Cancer Medicine – A Humbling Experience

In his brilliant 1998 book, Consilience, Edward O. Wilson, notes: “The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind.”

This sententious point has remained a guiding principle in my thinking about human cancer. It is critically important for scientific investigators to be humble. We are explorers in a field more complex than any man-made system. We must be instructed by biology – as biological events will always find a way to outsmart our best efforts to explain them.

I was reminded of E.O. Wilson, when a colleague forwarded a recent publication from Molecular Cancer Therapy, “Molecular Profiling of Patient with Colorectal Cancer and Matched Targeted Therapy in Phase I Clinical Trials,” Dienstmann, R. et al MOL CANCER THER Sept 2012. The study conducted by the Molecular Therapeutics Research Unit at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, Spain, evaluated 254 patients for evidence of specific genetic aberrations. Their genomic analyses included, KRAS, BRAF, PIK3CA, PTEN, and pMET. Patients were then provided clinical therapy trials that matched the targeted agents (drugs with activity against the specific mutation) with their individual mutation profiles

In all, 68 patients received treatment constituting a total of 82 different molecularly targeted therapies. The clinical response rate for this population of patients who received molecularly selected therapy was 1.2%. No that isn’t a typo; it was really one point two percent.

While I applaud the scientific concept of this trial and must admit that I might have expected a somewhat higher response rate, I am not surprised by the result. In keeping with E. O. Wilson’s quote, human biology is not a puzzle designed to be solved by humans; it is instead the complex product of a billion years of evolution. Rather than demanding that cancer patients respond to those treatments we have selected for them based on genetic information, we should be instructed by the tumor’s behavior of each patient and use those insights to select amongst active drugs, whatever genetic elements they may have been originally designed to target. In my lectures, I describe this approach as the wisdom of whole cell experimental models.

I am continually humbled by the complexity of human tumor biology and delighted to have the insights that my patient’s cancer cells provide through the functional profile created by our EVA-PCD assay. Not only do I gain exciting scientific knowledge, but my patients have very good responses to the drugs we select. Not a bad day’s work.

Cancer and the Great Divide

There are two types of cancer patients: those we can treat and those we can’t. As I reflect on this year and the years past during which we have applied the process of laboratory-guided treatment, I am reminded of this fact.

The EVA-PCD functional profile enables us to choose active treatments for patients, but I have sometimes wondered whether we are, in fact, choosing patients for the available drugs.  While the end result may not be all that different, e.g. superior clinical outcomes over randomly administered (standard) therapies, the path to that outcome, leaves room for interesting discussion.

I first pondered this issue at the time of completion of our earliest study. That study was conducted in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Recognizing that the corticosteroids were among the most important drugs for ALL, we exposed freshly isolated lymphoblasts from ALL patients to dexamethasone (ex vivo). At the fourth day we measured the degree of cell death and separated the patients in “sensitive” and “resistant “ subgroups. Strikingly, those children whose lymphoblasts died in the laboratory following exposure to dexamethasone (ex-vivo), virtually all survived without relapse, while those children whose lymphoblasts did not die in the laboratory following dexamethasone exposure (ex-vivo) relapsed at an alarming rate with only 25 percent still alive at the sixth year of follow up (p=0.009).

What we had succeeded in doing by Day 4 of diagnosis was something that all the known prognostic factors, like age, WBC and male vs. female could not do, namely accurately identify the responders and survivors.

Today, when I test patients in our laboratory, I consistently double or even triple the response rates over standard protocols, yet a subset of patients are not found sensitive to the available therapies. Patients who do not respond to chemotherapy are today known, in the oncologic vernacular, as “failing therapy.” If we view these “non-responders” as a biologically distinct group (not unlike the dexamethasone-resistant ALL patients above) then our role, in the field of functional profiling, is to quickly segregate the responders (to available drugs) from the non-responders and move those “non-responders” immediately to something that will work for them. In this light, patients no longer “fail therapies” but instead “therapies fail patients.” It is then our mandate to use the ex-vivo platforms to find (and yes, discover) novel therapies and combinations that will meet their unmet need.

