Science / Medicine : Drug Does Job of Marrow Implant

A team of French doctors said last week that it successfully treated three terminal cancer patients with a new genetically engineered drug rather than risky and painful bone-marrow transplants. The study, published in The Lancet, is the first to substantiate laboratory findings that GM-CSF, one of the most promising drugs to be developed with gene-splicing techniques, has broader and more sustained benefits than improving the viability of bone-marrow transplants.

The other two patients in the study died without any sustained recovery and the researchers said they already had severely damaged blood cells as a result of chemotherapy. None of the five patients in the study could have tolerated bone-marrow transplants.

GM-CSF, which was approved in the United States this year, stimulates portions of the blood cell that allow cell proliferation. The drug is currently used primarily in chemotherapy patients to help them rebuild their blood cells, and to improve the viability of bone-marrow transplants, but scientists also believe the drug may have broader potential in treating cancer.

All five patients in the French study, conducted at the Hospital St. Antoine in Paris, suffered from a deadly cancer of the lymph nodes called non-Hodgkin lymphoma.