Cancer Center Plans for Cures

Daily News Article   —   Posted on September 24, 2012

(from CBS News Radio, NEW YORK) — The MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston announced Friday it’s mounting a bold “moon shot” to dramatically reduce deaths from eight types of cancer within the next decade. 

The new effort was likened to the space program of the 1960s, inspired by John F. Kennedy’s famous speech, 50 years ago this month at Rice University in Houston, in which he said America should go to the moon and do other things, “not because they are easy but because they are hard.” 

“When Kennedy stood up there on September 1962, he didn’t say that we’re going to study how to get to the moon,” said Dr. Ronald DePinho, president of MD Anderson. “He said we are going to the moon. Then the nation rallied to make sure we went to the moon.” 

The program, set to launch February 2013, will aim to accelerate the time cancer prevention and treatment efforts [which have been] proven [successful] by research [in a lab] are used clinically. It is considered by the hospital as its largest initiative to eliminate some forms of cancer. 

[A year ago, when DePinho became its new president, he started a competition among its researchers to submit ideas for how to make fresh inroads against cancer. Six teams were chosen to tackle the eight cancers.

Each team has specific goals, ranging from basic research to clinical trials that test treatments, biomarkers and diagnostics. The teams will focus on personalizing treatment according to an individual’s tumor genes, real-time assessment of the effectiveness of therapies being tried, better diagnoses and early detection and reducing side effects of treatment.]

“They’re bringing the lab to the clinic,” said Dr. Roy Herbst, director of the thoracic oncology research program at the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center. “You would say that they’re doing this anyhow, but they’re refocusing.”  Herbst was a former faculty member at MD Anderson, but is not affiliated with its moon shot program. 

The program comes after a year-long review process by a panel of medical experts from across the nation. They argued that as a result of work done over the last decade, researchers are close to finding cures for some types of cancer. 

“In this moon shot effort, we’re fashioning our programs in a way that enables us to ensure these discoveries make an impact,” said DePinho. 

The cancers that the program intends to target include acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome, a disease that has made headlines after it was diagnosed in Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts. 

Other cancers in the program include chronic lymphocytic leukemia, melanoma, lung cancer, prostate cancer, and triple-negative breast and ovarian cancers. 

The $3 billion program will fund six research teams whose main goal is to expeditiously translate research to successful clinical interventions. [The Center already has”tens of millions” of dollars in gifts to jump start it now, according to Dr. De Pinho.]  The money is expected to come from hospital earnings, research grants and philanthropic donors. 

Long-term cancer survival rates have risen dramatically over the last decade. By the end of 2012, 11.3 million Americans are expected to be identified as cancer survivors, according to the American Cancer Society. 

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Background

M.D. Anderson is among the world's leading cancer centers. It treated about 117,000 patients last year, including some 11,000 who are enrolled in roughly 1,000 clinical trials* of experimental drugs and treatment regimens under way at the center. [*Clinical trials are trials to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of medications or medical devices by monitoring their effects on large groups of people.]

The cancers initially targeted [in the Cancer Center's program to reduce cancer deaths] include lung, prostate, breast and ovarian cancers, melanoma and three types of leukemia. They were selected from proposals made by M.D. Anderson researchers based in part on their prevalence in the population and on recent gains against those cancers that increase the potential for success. The specific goals vary by cancer - for instance, one goal in prostate cancer is to reduce mortality by 30% in newly diagnosed patients at risk for recurrence.

Helping to drive the initiative is the plummeting cost of gene sequencing, which is enabling clinicians and researchers to obtain information on genetic aberrations that underlie patients' tumors and match them with drugs that target those anomalies. Other advances, including improved computational power to analyze burgeoning amounts of genomic data and the ability to manipulate genes in laboratory experiments to understand their function, also support the effort.

"It is very rare in the history of science that you have such a confluence of enabling technologies," said Ronald A. DePinho, president of M.D. Anderson. The advances make it possible, he said, to "dramatically reduce mortality [from cancer] in this decade and set the stage for cures in the decades ahead." 

During the five years ended in 2008, the death rate from cancer in the U.S. declined at 1.5% to 2% a year. Recent advances in molecular biology and immunology have led to powerful new drugs for melanoma and lung cancer, for instance, and hope for further progress against the disease. They are also helping to fuel excitement that other tumors are ripe for similar successes.

"In almost every disease, we have an example of something that works," said Gordon Mills, head of systems biology at M.D. Anderson. "Once you have a first step, it's easier to take the second, the third."

But even in cases where tumors are initially knocked back by the new agents, patients typically develop resistance and their cancers recur or progress. Developing treatment regimens that can thwart resistance will be part of the Moon Shot effort.  (from wsj.com)