As the New Year is upon us I am filled with the expectation that 2013 will be one of discovery and innovation. Never before have so many interesting compounds been available for study. If we are fortunate enough to succeed in our efforts to collaborate with members of the drug development community and have the opportunity to intelligently apply functional profiling, for drug discovery, 2013 could be a very good year indeed.

A Tale of Two Trials

As I read through the November 10 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology there were two very different but highly instructive reports.

They first examined the impact of gemtuzumab ozogamicin for patients with acute myeloid leukemia. The second involved the incorporation of bevacizumab and erlotinib into the treatment of Stage III NSCLC in combination with radiation.

By way of introduction, gemtuzumab ozogamicin (GO) is an anti CD33 antibody linked to the highly toxic chemical calicheamicin. Calicheamicin, a member of enendyne class, is among the most toxic substances known to man. By linking this poison to an antibody directed against leukemia cells, it was reasoned that this novel conjugant would provide an effective therapy for leukemia. And indeed it did. But despite compelling science and what appeared to be initially good results (particularly in older patients with AML), and FDA approval for the agent, the drug was withdrawn from the market. Now, with the publication of a new study from the United Kingdom, GO is once again in the limelight as its inclusion in induction therapy resulted in a statistically significant three-year relapse-free survival advantage (p=.0007) and three year overall survival advantage (p=.05).

It appears, with regard to GO, that the clinical trial process failed to identify the clinical utility of an active and novel form of therapy for a potentially lethal disease.

The second article of interest regards a pilot study that incorporated an anti-VGEF antibody (bevacizumab) with EGFR TKI (erlotinib) along with chemotherapy and radiation. In this trial the objective response rate of 39 percent, median progression-free survival of 10.2 months and median overall survival of 10.4 months, were not demonstrably superior to contemporary results, yet toxicity was significantly enhanced. The investigators recommended against further exploration of this combination. Here the aggressive integration of targeted and conventional therapies proved a misadventure.

While these two reports are very different, they represent similar failings of the contemporary clinical trial process. The GO experience reflects the failure to identify efficacy due to contemporary clinical trial’s dilution of the benefit in select candidates, mixed in the overall population, with limited responsiveness to the agent. The second trial represents clinicians’ desire to engage in theoretically attractive clinical trials only to find that they reflect ineffective and/or more toxic treatment regimens.

On one hand, laboratory models that accurately identify responders can segregate those most likely to benefit from those who will not. GO represents just one of many interesting new classes of drugs for whom selective methodologies could prove highly valuable. The lung cancer experience reflects the failure of the research community to dedicate adequate resources to predictive clinical models.

Combinations of chemotherapy with target therapies have been the subject of investigation in our laboratory for more than a decade. For example, we observed antagonism between platins and the EGFR antagonists (gefitinib and erlotinib) two years before publication of the unsuccessful INTACT I and II Trials and three years before the unsuccessful TALENT and TRIBUTE trials.

All four of these trials combined platin based doublets with EGF-TKI’s. More recently we successfully identified favorable interactions between erlotinib and VGEF inhibitors in individual patients that have provided durable responses in our NSCLC patients as first line therapy, now out to four and five years since diagnosis. These experiences represent opportunities to explore novel therapies and avoid inadvertent antagonisms and misadventures.  In the recent JCO, a good treatment was missed while a bad treatment was advanced.

Functional profiling through use of the EVA-PCD® assay may represent the “critical path” from bench to bedside that the deputy director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration, Janet Woodcock has described as a crying need.

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month

With November designated as Lung Cancer awareness month we have the opportunity to focus national attention on this disease, the leading cause of cancer death in America.

It may come as a surprise to many that lung cancer causes more deaths than prostate, breast and colorectal cancer combined. Lung cancer is the big kahuna. And up until the last several years, no one seemed to be paying much attention. It may be that people considered lung cancer a disease associated with cigarette smoking and therefore, in some way, the individual victim’s fault. However, we are now witness to a changing biology wherein the predominant histology of lung cancer, previously squamous cell, has transitioned to adenocarcinoma.

While the incidence in males has fallen, the incidence in females has risen. Strikingly, the incidence of lung cancer in non-smokers is rapidly climbing. Indeed, up to 20 percent of lung cancers today do not appear to be directly related to cigarettes or known exposures at all.

