QUINCY, Ill. (AP) - A cancer treatment recently gained federal approval based on a study that included participation by local patients.
The Cancer Center, a joint venture of Blessing Hospital and Quincy Medical Group, has participated in several studies of drugs to gain Food and Drug Administration approval. However, QMG Oncology Department Medical Director Dr. Raymond Smith touted Tecentriq (atezolizumab) — the drug approved in October 2016 — as “the kind of drug Jimmy Carter made famous. These new drugs can work that well.”
The approval of Tecentriq and other drugs like it, Smith said, mark a new age in cancer treatment. Tecentriq targets specific protein cells, suppressing the toxicity of the cancer cells.
“Instead of using therapies which poison the normal cells as well as the cancer cells, and sometimes not too indiscriminately,” Smith said, “you really hope, if you get more targets, to be able to kill the cancer cells and not harm the normal cells.”
Smith described the treatment as a molecular DNA approach, as opposed to a microscopic approach.
“There have been a lot of improvements, but they have been slow,” Smith said of the field of oncology. “You get the sense that, in the last 10 years and particularly in the last two years, they were really on an accelerated understanding of the DNA and how things work.”
For cancer patients, this translates into better treatments, fewer side effects, higher quality drugs and longer life expectancy, Smith said.
“We seem to be moving away from that terminology of curing cancer and really creating a chronic condition that someone can live with for a very long time in their life,” said QMG Director of Clinical Research Kiley McGlauchlen. “One day, we hope that treating a cancer may be like diabetes or COPD,” referring to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
As technological abilities have increased, Smith said, the comprehension of the human genome project and understanding of genes have flourished simultaneously.
“I still think we’re in the infancy of that,” he said, “but we’re using that technology to stratify risks for cancer patients when they are diagnosed and which treatments we will use after they are diagnosed.”
Though advancements like Tecentriq provide hope for advanced cancer patients, Smith said preventive techniques, such as mammograms, are still crucial.
“We are curing a lot,” he said, “not enough, but a lot. We still have a long way to go, but it’s all going to take place through clinical trials.”
Participation in the Tecentriq study extended the life expectancy of a stage 4 cancer patient significantly, QMG Clinical Research Coordinator Kelly Sorrill said.
“Our patient started in 2014, and he’s still going steady,” Sorrill said. “He had multiple lesions in the lung. Some of those lesions — it’s just amazing to watch — can go from so large to so small or completely gone.”
The average life expectancy of such a patient, McGlauchlen said, would have been six months otherwise. The Cancer Center now has seven patients, all of whom first met extensive criteria, participating in clinical research trials.
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Source: The Quincy Herald-Whig, https://bit.ly/2kNsuPd
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Information from: The Quincy Herald-Whig, https://www.whig.com
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