Drugs that home in on hard-to-treat cancers and a vaccine that promises to prevent many cases of cervical cancer were among the top advances against cancer in 2006, according to experts from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). For the second year in a row, the ASCO editorial board has published its selections for the most important research findings, along with recommendations for getting even more bang out of each cancer research buck.
"If we hope to realize the potential of extraordinary new scientific knowledge and accelerate the pace of discovery, we need a new national commitment to cancer research, including greater funding," says Gabriel Hortobagyi, MD, FACP, president of ASCO and chair of breast medical oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Recent discoveries in the field of targeted therapies promise to change the way patients with certain types of cancer are treated -- and improve their outlook -- according to the report.
- The targeted drugs temsirolimus and sunitinib (Sutent) were shown to help people with advanced kidney cancer, which is notoriously difficult to treat, and seemed to have fewer side effects than conventional therapy.
- Another study found that the investigational drug lapatinib (Tykerb) could slow tumor growth in women with an aggressive form of breast cancer that grew despite treatment with trastuzumab (Herceptin).
- Dasatinib (Sprycel) eliminated or decreased the number of abnormal blood cells in people with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) who could not tolerate or had become resistant to treatment with Gleevec (imatinib).
- Adding cetuximab (Erbitux) to radiation therapy for head and neck cancer slowed the growth of the cancer and helped patients live longer.
Cancer prevention also got a huge boost in 2006 with the approval of Gardasil, the first vaccine against human papilloma virus, or HPV. The vaccine targets 2 strains of HPV that together are responsible for about 70% of cervical cancers, as well as some vaginal and vulvar cancers. (It also targets 2 other HPV strains that cause nearly all cases of genital warts.)
"The vaccine has the potential to profoundly reduce the burden of cervical cancer, which is diagnosed in nearly 500,000 women each year globally, including nearly 10,000 women in the United States," according to the report.
Another significant advance of the past year was the development of a gene profile test that could one day help doctors determine which people with early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer would benefit from chemotherapy and which would not. The test, which helps predict whether cancer is likely to come back after surgery, was more accurate than simply using clinical details (tumor size, grade, etc.) alone.
A similar approach is being refined to use in breast cancer cases.
The report goes on to describe numerous other notable studies that made important contributions to our knowledge about many other types of cancers, including central nervous system tumors, gastrointestinal cancers, skin cancers, and cancers in children.
Progress like this doesn't come easily or cheaply, though, and the report has some recommendations for keeping the research funding and ideas flowing.
Congress should increase funding for cancer research, the ASCO report says, and federal officials should clarify privacy regulations to help smooth the path of clinical studies. In addition, the report says, researchers and those who fund them need to standardize the way tissue and blood samples are collected and stored to make it easier to study them and share findings.
Citation: "Clinical Cancer Advances 2006: Major Research Advances in Cancer Treatment, Prevention, and Screening -- A report from the American Society of Clinical Oncology." Published in the Jan. 1, 2007, Journal of Clinical Oncology (Vol. 25, No. 1: 146-162). First author: Robert F. Ozols, MD, PhD.