Our recent publication of a clinical trial in lung cancer patients was highly instructive. First, we were able to double the response rate and nearly double the survival through functional profiling (EVA-PCD®).

Second, there was no “right” treatment for patients. Different treatment combinations worked best for each patient with no single combination working for all.

Third, many patients did well with first line targeted agents. In fact, several long-term survivors have never received any form of cytotoxic chemotherapy, despite widely metastatic disease at presentation.

Several questions remain. Among them, the role of the repeat biopsies in patients with recurrent disease.  Several patients under my care have undergone additional biopsies each time a recurrence was documented with the new assay findings guiding us to a different treatment regimen. It is not impossible to imagine a day when cancer treatments will be modified and changed the way contemporary internists switch antihypertensives or cholesterol lowering drugs. That is, lung cancer like these maladies is becoming a chronic disease.

With several patients out over five years this strategy has served us well in select cases. A second issue surrounds the early introduction of experimental agents. Should we not have the opportunity to utilize drugs that have succeeded in Phase I trials, (and are thereby known to be safe for human administration), for patients whose cancer tissue reveals a favorable profile ex-vivo? I, for one, would relish the opportunity to administer second-generation EGFr-TKIs to c-MET inhibitors, to appropriately selected candidates. Smart drugs need smart mechanisms to get to market.

With the advent of lung cancer awareness month we have the opportunity to educate the public and expand awareness of the desperate need for advances in this disease. The disparity in funding for lung cancer patients compared with ovarian or breast cancer patients is disturbing. For every lung cancer death, there are five to 10 times more dollars expended on research to prevent breast and ovarian cancer deaths. While we applaud the successes in breast and ovarian cancer treatment we encourage lung cancer patients to call your congressperson to make lung cancer a front burner issue.

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One of our most gratifying success stories is Pat Merwin, now four years since diagnosis. Pat has organized a local (Long Beach, CA) observance of the national lung cancer awareness vigil to be held on Tuesday, November 13. I could not be happier than to be the invited speaker for this important occasion and to be with many of my patients.

The Tumor Micro Environment

As I was reading the October 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, past the pages of advertisement by gene profiling companies, I came upon an article of very real interest.

While most scientists continue to focus on cancer-gene analyses, a report in this issue from a collaboration between American and European investigators provided compelling evidence for the role of tumor associated inflammatory cells in metastatic human cancer. (Asgharzadeh, S J Clin Oncol 30 (28)3525–3532 Oct 1, 2012) Through the analysis of children with metastatic neuroblastoma, they found that the degree of infiltration into the tumor environment by macrophages had a profound effect upon clinical outcome. This study confirmed earlier reports that macrophage infiltration is an integral part and potential driver of the malignant process.

Using immunohistochemistry and light microscopy the investigators scored patients for the number of CD163(+) macrophages, representing the alternatively activated (M2) subset within the tumor tissue. They then examined inflammation related gene expressions to develop a “high” risk, “low” risk algorithm and applied it to the progression free survival in these children.

Highly significant differences were observed between the two groups. This report adds to a growing body of literature that describes the interplay between cancer cells and their microenvironment. Similar studies in breast cancer, melanoma and multiple myeloma have shown that tumor cells “co-opt” their non-malignant counterparts as they drive transformation from benign to malignant, from in-situ to invasive and from localized disease to metastatic. These same forces have the potential to strongly influence cellular responses to stressors like chemotherapy and growth factor withdrawal. While we may now be on the verge of identifying these tumor attributes and characterizing their impact upon survival, these analyses represent little more than increasingly sophisticated prognostics.

The task at hand remains the elucidation of those attributes and features that characterize each patient’s tumor response to injury toward ultimate therapeutic response. To address this level of complexity, we need the guidance of more global measures of human tumor biology, measures that incorporate the dynamic interplay between tumors cells, their stroma, vasculature and the inflammatory environment.  These are the “real-time” insights that can only be achieved using human tissue in its native state. Ex vivo analyses offer these insights. Their information moves us from the realm of prognostics to one of predictives, and it is after all predictive measures that our patients are most desperately in need of today.

