where's our liver trial....?, page-4

where's our liver trial? could this be it?? Could this be part of the Progen liver trial??
Anyone close to the company who can confirm?
Who else are doing trials using this agent?
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Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2004/s1237383.htm
Broadcast: 08/11/2004

Anti-cancer drug trials begin
Reporter: Genevieve Hussey

KERRY O'BRIEN: Finding a cure for cancer remains one of the holy grails of medical research.

Now scientists and leading oncologists believe they may be one step closer to that goal with the development of an experimental drug that seems to stop tumours growing by blocking their blood supply.

Early clinical trials in the United States have shown the new type of drug, called an angiogenesis inhibitor, extended colon cancer patients lives when given in combination with standard chemotherapy drugs.

Hundreds of patients across Australia with advanced cancer are now taking part in an international trial.

And, as Genevieve Hussey reports, for some it's proving a second chance at life.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: 49-year-old Lee Vincent has always led a pretty healthy life, but at the beginning of the year this former nurse visited her local doctor, complaining of nausea.

She was devastated by the diagnosis.

LEE VINCENT: My liver was basically covered with lesions.

I wasn't sure whether I was numb or I had a whirlpool in my head and I really thought, "No, it can't be cancer. It can't be real."

It was like a nightmare.

"When I wake up tomorrow, it's going to go away."

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: Lee Vincent was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer that had spread to her liver.

It was basically untreatable.

LEE VINCENT: He said, "There is nothing I can do for you.

"I can't offer you anything.

"I can't offer you surgery.

I can't offer you radium.

"The only thing that is available is chemo, but think seriously about taking on chemo or basically go home and get your affairs in order."

DR PAUL MAINWARING, MATER ADULT HOSPITAL: Lee had extensive involvement of both sides of her liver.

She was significantly impaired in her ability to get around, to lead a normal quality of life.

Without any treatment, her life span was measured in months - three to six months at best.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: At the same time in the United States, a range of innovative, new anti-cancer drugs were in development that would offer patients like Lee Vincent new hope.

Early clinical trials of a new type of drug called an angiogenesis inhibitor were showing encouraging results.

The drug appeared to work by blocking the blood supply to tumours.

PROFESSOR ALAN COATES, AUSTRALIAN CANCER COUNCIL: I think this is very exciting.

Cancer can only kill you if it becomes a successful parasite by fooling the body into making new blood vessels to feed the cancer, otherwise the cancer cannot grow bigger than a match head.

So attacking these new blood vessels has always been an attractive option.

It has been around for years.

This is the first time we've seen proof that it can work.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: For cancer to grow, it needs nutrition.

The cancer cells give off a chemical called VEGF, or vascular endothelial growth factor, into the area around the tumour.

VEGF attracts blood vessels to grow towards it.

Angiogenesis inhibiting drugs work by getting into the cancer patient's blood stream and binding to the VEGF, mopping it up, preventing the cancer from developing its own blood supply and helping kill the cancer.

DR PAUL MAINWARING: The development of new anti-cancer strategies is a step-by-step basis, painfully slow and painfully small steps, but what we know is that across the board there are very exciting results in a variety of different tumours showing that different types of drug in this class of angiogenesis inhibitors have shown dramatic improvements.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: When Lee Vincent was asked by her doctors at Mater Adult Hospital in Brisbane if she wanted to take part in a wider, international trial of an angiogenesis inhibiting drug, she jumped at the chance.

The trial would offer her the possibility of receiving a combination of a new regiment of chemotherapy and a new anti-angiogenesis drug.

LEE VINCENT: It's my second chance at life.

No one has offered me that.

I've got no option.

I need to do this.

It's my second chance.

Just do it.

I've got nothing to lose.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: Six months on, Lee Vincent's treating doctor, medical oncologist Paul Mainwaring, says the results have been wonderful.

DR PAUL MAINWARING: As you can see, this was done in March here and this one is the most recent scan you just had the other day and the good news is you can see the radiologist where they put the markings on the extent of the disease that we had in March, and if we compare a similar slice through the CT scan down here, we can see a very vague outline, so there has been...

LEE VINCENT: About 63, 65 per cent reduction after those few treatments and I wasn't halfway through the treatments as yet.

I've only just come halfway through the trial treatment.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: So how surprised were you to see that?

LEE VINCENT: Oh, I was just - every time I have to go for a scan I get really nervous thinking, "Is it going to be good this time?"

Yeah, just so relieved, so pleased that it was actually working.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: Dr Paul Mainwaring says this anti-angiogenesis drug appears to have few side effects, although it's not recommended for patients at risk of stroke and with heart conditions.

He believes, in years to come, angiogenesis inhibitors could play a major role in all cancer treatment.

DR PAUL MAINWARING: In the future, we hope that adding in these drugs to patients who have just had an operation and having chemotherapy to try to mop up any small amounts of cells, hopefully that will help increase the cure rate of cancer.

And in the future, by getting a better understanding of this, we may be able to help prevent cancers by identifying changes in human bodies early on and using this as part of a targeted approach.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: At the Mater Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, scientists believe the development of angiogenesis inhibitors also opens up other areas of study.

They are set to examine how these drugs could work in conjunction with the immune system to target tumours.

PROFESSOR DEREK HART, MATER MEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE: It's very exciting because what you're doing is using two different natural responses that actually work very well together and are likely - we've yet to prove this - but they are likely to produce synergistic, that means they will add more than two parts, so one plus one will come out as four or five, we hope, in those experiments.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: Head of the Australian Cancer Council Professor Alan Coates says all of the new discoveries will come at a cost.

PROFESSOR ALAN COATES: Inevitably these are going to be expensive agents.

The cost of bringing a new agent through to the market has been estimated at more than a billion US dollars.

Now, that doesn't appear out of thin air and so the few drugs that do make it through to the market have to pay not only for their own development, but for the development of other drugs that get some expensive way down the track but never make it through.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: Lee Vincent's doctor stresses this trial isn't offering her a cure, but he says her response has been so good, with new drugs coming on line all the time, she now has options.

DR PAUL MAINWARING: We've bought her time and hopefully we will be able to double or even triple her life span just with these agents, let alone what we will be able to do in the future with some of the other drugs we've got coming along.

LEE VINCENT: From probably the three months on, I've been good.

My quality of life is good.

I'm not sure whether doctors know what sort of success rate we're going to get because they've been so happy with the results we've had so far.

I don't know think any of us know what to expect.

I'm hoping I can get that 100 per cent reduction, that would be wonderful.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Genevieve Hussey.