Innovative Cancer Laboratory's Research Method Radically Changing The Approach To Cancer Treatment.
New Study Of Break-Through Breast Cancer Research To Be Published In June Issue Of The Journal Of Clinical Oncology
Study Shows - 50% Response Rate in Advanced Breast Cancer Cases
Long Beach, Calif. / New Orleans (ASCO Annual Meeting) -- For Release Saturday, May 29, 2000 --
A remarkable study on a break-through breast cancer drug therapy will be published in the June issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Dr. Robert Nagourney. This is just one in a series of successful cancer treatments developed in his innovative laboratory, Rational Therapeutics™, Inc. in Long Beach.
With an overall response rate of 50 percent and numerous patients who had relapsed after bone marrow transplant therapies responding, this new method of approaching cancer therapeutics is a powerful tool.
"It is not the results so much as the method by which the results were obtained that is newsworthy," says Dr. Nagourney. "The importance of this contribution is greater than simply an effective combination. Rather it is a wholly different approach to Cancer therapy and has the potential to revolutionize treatment strategies.
"In conventional treatment, combination chemotherapies are developed by a 'hit or miss' approach that often fail to provide effective treatments. In contradistinction, we use a laboratory model of human cancer that provides the insight which leads to novel treatments, the current report being only one."
The Rational Therapeutics™, Inc. research team identified the novel drug combination utilizing the Ex-Vivo Apoptotic (EVA-PCD™) assay to detect drug induced cancer cell death (i.e. apoptosis). This strategy is based on a new form of chemosensitivity testing that accurately determines how a patient's cancer cells will respond to an array of drug combinations. Using the EVA-PCD™ assay, Dr. Nagourney was able to pinpoint the Gemcitabine/Cisplatin drug combination as effective in the fight against breast cancer.
"Neither Cisplatin nor Gemcitabine are widely used in Breast Cancer and as a result no one recognized the potential of this combination. To date, Gemcitabine has been granted FDA approval for Pancreatic and Lung Cancers. Thus, this important combination could easily have been missed.
The EVA-PCD™ assay accomplished in the test tube what could otherwise only be done by giving a patient multiple courses of chemotherapy to find out which combination of the 60-plus available FDA approved chemotherapy drugs is most likely to kill their unique cancer cells. It can be done quickly and saves the patient from potentially toxic and ineffective treatments.
"This is a new approach to chemotherapy, using the laboratory rather than the patient as a testing ground. We develop new treatments for individual cancer patients according to their unique response profile. With so many different cancer drugs available, the challenge is finding which drug combinations will work best for each patient," said Dr. Nagourney.
"While the EVA-PCD™ assay is not 'magic,' it has proven to be a highly accurate means of matching drugs to individual patients to achieve the best possible outcome," say Dr. Nagourney. He regularly receives patient cancer tissue from physicians and clinics across the country, in hopes that he can identify a therapy that will be successful.
In the Journal article, positive outcomes were achieved even among some patients for whom virtually every other known form of treatment had failed, including chemotherapy, radiation and in some, even high-dose, stem-cell bone marrow transplants.
Dr. Nagourney is the medical and laboratory director of Rational Therapeutics™, Inc. in Long Beach, California and teaches cancer pharmacology at UC, Irvine. He is board certified in Medical Oncology, Internal Medicine and Hematology.
Rational Therapeutics™ is a pioneering cancer research center specializing in new treatment protocols and individualized therapy. Its research laboratory is located at 750 E. 29th Street, Long Beach, CA 90806; Tel. (562) 989-6455; Fax (562) 989-6454; www.rationaltherapeutics.com.
Contacts: Judi Davidson, John Blanchette, Gilbert DeGloria Ph (323) 954-7510
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