Systems Biology Comes of Age: Metastatic Lung Cancer in the Crosshairs

Cancer therapists have long sought mechanisms to match patients to available therapies. Current fashion revolves around DNA mutations, gene copy and rearrangements to select drugs. While every cancer patient may be as unique as their fingerprints, all of the fingerprints on file with the federal AFIS (automated fingerprint identification system) database don’t add up to a hill of genes (pun intended), if you can’t connect them to the criminal.

To continue the analogy, it doesn’t matter why the individual chose a life of crime, his upbringing, childhood traumas or personal tragedies. What matters is that you capture him in the flesh and incarcerate him (or her, to be politically correct).

The term we apply to the study of cancer, as a biological phenomenon is “systems biology.” This discipline strikes fear into the heart of molecular biologists, for it complicates their tidy algorithms and undermines the artificial linearity of their cancer pathways. We frequently allude to the catchphrase, genotype ≠ phenotype, yet it is the cancer phenotype that we must confront if we are to cure this disease.

Using a systems biology approach, we applied the ex-vivo analysis of programmed cell death (EVA-PCD®) to the study of previously untreated patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Tissue aggregates isolated from their surgical specimens were studied in their native state against drugs and signal transduction inhibitors. This methodology captures all of the interacting “systems,” as they respond to cytotoxic agents and growth factor withdrawal. The trial was powered to achieve a two-fold improvement in response.

At interim analysis, we had more than accomplished our goal. The results speak for themselves.

First: a two-fold improvement in clinical response – from the national average of 30 percent we achieved 64.5 percent (p – 0.00015).

Second: The median time to progression was improved from 6.4 to 8.5 months.

Third: And most importantly the median overall survival was improved from an average of 10 – 12 months to 21.3 months, a near doubling.

These results, from a prospective clinical trial in which previously untreated lung cancer patients were provided assay directed therapy, reflects the first real time application of systems biology to chemotherapeutics. The closest comparison for improved clinical outcome with chemotherapeutic drugs chosen from among all active agents by a molecular platform in a prospective clinical trial is . . .

Oh, that’s right there isn’t any.

Empowering Patients Towards Personalized Cancer Care

We have one more guest blogger to introduce during Dr. Nagourney’s absence: Patricia Merwin. Pat just celebrated her fourth anniversary of wellness after receiving a diagnosis of metastatic lung cancer.

In July of 2011, I attended a local TEDx conference in Long Beach, CA where Dr. Robert Nagourney gave a compelling talk about the nature of his work and the future of cancer care. TED is a global organization with a mission to “share ideas worth spreading,” a very appropriate forum for Dr. Nagourney to share his insights into cancer and how to defeat it.

Just three months earlier, at another TEDx event in the Netherlands, Dave deBronkart also gave a talk about the future of cancer care.  Dave deBronkart, better known as “E-patient Dave,” was diagnosed in January 2007 with a rare and terminal kidney cancer.  Given a dismal prognosis, Dave refused to cede his life to “standard care.”  Instead, he turned to a group of fellow patients online and found the information that eventually led to a treatment that saved his life. Dave deBronkart has since become a prolific online patient advocate and an internationally renowned speaker on the subject of patient empowerment and participatory medicine.

Like e-Patient Dave, I was given a “dismal prognosis” when I was diagnosed in 2008 with advanced metastatic lung cancer.  I too refused to cede my life to the standard protocol of the day. But it was not my health care providers who led me to Dr. Nagourney, it was a close friend.  Empowered with the knowledge that it was possible to improve my odds for survival, I chose functional profile testing (EVA-PCD®) to help determine my personalized treatment plan. It was a wise, informed decision resulting in the best possible outcome.  I have since become an online patient advocate, spreading the word to thousands of other patients so that they can become knowledgeable about this important test that could save their lives.

According to Dr. Nagourney, “Every system performs exactly as it was designed to perform. The current system of medical oncology provides adequate care for the average patient. There is little room for true, individualized care, for it disrupts the norm.”  But every patient with cancer has the same objective. To find the treatment that will work for “me.”  With a system skewed toward averages and away from the individual, the path to personalized medicine must be to empower the person with the most at stake – the patient. Dr. Nagourney says, “Today’s patient must become his or her own best advocate.”

