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Cancer Center Redefines Its Future...
Clinical researchers at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey are beginning to test more than a dozen novel treatments in patients, doctors said yesterday at a conference marking the center's 10 years as a federally designated cancer center.
Some of the treatments are already in the earliest stages of human testing
and doctors hope they will help patients with ovarian, pancreatic, breast,
prostrate, bladder and other cancers.
These treatments are moving away from traditional radiation and chemotherapy
and focusing on targeted therapies that hit specific structures of the offending
cancer cell.
"The future will be about less toxic and more targeted therapies," said
Eric Rubin, associate director for clinical science at the cancer institute.
Rubin said the future will bring better ways of predicting who will get cancer,
finding cancer sooner and personalizing treatment.
Researchers, for instance, no longer believe that every woman with breast cancer
has the same cancer. Future treatments, they said, will be targeted more on tumor
biomarkers than on the actual site of the tumor.
The cancer institute opened in 1991 and received National Cancer Institute designation
in 1997. It is the state's first and only center with the prestigious designation
and has grown quickly -- from no patients in 1993 to 72,000 patient visits last
year.
Edmund Lattime, the institute's associate director for education and training,
talked about using vaccines as treatments for existing cancer.
A mystery is how cancer cells evade the body's immune system, which can effectively
attack infectious disease. Why not the cancer invaders?
"We've learned that the tumor develops sophisticated ways to block the body's
immune response," Lattime said.
He is working on ways to shut off the cancer cell's ability to block the immune
response. Already he has tested a vaccine that uses a poxvirus to deliver substances
to the tumor in patients with bladder cancer. The vaccine is shot right into
the bladder.
Researchers have learned the vaccine can deliver the substances to the tumor
-- and that those substances can induce an immune response.
The early human trials were designed only to determine if the vaccine was safe.
New trials may start this summer looking at patients with early, though inoperable,
pancreatic cancer.
Eileen White, associate director for basic science, is looking at the mystery
of cancer cell survival. The cells can survive even when "starved" of
necessary fuel such as glucose, blood and oxygen.
"How do you starve a cancer cell?" she asked. "You can activate
metabolic stress. But when you do, the cells seek alternative sources of nutrients.
They start eating themselves or each other. They 'hibernate.' They can go on
for long periods of time. They shrivel up. But as soon as they get food again
they come right back."
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