According to the This Is Lincolnshire, 47-year-old Larraine Kirk developed mesothelioma 25 years after she worked as a machinist in a factory between 1980 and 1984. While she was an employee there, she performed repairs on heating pipes that often were lined with asbestos insulation products.

In June 2011 a tumor was found in her bowel. She was eventually diagnosed with mesothelioma, and fought the disease before passing away Last October.

In addition to mesothelioma, asbestos exposure can cause also cause other deadly diseases such as asbestosis and asbestos lung cancer.

If you or a loved one was exposed to asbestos and has since developed mesothelioma, contact Sokolove Law to receive a free legal consultation.

Asbestos

According to WFMZ, the Gracedale Nursing Home facility in Northampton County recently tested positive for asbestos after the deadly fibers were detected in certain areas of the building.

Tom Harp, Northampton County’s director of administration, said that the Gracedale Safety Committee requested asbestos testing for the building after construction work was done that they believed may have exposed some asbestos products.

Harp said that certain areas of the nursing home have been shut down and none of the asbestos fibers became airborne and inhaleable. He noted that the cleanup may costs tens of thousands of dollars.

If you or a loved one has been exposed to asbestos, you may be entitled to compensation. Contact Sokolove Law for a free legal consultation.

Asbestos

Concern about asbestos at the site arose when a backhoe company began excavating the grounds in preparation to remove an old missile silo. Local residents in the area called in complaints to authorities that contaminants were being spread by the excavation. Subsequent soil tests and tests to the debris at the landfill showed the presence of asbestos. No charges were filed because the asbestos had not yet gone airborne, but rather was contained to the landfill site.

Upon learning of the presence of asbestos among other environmental contaminants, the excavating was ceased and the area was covered, pending professional asbestos abatement services.

Cory Stark, director of Elbert County Emergency Management determined that the backhoe company, Backhoe Services, was operating without having tested the soil first and without a formal contract with the city. As reported by the Denver Post, Backhoe Services could not be reached for comment.

Stark asserts that there has been no danger to local residents so far as the toxins have been contained. Still, local residents have remained cautious and concerned. They are now taking their trash and debris to an alternate dump site.

Asbestos diseases such as lung cancer, asbestosis, andmesothelioma are the unfortunate result of asbestos exposure. If you have been diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease, contact amesothelioma lawyer at Sokolove Law today for a free consultation.

Asbestos

Deciding whether to enroll in a mesothelioma clinical trial is a serious and personal decision. This blog series will present an overview of information to address some of the basic questions and concerns that might arise. Always discuss your options with your doctor and your support network before making any serious decisions.

Medical research institutions conduct clinical trials when developing new treatment options in medicine. Whether a new medicine works in humans and whether it’s safe are questions that clinical trials are designed to answer. Clinical trials are typically grouped into phases with each phase designed to answer certain questions, while keeping participants as safe as possible.

By the time a new mesothelioma drug treatment makes it to clinical trials, it has at least six years of research behind it. There is a lot of careful work that must go into developing a new medicine including laboratory tests in cells and in animals before it can be tested in humans. Only about one out of every 1,000 potential medicines tested make it to human clinical trials. Once a drug enters clinical trials, it takes an average of eight years to be approved and available for prescription.

Clinical trials are usually carried out in five different phases, 0 through IV. Each phase is designed to answer certain questions. As amesothelioma patient considering enrollment in a clinical trial, it’s important for you to know the potential benefits and the potential risks of taking part in each phase. The second part of this clinical trials overview blog series will focus on phases 0, I, and II clinical trials.

Mesothelioma

Phase 0 studies for mesothelioma often use only a few small doses of the new drug in each patient. Researchers test whether the drug reaches the tumors, how the drug behaves in the body and how thecancer cells respond. Due to the very low doses of drug in phase 0 studies, there is low risk to mesothelioma patients compared to other phases. However, there’s likewise virtually no potential benefit to a patient enrolled in a phase 0 study. With the requirement of having extra biopsies, scans and blood samples taken, enrolling in a phase 0 study is not usually worth a patient’s time and effort.

Then why conduct phase 0 studies at all? Phase 0 studies help researchers determine whether drugs will do what they’re expected to do in a human body based on studies in the laboratory. Testing conservatively this way with phase 0 studies will usually bring any potential problems to light quickly. Phase 0 studies aren’t included inclinical trials for every drug and when they are used, they’re very small, usually with less than 20 subjects.