More and more, patients are turning to online forums and other patient groups, not just for support, but to seek and share the latest news and information about treatments, side effects, tests, etc. If two heads are better than one, then thousands of engaged patients should, at the very least, provide good food for thought, “ideas worth spreading.”

Dr. Nagourney believes that “it’s in the online trenches where the real, personal war of cancer is being waged.  The old paradigm, that knowledge runs downhill from academics to practitioners to patients is being turned upside down as empowerment goes from the bottom up, not just from the top down.”  I’m sure e-Patient Dave would agree, along with countless other e-patients like him.

Cancer Treatment – A Husband’s View

Guest blogger – Gary Brutsch

Dr. Nagourney is currently attending an international conference where he is an invited speaker. During his absence we will have guest bloggers sharing their views on chemosensitivity testing and the EVA-PCD® assay. Our first guest is Gary Brustch.

Five years ago, my wife of otherwise good health was diagnosed with Stage IV uterine cancer. Following a surgical “solution,” we commenced our search for the next best alternative to just waiting for the disease to take its course.

We settled on a protocol supervised by a major cancer treatment center in Texas. For a total of six months, my wife, Tina, was treated with a combination of chemotherapies. During this treatment we continued to look for medical care that was more scientific-based.

At the conclusion of their protocol, we were notified that the course of treatment had not been successful. At this time Tina’s cancer marker numbers were approaching 800. Two days after this notification we decided that our final option was to contact Robert Nagourney, MD, at Rational Therapeutics in Long Beach, CA.

Our decision was based on the belief that his tumor sensitivity based chemo architecture was probably a more effective method to treat her tumor growth.

After obtaining a tumor sample from Tina and subjecting it to a laboratory process (assay testing), Dr. Nagourney prescribed a specific chemotherapy cocktail for her treatment. After one month of supervised treatment, Tina’s cancer marker number was under one hundred.

We are now into our fourth year of maintenance supervised by Dr. Nagourney. Our united opinion seems to say that, as health challenged individuals we must demand that caregivers treat our health challenges on a focused, individual basis.

We cannot accept that one category of chemotherapy is good for all.

What is Personalized Cancer Therapy?

Personalized therapy is the right treatment, at the right dose for the right patient. Like the weather, however, it seems that everyone’s talking about it, but no one is doing anything about it.

In its simplest form personalized care is treatment that is designed to meet an individual’s unique biological features. Like a key in a lock, the right drug or combination opens the door to a good outcome.

When over the years I lectured on the development of the cisplatin/gemcitabine doublet, my two boys were quite young. I would show a slide depicting a doorknob with a key in the keyhole. I likened our lab’s capacity to identify sensitivity to the cisplatin/gemcitabine combination as “unlocking” an individual’s response.

At the time my wife and I would leave the key in the inside of the front door enabling us to unlock it when going out. We reasoned at the time that our 2-year-old would not be strong enough, nor tall enough to turn the key and let himself outside.  We reasoned wrong, for one day our son Alex reached up, turned the key and opened the door right in front of us. Lesson learned: Given the right key, anyone can open a door.

I continued my analogy by saying that even Arnold Schwarzenegger would be unable to open a door given the wrong key, but might, if he continued trying, snap it off in the lock.

The right key is the right treatment, effortlessly unlocking a good response, while the wrong key is the wrong treatment more often than not too much, too late, akin to a solid tumor bone marrow transplant.

In recent years, personalized care has come to be considered synonymous with genomic profiling. While we applaud breakthroughs in human genomics today, there is no molecular platform that can match patients to treatments.  The objective response rate of just 10 percent, almost all in breast and ovarian cancer patients in one study (Von Hoff J Clin Oncol 2010 Nov 20:28(33): 4877-83), suggests that cancer biology is demonstrably more complex than an enumeration of its constituent DNA base pairs. The unilateral focus on this area of investigation over others might be described as “the triumph of hope over experience” (James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791).

But hope springs eternal and with it the very real possibility of improving our patients outcomes. By accepting, even embracing, the complexity of human tumor biology we are at the crossroads of a new future in cancer medicine.

