My niece, Megan 22 years old, just began this combo treatment after two high doses of ifosfamide chemotherapy She was going to tell the doctors she could not tolerate another round of that but the CT scan showed it stopped the growth of the multiple tumors in her lungs.. This is what they decided was next. Does anyone have any experience with this Gemzar and Docetaxel?
Gemzar and docetaxel (taxotere) is a common second line treatment for sarcoma. Unfortunately, it is generally not as effective as high dose ifosfamide for synovial sarcoma.
Here are 2 publications about this combination if you want to know more:
http://www.apocpcontrol.org/paper_file/issue_abs/Volume13_No2/463-67%201.6%20Kaya.pdf
http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/content/12/8/999.full
Thank you so much for the links.! She said she was on a very high dose of ifosfamide like 30x higher than normal before this combination. It was very tough on her (horrible) and maybe that could be why they decided to go this route..she has lost so much weight. The doctor says the tumors make up too much of her lungs to be removed. It is tough becuase you want to trust the doctors so you hope they are making the right decisions for her. She is so strong! This is just really hard. Thanks again for this information. Have you heard of any successful trials? They also talked to her about votrient if this does not work, do you know anything about that?
Votrient was recently approved and we have a bunch of people here who are taking it. You may want to check the discussion section for more information about it. Not all doctors give high dose ifosfamide the same way. If you niece ever wants to give it another try, I strongly recommend Dr. Rosen at NYU. He is very experienced with this drug. As far as trials, the immunotherapy trial in Bestheda may be an interesting option:
http://forum.synovialsarcomasurvivors.org/profiles/blogs/immunotherapy-trial-at-nih