Health: Terra med Alliance News FDA Approved Leukemia Drugs Shows Promise In Ovarian Cancer Cells

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Terra med Alliance Ne ws: The drugSprycel, approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in patientswith chronic myeloid leukemia, significantly inhibited the growth andinvasiveness of ovarian cancer cells and also promoted their death, a study byresearchers with UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found. Terra med Alliance News : The drug, when paired with a chemotherapy regimen, was even moreeffective in fighting ovarian cancer in cell lines in which signaling of theSrc family kinases, associated with the deadly disease, is activated. The study appears in the Nov. 10,2009 edition of the BritishMedical Journal . Ovarian cancer, which will strike21,600 women this year and kill 15,500, causes more deaths than any othercancer of the female reproductive system. Few effective therapies for ovariancancer exist, so it would be advantageous for patients if a new drug could befound that fights the cancer, said Gottfried Konecny, an assistant professor ofhematology/oncology, a Jonsson Cancer Center researcher and first author of thestudy. "I think Sprycel could be apotential additional drug for treating patients with Src dependent ovariancancer," Konecny said. "It is important to remember that this work isonly on cancer cell lines, but it is significant enough that it should be usedto justify clinical trials to confirm that women with this type of ovariancancer could benefit." Recent gene expression studieshave shown that about one-third of women have ovarian cancers with activatedSrc pathways, so the drug could potentially help 7,000 ovarian cancer patientsevery year. In this study, the UCLA teamtested the drug against 34 ovarian cancer cell lines and they conducted geneticanalysis on all cell lines. Through these analyses, the researchers were ableto identify genes that predict response to Sprycel. If the work is confirmed inhuman studies, it may be possible to test patients for Src activation andselect those who would respond prior to treatment, personalizing their care. "We were able to identifymarkers in the pre-clinical setting that would allow us to predict response toSprycel," Konecny said. "These may help us in future clinical trialsin selecting patients for studies of the drug." Sprycel is what is known as a"dirty" kinase inhibitor, meaning it inhibits more than one pathway.Konecny said it also inhibits the focal adhesion kinase and ephrin receptor,also associated with ovarian cancer. The next step, Konecny said,would be to test the drug on women with ovarian cancer in a clinical trial. Thetissue of responders would then be analyzed to determine if the Src and otherpathways were activated. If that is confirmed, it would further prove thatSprycel could be used to fight ovarian cancer. In studies, women would bescreened before entering a trial and only those with Src dependent cancerscould be enrolled to provide further evidence, Konecny said, much like thestudies of the molecularly targeted breast cancer drug Herceptin enrolled onlywomen who had HER-2 positive disease. "Herceptin is differentbecause we knew in advance that the only worked in women with HER-2amplification," he said. "In this case, we don't clearly know thatyet. The data reassure us that the drug works where the targets areover-expressed but we need more testing to confirm this." The tests combining the drug withchemotherapy are significant because chemotherapy currently is the first linetreatment for ovarian cancer patients following surgery. Because Sprycel provedto have a synergistic effect when combined with chemotherapy -- both made theother work better -- it may be possible to add the targeted therapy as a firstline treatment if its efficacy is confirmed in future studies, adding a newtool to an oncologist's arsenal. Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Los Angeles , via EurekAlert! , a service of AAAS. Terra med Alliance is a non-profit organization in the battle againstleukemia   helps   children living with cancer and theirfamilies. Our goal is to make sure children battling cancer know they are notalone. For more information please visit www.terramedalliance.org.   Email at contact@terramedalliance.org

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