Phase I Mesothelioma Clinical Trials

Phase I studies are typically the first time a new drug will be tested in people. Treatments for patients involved in phase I studies are aggressive, as the goal of the study is to determine the highest dose that can be tolerated without causing serious side effects. It is not technically a goal of a phase I study to determine how well the new drug works against the cancer. Phase I clinical trials for mesothelioma are usually a high safety risk to patients and offer a low chance of helping patients. If the drug is found to be reasonably safe in phase I studies, it will advance to phase II studies.

Phase II Mesothelioma Clinical Trials

Between 25 and 100 patients might be enrolled in a phase II study, which is a larger group than that in phase I. The goal of the phase II study is to determine if the drug is effective in fighting the cancer. Researchers look for benefits patients may be experiencing such as increased comfort and quality of life, living longer than expected, shrinking the tumors or preventing the growth of the tumors. If enough people benefit from the treatment, and the side effects aren’t too bad, the treatment is allowed to go on to a phase III clinical trial.

The third and final part of this clinical trials overview blog series will focus on phases III and IV clinical trials.

Mesothelioma

Typically, drug treatments that have been proven relatively safe in phase I and that have been found to work against mesothelioma in phase II studies can advance this stage of testing. Phase III clinical trials for mesothelioma compare the safety and effectiveness of the new treatment against the current standard treatment.

Phase III studies are often double-blinded as well as randomized. Patients are chosen at random to get either the standard treatment or the new treatment and neither the patient nor the doctor knows which treatment the patient is getting. Placebos may be used in some phase III studies, but they are never used alone if there is already a treatment available that works.

Phase IV Clinical Trials for Mesothelioma

Phase IV studies are not additional tests conducted by the researchers, but rather a comprehensive Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review. The treatment is delivered along with a new drug application (NDA) to the FDA for approval.

The FDA will review the results from the studies conducted in the first four phases and ask questions, order more tests, or simply approve the new drug. If more tests are ordered, the approval of the new drug can be stalled by up to five additional years. If, on the other hand, the FDA approves the drug in this phase, it becomes the new standard of care which all newer drugs must test against before being approved for use.

If you would like to take part in a mesothelioma clinical trial, start by asking your doctor if your clinic or hospital conducts any. ACS has a “clinical trials matching service” available online. You can also get a list of current clinical trials by visiting the National Cancer Institute’s clinical trials Web site at www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials.

For more information on mesothelioma clinical trials and their phases, visit the American Cancer Society.

Filing a mesothelioma lawsuit may result in a mesothelioma settlement, which could help pay for in-home medical care and pay off other bills, debts, and other expenses. Contact Sokolove Law today to learn more about pursuing your legal options.

Mesothelioma

The lawsuit was filed by Nancy Lopez against the U.S. Engineering Co. over the company’s failure to take proper precautions to protect courthouse workers while handling asbestos in the building, according to the Associated Press. In her suit, Lopez, who worked at the courthouse in Kansas City for 27 years, claimed she developedmesothelioma cancer from her asbestos exposure. In October 2010, she passed away from the disease. The asbestos lawsuit settlement was awarded to her family late last month.

If you or a loved one has suffered from asbestos exposure and later developed mesothelioma, call an asbestos attorney at Sokolove Law today for a free consultation.

Asbestos

In early 2010, results of a study were published in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine that proved the safety of a possible vaccine for mesothelioma.

In late 2010, Dr. Rachel Ostroff, the clinical research director of Somalogic Inc., presented results of an ongoing study at the Fourth AACR International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development about new biomarkers she discovered for mesothelioma that would impact early diagnosis and provide insight into new therapies for the disease.

Just last month, NIH-funded research discovered a genetic link to mesothelioma.

History of Mesothelioma and Asbestos Exposure

As far back as the early 1900’s, cases of mesothelioma and lung cancerhave been linked to asbestos exposure. It wasn’t until 1970 with the United States Clean Air Act that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was permitted to start regulating asbestos as a hazardous pollutant. With asbestos being more and more regulated in the United States over the past forty years, the rate of new mesothelioma diagnosesin the U.S. each year has risen steadily in men and sporadically in woman.

Currently in the United States, there are an estimated 2000 to 3000 new cases of mesothelioma diagnosed each year. The increase in incidence may be the result of lag time between asbestos exposure and diagnosis, which can be up to 50 years. For this reason, the number of new mesothelioma diagnoses is expected to continue to rise through the year 2020.

