News About Cancer Treatments:
Tracking a cancer cure
A sheaf of new studies shed more
light on ways to combat a killer
BY MARY BROPHY MARCUS
Cancer researchers used last week's meeting of the
American Society of Clinical Oncology as the forum
for announcing the results of several new cancer
studies. New information from the conference and in
recent medical journals shows the unprecedented
progress scientists are making toward halting the
many forms of the disease:
Camptosar. A relatively new injectable
chemotherapy drug may help conquer the second
leading cause of cancer deaths in the United
States--colorectal cancer. Camptosar, made by
Pharmacia & Upjohn of Kalamazoo, Mich., from the
Chinese Camptotheca acuminata tree, was
approved two years ago by the Food and Drug
Administration. Recent clinical trials found it shrank
and slowed the growth of tumors in the lower
digestive tract. Researchers announced that
Camptosar was effective in patients whose colon
cancer had spread throughout the body and
recurred after standard chemotherapy. In the trials,
36 percent of 279 patients on Camptosar were alive
after a year, while only 14 percent of patients who
had received usual care survived. Oncologists plan
to examine the drug's effectiveness in people with
early-stage colon cancer, as well as in cancers of
the liver, esophagus, and stomach.
Taxol. The word cure was also batted around at
the meeting in Los Angeles during discussions of
Taxol, a breast cancer fighter derived from the yew
tree. Research showed that when standard
chemotherapy and Taxol are administered after
surgery in women whose cancer has traveled to
their lymph nodes, death rates dropped 26 percent
and the chances of the cancer's return were
reduced 22 percent, compared with patients who
received only standard chemotherapy. Until now,
doctors have used Bristol-Myers Squibb's drug
primarily to treat advanced breast cancers. Experts
hope research in early-stage cancer patients will
show Taxol can destroy bad cells before they fan
out to the lymph nodes. Of 183,000 women
diagnosed with breast cancer each year, it is
estimated that as many as 75,500 will be eligible
for the new therapy. "Taxol is going to
unquestionably save lives," says Larry Norton, head
of medical oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center, who is among those researching
the drug.
Herceptin. About one third of breast cancer
patients carry large amounts of a protein called
HER2. Standard chemotherapy doesn't work with
very ill breast cancer patients with a lot of HER2.
But doctors have found that they can extend life for
25 percent of these women using a drug called
Herceptin, by Genentech of South San Francisco,
Calif. This drug is exciting to oncologists, says
Sloan-Kettering's Norton, because when used in
combination with Taxol, it appears to double, even
triple, Taxol's effectiveness without adding major
side effects.
SERMs. Further research was introduced
confirming the power of Eli Lilly's raloxifene in
reducing the risk of breast cancer. The drug,
marketed as Evista, is what is called a selective
estrogen receptor modulator, or SERM. Designed
to fight osteoporosis by activating special estrogen
receptors in bone, raloxifene appears to reduce the
risk of breast cancer by more than 50 percent, and
by as much as 83 percent in post-menopausal
women. Unlike tamoxifene, another SERM made by
Zeneca, it's not linked to increases in uterine
cancer.
PSA test. Many urologists recommend that men
over 50 get an annual PSA (prostate specific
antigen) blood test, which measures a protein that
rises when prostate cancer is present. Another
blood test is now available for men whose PSA
results fall between 4 and 10, what doctors
consider a gray area. Biopsies are needed to know
if cancer exists for sure. The new free PSA test,
which measures PSA that floats free or is not
bound to proteins, helps doctors rule out cancer in
about 25 percent of men in that questionable range.
That means about 200,000 fewer men will have to
undergo biopsies each year.
Smoking. Away from the conference, a study
discussed in an editorial in last week's Journal of
the National Cancer Institute threatens to undo
years of health education. A study of American and
Canadian women with a particular gene that
increases the chance of breast cancer found that
smoking one pack of cigarettes a day for four or
more years appears to reduce the risk of developing
breast cancer. This doesn't mean you should
smoke, says Paul Kleihues of the International
Agency for Research on Cancer, in Lyon, France.
That's playing Russian roulette with lung cancer
and numerous other diseases. Kleihues and his
colleagues believe smoking reduces estrogen
production, thus slowing cancer growth. Experts
are quick to say more studies are required.
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