News of Drug Test Spurs Blitz by Cancer Patients
City of Hope Medical Center officials received more than 350 telephone calls Tuesday from cancer patients hoping to take part in an experimental treatment program that involves activating immune system cells with a compound called interleukin-2, which the National Cancer Institute believes holds promise for treating advanced cases.
The calls were triggered by a cancer institute announcement naming City of Hope in Duarte as one of six centers in the nation for a yearlong trial using interleukin-2 on patients with melanoma, colorectal or kidney cancer.
Sally Gallagher, the center’s assistant administrator, estimated that only 10% to 15% of the callers would be candidates for the program, which has strict criteria for accepting patients. One of the criteria is failure to respond to standard cancer treatments.
She said that many of the callers were screened out because they had been under treatment with chemotherapy or radiation within the past month. Many others, she said, had types of cancer other than the three types selected for treatment with interleukin-2.
Treatment Is ‘Extremely Potent’
Gallagher said that because the experimental treatment is “extremely potent,” patients who are accepted must be ambulatory and healthy enough to physically tolerate the side effects.
According to Dr. James Dorowshow, who heads the City of Hope program, one or two patients a week will be admitted until a quota of 50 has been reached.
During the preliminary trial with interleukin-2, reported in December on 25 patients, physicians at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., said tumors shrank by more than 50% in 11 patients who no longer were responding to regular treatments. Those results were considered sufficient to warrant the national study, which will enlist 300 patients.
One of the patients at the National Cancer Institute is Rep. John Grotberg (R-Ill.) who, it was reported Monday, is in a coma following a treatment he received earlier this month. Dr. Steven Rosenberg, the cancer institute physician who heads the program, said Grotberg had recovered “quite well” from the treatment’s side effects and that the coma was the result of an infection picked up after surgery.
