Office of Public Relations — Newsroom
News Release
For Immediate Release
Contacts: Lynn Gorham, UCCC, (303) 724-3160 Lynn.Gorham@uchsc.edu
New Cancer Drug May Shrink Tumors in Ewing's Sarcoma Patients
AURORA, Colo. (Oct. 24, 2007) Ð An investigational drug being studied at the University of Colorado Cancer Center is showing strong early promise for treating Ewing's sarcoma and other sarcoma tumors without the usual cancer-treatment side effects.
R1507, created by Roche, is a new kind of cancer drug that attempts to block insulin growth factor 1, or IGF-R1, a chemical pathway involved in cell growth and cell survival.
In the Phase I study-designed to test toxicity and side effects, but not effectiveness-the advanced solid tumors of nine of 34 adult patients stopped growing. Seven of the patients, all who have sarcoma, are still being treated with R1507, and each of them either experienced no tumor growth or tumor shrinkage on the drug. Four of the seven patients have Ewing's sarcoma, a rare cancer usually found in children and young adults.
This drug and others like it that attack the IGF pathway may provide a new class of drugs to treat a variety of cancers, including breast, prostate, colon, melanoma, myeloma and a variety of sarcomas, which could greatly add to the way that we currently treat these patients, said Stephen Leong, MD, assistant professor of medical oncology at UCCC. ÒFor these patients to have control of their disease implies significant activity, but because the number of patients studied is so small, it is impossible to draw significant statistical conclusions.
So far, R1507 has been shown to cause few to none of the side-effects usually associated with cancer treatment, such as low blood counts, risk for infection, hair loss, severe nausea and vomiting. Although the vast majority of side effects were mild, one patient had a stroke and another had a breakdown of red blood cells during treatment. Researchers are unsure whether R1507 caused these adverse events.
"With a very small number of patients treated, the true and related side effects are still being evaluated," Leong said.
One 28 year-old Ewing's sarcoma patient with large tumors that were unresponsive to many other treatments showed dramatic tumor shrinkage within six weeks, without side effects.
About 300 Americans are diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma tumors each year, mostly adolescents. By the time they are diagnosed, the cancer has spread beyond the original tumor in 20 to 30 percent of patients. Outcomes for patients with metastatic Ewing's sarcoma have not improved much during the last 20 years. Only 25 to 30 percent of patients who have metastatic disease when they are diagnosed survive when treated with current therapies.
Based on these initial results with R1507, Roche plans to conduct additional trials and work with a global consortium of sarcoma experts, including the Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration.
The University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center is one of three universities in the University of Colorado system. Located in Denver, on the Auraria Campus, at Ninth & Colorado Blvd. and on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo., UCDHSC is Colorado's premier research university offering more than 100 degrees and programs in 12 schools and colleges and serving more than 28,000 students in Metro Denver and online. For more information, visit the web site at www.ucdhsc.edu or the UCDHSC Newsroom at http://www.uchsc.edu/news.
###