shows a tumor in the throat.

Quitting Smoking Before Laryngeal Cancer Treatment Improves Survival

April 26th 2024
Article

Patients with laryngeal cancer who stopped smoking before receiving treatment had better survival outcomes, compared with patients who actively smoke.

Read More

cancer horizons logo: a white microphone on a navy blue background

Oncology Approvals, Psychological Outcomes for Survivors and an Ovarian Cancer Vaccine

March 11th 2024
Podcast

Last week we saw some FDA approvals come through, as well as research that explored the psychosocial outcomes of individuals who survived pediatric rhabdosarcoma.

Listen

Illustration of a man with longer gray hair.

The Long and Winding Road Leading to My Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma

April 25th 2024
Article

The day I found out I had cancer, my wife and I thought I would just be going in for a scan.

Read More

cancer horizons podcast logo: a white microphone on a blue background

Cannabis Talks During Cancer, Cardiometabolic Comorbidities and Current Research

March 4th 2024
Podcast

In addition to a breakthrough therapy designation for a lung cancer drug, this week we’ll be talking a lot about additional side effects and health conditions that may come with a cancer diagnosis, and how to manage them.

Listen

Meaghan Mooney, B.S.N, RN, OCN won the 2024 Extraordinary Healer Award. From left: Kristie L. Kahl, Meredith Cooper, Meaghan Mooney, B.S.N, RN, OCN, Kristen Dahlgren

Meaghan Mooney, B.S.N., RN, OCN, Wins CURE’s 2024 Extraordinary Healer® Award

April 25th 2024
Article

During this in-person event, over 500 attendees celebrated the remarkable efforts made by oncology nurses in the care of patients with cancer.

Read More

Image of pills and a vial with a syringe on a paper that says "Multiple Myeloma."

Carvykti Provides Good Long-Term Quality of Life in Pretreated Myeloma

April 24th 2024
Article

Patients with heavily pretreated myeloma tended to have “really amazing results” with the CAR-T cell therapy, Carvykti.

Read More