New Science – Mesothelioma Vaccine

The continued increase in the rate of mesothelioma diagnosis and the current lack of treatment options is what inspired researchers at the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands to study new therapies. Immunotherapy, which stimulates the immune system to target and destroy cancer cells, had previously shown promise. Based on this previous research, Dr. Joachim G Aerts, a pulmonary physician at Erasmus Medical Center, set out to create a vaccine for mesothelioma. The vaccine, which uses a patient’s own dendritic cells (DC) with antigen from the patient’s tumor, was able to induce a T-cell response against mesothelioma tumors.

In other words, three out of ten patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma of the epithelial subtype showed signs of tumor regression and four others showed evidence of cytotoxicity against their own tumors after vaccination. There is much more work to be done before results can be irrefutably attributed to the vaccine and side effects can be minimized, but the study showed real promise.

Dr. Aerts says of the study: “We hope that by further development of our method it will be possible to increase survival in patients with mesothelioma and eventually vaccinate persons who have been in contact with asbestos to prevent them from getting asbestos related diseases.”

In the next post of this series, we’ll look at mesothelioma biomarkers and the implications they have for possible future treatments

Mesothelioma

A state investigation ensued and six of the eight companies involved in the plant restoration work were cleared of blame. The company that was in charge of labeling the asbestos-containing pipes and products and that was tasked with safely removing asbestos from the building was Hopewell-based Quality Specialties Inc. and they were fined $4,900 for not labeling the pipes. The state has targeted one other company – Dominion Power, the electricity supplier for VA and NC and the owner of the power plant — to take partial blame for the incident but have not released details of their investigation.

Asbestos was used when the plant was first built to insulate pipes and other parts of the plant from excessive heat. Asbestos has been widely used for such purposes for the past century, but less so in the past 30 years or so since asbestos exposure was definitively tied tomesothelioma and other types of cancer. Asbestos is only carcinogenic when it is airborne and can be breathed into the lungs. Although any amount of asbestos exposure carries risk,mesothelioma victims are usually people who were once exposed to asbestos at a high concentration for an extended period of time.

A spokesperson for the power plant, Richard Zuercher, attempted to assuage the concern of the exposed workers and their families by asserting there was no danger to them. “Most of the asbestos has been removed and replaced with asbestos-free material, including the area where the workers were,” says Zuercher. “There is some equipment with asbestos at the plant, but it has all been abated.”

Zuercher’s statement was proved false, however, after the State Department of Labor and Industry tested the environment and found asbestos fibers on the clothes of the 12 exposed workers as well as in three of the worker trailers.

Exactly how much asbestos the workers were exposed to is indeterminable because the plant’s owner, Dominion Power, did not have air sampling equipment on site at the time of the incident.

Asbestos

An anonymous donor has given a $3.58 million donation to the Hawaii cancer center to help aid the mesothelioma research work of its director, Dr. Michele Carbone, and her colleagues.

“Mesothelioma is a serious public health problem,” said Dr. Virginia Hinshaw, Chancellor of UH Mānoa. “We’re proud that Dr. Carbone’s team is leading the world in this area of discovery. This gift validates their efforts and will help them remain at the forefront of thoracic oncology research.”

The gift is the second largest one ever given to the UH Cancer Center. Dr. Carbone’s and researchers at the center recently released new findings relating to the presence of erionite – a material that causes mesothelioma – in rock materials that are used to pave roads in North Dakota.

The center has also conducted studies in Capadoccia, Turkey, a region where nearly 50 percent of the residents die of mesothelioma. There are currently plans for Dr. Carbone and collaborators to conduct a clinical trial co-sponsored by the Early Detection Research Network of the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the Turkish Ministry of Health to validate serum biomarkers they discovered for the early detection of mesothelioma.

“Private support is essential to solidify the UH Cancer Center’s role as the world leader in mesothelioma research,” said UH System President MRC Greenwood. “We look forward to furthering our work with donors to help the UH Cancer Center fulfill its vast potential as a transformative research enterprise for our state.”

Mesothelioma and asbestosis are both deadly illnesses that are caused primarily by prolonged exposure to asbestos fibers. If you were exposed to asbestos while working for a company and have since developed one of these illnesses, it may be worth pursuing amesothelioma lawsuit that could potentially result in a substantialasbestos settlement. If you think that a mesothelioma attorney could help prove your illness was caused by a specific entity’s negligence, please contact Sokolove Law for a free legal consultation.

Mesothelioma