News and Events

Local study, med tech give cancer docs new hope

March 22, 2007

Source: Business Review Western Michigan external link

By: Mark Fellows
mfellows@mbusinessreview.com

The Watervliet man's lung cancer is a death sentence. The best that oncologists such as Eric Lester can usually do is guess which therapies might slow it down.

And then try something else, if there's time.

But this time the St. Joseph physician has new insight. Technology only now making its way to the bedside showed that a form of gene expression known as epidermal growth factor receptor was high in Lester's patient. That suggested a relatively new drug, Roche's Tarceva.

"Instead of waiting to use that when he was failing all else, I decided to use it up front," Lester explained. "Essentially I tailor-made a (drug) cocktail for this patient based on the chip data, but staying within the bounds of the FDA."

The outcome so far: "This guy's had a better response than the vast majority of people I treat."

It might be a fluke. It's not a cure. It's way too early to make judgments. But applying genetic and drug data bases to individuals' biological profiles analyzed by molecular diagnostic techniques might prove a powerful tool in treating cancer.

Using proprietary data base software, a research study spearheaded by the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids recently enrolled the last of 50 late-stage cancer patients. Biological samples collected by area oncologists are placed on silicone wafers known as DNA microarray chips and analyzed.

Individuals' personal results are then compared to pharmaceutical and genomic data bases using the VAI's Xenobase software.

Five-year-old Xenobase was the core of a 2005 VAI spinoff, XB TransMed Solutions, and has been licensed to at least a half-dozen users, including drug researchers Schering-Plough Research Institute.

But, said VAI translational medicine program director Craig Webb, "this is the first time we've touched on providing information back to the people who are treating patients."

Carried out under regulatory compassionate-care protocol, the study is meant to validate the concept of applying molecular analysis and other information to a search for more personalized treatment solutions, Webb said.

"We have to individualize treatment," oncologist Lester emphasized. "You don't learn to kill cancer with a single magic bullet."

Cancer is a complex, dynamic and hitherto unpredictable disease with a dizzying array of manifestations at the molecular level. Yet the only approved treatments are those that proved of some benefit to specific diseases in large-group clinical studies.

So-called off-label or unapproved treatments often aren't reimbursed by health insurers, further limiting oncologists' options.

But as the tools of translational medicine break down barriers between researchers and doctors, they might also open new avenues for cooperation among drug companies, proponents hope. By allowing researchers to tighten their areas of inquiry, such analytic tools also could yield greater understanding of issues such as the effectiveness of different modes of medication administration.

"By this collaboration of experts on both sides, you can start framing the questions much better, and frame the evaluations in a much better fashion," said Anthony Senagore, vice president of research and education at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids.

Spectrum is partnering with VAI and area cancer specialists in the study.

"These are the kinds of things, the collaboration between science and medicine -- the translational mode -- that everybody's talking about when we talk about these biomedical corridors," Senagore said.