Mesothelioma Research Money Reaches Nearly $1 Million Mark For New Trials

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November 17, 2007

The Mesothelioma Applied Research Fund (MARF) has granted nearly $1 million in monies to be applied to fighting mesothelioma and finding a cure for the lung disease. Mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer that is directly linked from previous asbestos exposure, has found a frequently reported place in the media in the past several years as more and more of America’s heavy industry professionals have been diagnosed with the life-ending condition.

The $1 million funding will allow nine separate mesothelioma-related projects to be funded by awarding each project about $100,000 to continue or begin new project research. Researchers from Holland, Australia and the United States are all set to begin research studies focused on a cure concerning mesothelioma cancers and the process in which the tumors travel to other parts of the body, such as the heart, abdomen, and testicles.

Currently, a diagnosis of mesothelioma is terminal. The prognosis allows the sufferer usually between six and twelve months of life. Mesothelioma is related to exposure to the mineral asbestos in either its natural or processed form. Up until the mid-1970s, the asbestos was used in many different forms of construction. Shipbuilders, boiler workers, plumbers, and smelt workers and the like were all exposed to toxic levels of asbestos without the proper protection equipment or without knowing that the need for personal protection equipment was essential to protecting themselves from carcinogenic exposure.

The importance of funding for research trial concerning mesothelioma illness lies in the fact that the approved courses of treatment currently being used does little to support health over the long-term, nor does treatment offer much more than standard chemotherapy and radiation therapy used in other forms of cancer. For mesothelioma, a form-specific approach has yet to be discovered to bring hop to those who have been diagnosed with this type of cancer.

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