LINCOLN - Doctors gave Edward Silver two months to live last February, before a new treatment under study at the University of Medical Center gave him new hope.
Now UNMC has pulled a bit of a coup among medical centers by winning the exclusive contract to conduct additional tests on a new drug for treating acute myelogenous leukemia, a particularly deadly cancer that afflicts mostly elderly people.
Silver received just one pill of the new drug in the UNMC clinical trial's first phase, and he said it worked wonders.
"I tell you what, for a couple, three weeks I felt pretty damn good," the 72-year-old from Ord said. "After that it went downhill like it always does."
Now Silver can get the new drug regularly as the clinical trial moves into the next phase. UNMC is seeking up to 30 participants for the trial.
The new oral drug's name is being kept confidential to preserve the proprietary interests of its manufacturer, Pharmacia Corp. division Sugen Inc. It's part of a new class of drugs called receptor tyrosine kinases (RTK) inhibitors, which appear to play an important role in the disease process. Leukemia cells in most patients express RTKs, or growth receptors, which, when interacting with their respective growth factors, cause leukemia cells to multiply.
Dr. James Foran, principal investigator of the UNMC study, said the drug might be a potential additional treatment for what frequently is an incurable disease. Even people responding well to intensive chemotherapy have life expectancies of just 8-12 months, he said.
"So it's a tough disease," he said.
The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society estimates leukemia killed about 21,500 people in the U.S. in 2001. Of those, about one-third died from acute myelogenous leukemia. AML is a rapidly progressing disease that originates in a cell in the bone marrow, and causes uncontrolled growth of developing marrow cells that affect the body's ability to fight infections.
Foran said about one in four patients under 60 years old with AML can be cured, but the disease in those 60 and over is much more difficult to cure.
The reputations of UNMC and some of its individual researchers helped win the medical center the honor of being the first one in the U.S. to test the new drug, Foran said.
"We think it's a bit of a coup," he said.
UNMC is recognized internationally for its expertise in diagnosing and treating leukemia and lymphoma, and is one of the busiest bone marrow and stem cell transplant centers in the world. Dr. Jim Armitage, now dean of the UNMC College of Medicine, launched the program in 1982.
Foran once worked closely with a hematologist who went on to head the AML drug effort at Sugen.
"He was confident that we'd be able to do it," Foran said.
People eligible for the study are those diagnosed with AML, ages 19 and older, whose treatment has failed or who are not eligible for conventional chemotherapy. Those who have not yet received any treatment for their disease also may be considered for the study. Participants will receive treatment at no extra cost on an outpatient basis in the Lied Transplant Center at UNMC in Omaha. Participants can continue to see their own doctors. They may refer themselves, or be referred to UNMC by their doctors.
For more information about the study, call Maribeth Hohenstein at (402) 559-9053.
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This story originally appeared in Nebraska StatePaper on January 16, 2002.
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
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