<i> Breakthrough</i> May Be the Word for It : Cancer-killer is first biotechnology counterattack for large numbers of patients
Chemotherapy has been used to treat cancer for only about a generation and is still evolving, with new and more powerful drugs available every year.
Some of these chemicals kill not only cancer cells but also white blood cells, leaving patients vulnerable to infection and to raging fevers--the body’s last defense against infection when its white-cell count drops.
It would be a welcome advance in medicine to have just one drug to counter this sometimes life-threatening reaction. Then doctors could use stronger anti-cancer agents or maintain therapy schedules rather than suspending treatment for up to two weeks while more white cells grow.
It is a sign of the incredible times that lie ahead as the rewards of biotechnology research emerge that one such drug went on the market Monday and that more are coming.
The first drug was approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration last week after tests with 211 chemotherapy patients succeeded in cutting infections by half.
Developed in the laboratories of Amgen Inc. in Thousand Oaks, the drug commands the body to produce white cells instantly to replace those killed by chemotherapy. The technical name of the protein that governs the production of white cells is granulocyte colony stimulating factor, G-CSF for short. It occurs naturally but not in quantities sufficient for drug production. Amgen scientists isolated the G-CSF gene and inserted it into bacteria, which grow very fast.
Immunex Corp. of Seattle is next in line for FDA approval of a similar drug, GM-CSF, and foreign firms should be ready to market still another version by summer.
Dr. Alexandra Levine, chief of the Department of Hematology at the USC School of Medicine, called clearance for the drug a “major event.” If some doctors seemed restrained about Thursday’s report that the drug had been approved, she suggested, it’s probably because they forget how excited they were when they first heard it was coming three years ago.
It is, among other things, the first product of biotechnology research that will help large numbers of patients. Earlier biotech products have been directed mainly at rare diseases. Amgen’s new drug, called Neupogen, can help 225,000 chemotherapy patients alone. It will help AIDS patients who are talking the drug AZT, which also kills white blood cells. It may even help prevent pneumonia in elderly hospital patients.
Breakthrough is an overworked word, but this time it may not do justice to the importance of the event.
