Specialist Discloses Promising Treatment at ‘Cancer Summit’

The chief surgeon at the National Cancer Institute disclosed Tuesday a promising new treatment for cancer that uses potent “killer” cells mixed with a growth element called interleukin-2.

Dr. Steven Rosenberg, who gained fame by treating President Reagan for colon cancer, surprised a televised “cancer summit” between American and Soviet specialists by revealing the still-unpublished results of new trials on patients with incurable melanoma, a form of skin cancer.

“We have now treated nine patients with advanced melanoma and have seen evidence of substantial regression (of cancer) in eight of these nine patients,” Rosenberg said as he appeared on a panel of top U.S. cancer specialists. They addressed their Soviet counterparts via a satellite hook-up with Moscow in which the two sides exchanged general views on cancer research. Rosenberg emphasized that the new therapy is in its infancy.

In 1985, Rosenberg startled the medical world and caused a stampede of desperate cancer patients after he announced promising results on incurable cancer patients using interleukin-2 combined with white blood cells.

Those cells, known as lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells, were extracted from the patient and reinfused into the patient’s blood stream with the interleukin-2 acting as a growth agent. The cells then attacked and killed tumor cells.

But the process is costly, time-consuming and poses serious side effects, leading to rapid weight gain and respiratory failure in some cases.

Rosenberg said his latest research involves tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, or TILs, which are obtained from patients’ tissue more easily and at a much lower cost. These, too, are combined with interleukin-2 and put back in the patient.

“They have greater potency and appear to have less toxicity,” Rosenberg said. “They are 50 to 100 times more potent than LAK cells with interleukin-2.”

He also said treatment using the TILs took only five days, compared to about three weeks using the LAK therapy, thus subjecting patients to smaller doses of the potentially toxic interleukin-2.

Rosenberg said his research on interleukin-2 combined with LAK cells on more than 300 advanced patients with previously incurable cancers had left about 10% free of disease and had caused tumors to regress by 50% or more in about 100 patients.

Cancer ranks second behind heart disease, which is the No. 1 cause of death in both the United States and the Soviet Union, annually killing about 500,000 citizens in each country.

In videotaped messages to the cancer summit, Reagan and his wife, Nancy, who have both undergone cancer surgery, both offered welcoming remarks.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev did not appear in person at the satellite conference, but a Soviet health official read a statement from him calling for “faster real disarmament” so that more funds will be available to fight cancer.