Periwinkle Joins Battle With Cancer

For ages, periwinkle, a sturdy little plant found in many gardens and fields, and often called myrtle, has been grown for ornamental use as ground cover, in window boxes and in flower urns. Now, however, the cute little plant has been recruited by drug manufacturers who are using extracts from it to treat cancer patients.

There are two popular types of periwinkle, Vinca minor and Vinca rosea, the latter with soft red flowers often called Madagascar.

Extracted from periwinkle Madagascar is an active drug called vincristine. It is invaluable in chemotherapy treatments for acute lymphocytic leukemia (often called ALL), breast cancer and other forms of cancer. Currently the subject of several legal challenges for patent infringement, periwinkle extract has become prohibitively expensive. Its cost as a raw material, before formation into injectable vials, is now about $1,200 per gram.

Eli Lilly & Co., a pharmaceutical manufacturer, was the first to market vincristine as a freeze-dried formulation with the brand-name Oncovin. The product, of course, had to be reconstituted before it could be injected into the cancer patient. When the patent for the product expired in 1982, several forms of vincristine became available from small manufacturers of generic drugs.

In Buffered Form

In the meantime, Lilly & Co. scientists had developed and marketed a buffered vincristine formulation, a ready-to-use injection in comparison to the freeze-dried formulation. Controversy arose when a U.S. patent was granted to Lilly & Co. on the grounds that the new formulation was considered to be a continuation of the original patent, and attorneys for Lilly requested the generic companies to cease marketing vincristine products.

Vincristine is an essential drug for leukemia in children. It is usually used in combination with the steroid drug, prednisone.

Those undergoing chemotherapy should be entitled to the lowest-priced drug possible to treat their illness--including vincristine.