William Withering (1741-1799) the English physician and botanist credited with discovering digitalis as the therapy for dropsy, e.g. congestive heart failure (An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses, Withering W. 1785), had absolutely no idea what a membrane ATPase was, when he made his remarkable discovery. It didn’t matter. Cardiac glycosides provided lifesaving relief to those who suffered from this malady for fully two centuries before Danish scientist, Jens Christian Skou, identified these membrane bound enzymes, for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1997.

Similarly, penicillin, aspirin, and morphine were in all use for decades, centuries, even millenia before their actual modes of action were unraveled. Medical doctors must use any and all resources at their disposal to meet the needs of their patients. They do not need to know “how” something works so much as they (and their patients) need to know “that” it works.

The guiding principle of personalized medicine is to match patients to therapies. Nowhere in this directive is there a prescription of the specific platform to be used. Where genomic signatures provide useful insights for drug selection, as they do in APL (ATRA, Arsenic trioxide); NSCLC (EGFr, ROS1, ALK); CML (Imatinib, Dasatanib) then they should be used.

However, in those disease where we haven’t the luxury of known targets or established pathways, i.e. most human malignancies, then more global assessments of human tumor biology should, indeed must, be used if we are to meet the needs of our patients.  Primary culture analyses like the EVA/PCD® provide a window onto human tumor biology. They are vehicles for therapy improvement and conduits for drug discovery.  Scientists and clinicians alike need to apply any and all available methodologies to advance their art. The dawn of personalized medicine will indeed be bright if we use all the arrows in our quiver to advance clinical therapeutics and basic research.

The Death of Christopher Hitchens

Among the more colorful writers, orators and pundits in the later part of the 20th Century and the early part of the 21st was Christopher Hitchens. Born in England in 1949, he moved to the United States where he became famous for his deeply held political views. An outspoken critic of injustice, he called it as he saw it. While his political leanings were mostly liberal, he was willing to take on the establishment on both sides of the political isle when he saw injustice and political hypocrisy.

Christopher Hitches died at age 62 from cancer of the esophagus. Although unapologetic for his use of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, his lifestyle may have contributed to his diagnosis. What saddens me most is the possibility that he could have done better. And didn’t.

Like so many celebrities when they are diagnosed with cancer, Hitchens entered a realm that I call, “social medicine.” Not to be confused with socialized medicine and related political issues, social medicine is the process whereby the rich and famous receive care from the “right” doctors. These luminaries, through their channels and connections, are hand carried to the most famous physicians in the country. Their prominent and widely published ivory tower investigators then provide the best care money can buy. Yet, more often than not it is exactly the same therapy that they would have received from their home-town oncologists, who read the same journals, attend the same meetings and adhere to the same NCCN guidelines as the “best and the brightest” academics. We then conveniently chalk these patient’s failures up to the biology of the disease and the patient’s drug resistance rather than examining the more discomforting reality that protocol therapy doesn’t work for famous patients any better than it does is for anyone else.

But what if these patients just got the wrong treatment? What if the drugs these doctors chose were the very best for many, but not right for them? What if the right treatment was just right around the corner, but these prominent academics couldn’t see it? What if these patients had submitted a tumor sample for an EVA-PCD® assay and knew which drug or combinations would kill their cancer cells?

It isn’t that Christopher Hitchens or Steven Jobs are more important than any other patient. Their collective suffering and the losses to their families are no greater than any other cancer patient who confronts this illness. It’s just that they are famous and we know about it from the beginning to the end. We watch as these patients suffer through the toxicities and side effects of randomly administered therapies. And, in the case of Hitchens we are provided a blow-by-blow description in his writings. Unlike other patients who seek their care outside of the limelight, these celebrities are above the fray, protected by their handlers, PR agents and managers – they are unapproachable. With Jobs or Hitchens I would have relished the opportunity to offer any assistance possible, and through contacts at Apple I actually tried, but to no avail.

These individuals suffer and die in the public eye. Like salt in a wound, investigators like my colleagues and myself who are engaged in the pursuit of better, more intelligently delivered therapies, suffer with them. No, they are not more important, but it just seems so when you watch it every day on television, online, or in the print media, you clearly see an “in your face” example of a failing paradigm of cancer therapeutics.