What Can You Do to Improve Your Odds Against Cancer?

I sometimes joke with my patients that a new diagnosis of cancer rarely provides them enough time to get an MD or PhD. Yet it is that level of preparation that may be required to answer the myriad questions that lie ahead.

Although it’s a joke, it is only partly in jest. Unlike buying a house or a car for which one’s life experiences can prepare you, medicine is opaque, complicated and ever changing. At the bleeding edge of medical complexity sits medical oncology and its dizzying array of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, epigenomics and metabolomics. Not only is it difficult for patients to keep up with all the changes, it is increasingly beyond the ken of their doctors who have spent entire careers training in the specialty, many of whom may have an MD and a PhD.

So how can patients improve their odds when the obstacles seem so daunting?

My first recommendation is that you develop a personal diary or record book of the procedures, staging studies, pathologic diagnosis, tumor markers, and physician recommendations. This can be accomplished by requesting that your doctors provide either electronic or physical copies of CT scans, pathology reports, blood tests and other clinically relevant information. While there has been some controversy surrounding their overuse, I am a believer in the simple blood tests used as barometers of your cancer with names like CEA, CA19.9, CA125, CA27.29, and CA 15.3. Although they are not perfect, they are easy to obtain, relatively inexpensive and can be repeated regularly to assess progress with therapy.

The second thing that I recommend is that you gain a working knowledge of your diagnosis. While there are no perfect sources of information, the internet can provide useful basic information as a starting point. Begin by obtaining from your doctor the most accurate definition of the cancer. If it is breast cancer, is it infiltrating ductal or lobular? Are you ER positive? Is your tumor HER-2 positive? If it is stomach cancer, is it intestinal type or diffuse, etc? This will facilitate your searches, as well as your future conversations with consultants.

Once you know what you’ve got, the next thing you will need to know is where it is. That is what is known as your stage. The older classification used Roman Numerals I-IV with local disease (early) as stage I and metastatic (disseminated) as stage IV. The more modern system is known as TNM, where T stands for tumor size (1-4), N stands for lymph involvement(1-3), and M stands for metastatic involvement (0 or 1). Most contemporary pathology reports include TNM staging. With the diagnosis and stage established, you now know what you have and where it is.

This is where it gets interesting. Now, what do you do about it?

It is at this point that therapeutic choices must be made. Most physicians will rely upon standard established guidelines. Among the most widely used guidelines are those published by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network known as NCCN. While these guidelines can be useful, they can also be stultifying, limiting patients to what might be considered the lowest common denominator of care. While they may be better than haphazard treatment selection, they may very much miss the mark for your unique needs.

Here the process degenerates into a plethora of confusing choices.

Should you have genomic profiling? If so, should it be based on a tissue biopsy, circulating cell free tumor analysis, or even the newer urine tests that measure the presence or absence of abnormal genes? All of these technologies have merit and over the coming years the best ones will shake out. Despite these tests being widely touted (and profitable for the purveyors), none of these test have been put to formal trials that establish their capacity to influence survival. This is interesting because many of these tests have obtained insurance and Medicare coverage without even remotely rising to this standard. Nonetheless, these tests can be used for specific diseases like lung and leukemia where actionable targets are known to exist. Beyond that, caveat emptor (buyer beware).

One of the problems with genomic profiles is that they do very good job of telling you what the problem may be, but a very bad job at telling you the solution. It is a rare genomic mutation that comes with a drug to treat it. Most of the findings wind up asking more questions rather than providing more answers.

With the diagnosis established, the stage known and in certain circumstances molecular profiles complete, it is time for you to choose treatments and the centers that will provide them. Many seek the care of academic centers. These centers may offer clinical trials as a first line therapy for those who meet criteria.

It should be remembered that clinical trials are conducted in three principal formats. Phase I trials examine brand new drugs. These trials determine the safety of the drugs at different dose schedules. Phase II trials take the established safe doses and develop experience in each type of disease, e.g. lung versus colon versus breast. Phase III trials then compare the new drugs with existing treatments to see if there is any real improvement.

It is critical to recognize the functions of these different types of trials. Phase I studies classically have no therapeutic intent (your benefit is secondary to their measurement of your ability to tolerate the drug).

Phase II trials seek evidence of clinical activity by disease, but your specific disease may not be right for that drug.

Finally, Phase III allows a comparison of standard treatment to the new one. Many of these drugs do not make the grade and fall off the development wagon. In addition, you must be willing to be randomly assigned.

It is here that my approach diverges from those outlined. I have long maintained that each patient is unique and that their cancers must be treated individually. Recognizing that no genomic, proteomic or transcriptomic platform can answer the very complex questions of therapeutic response, we at Rational Therapeutics have developed functional analyses through the use of the EVA-PCA assay, which studies each patient’s tumor by exposing it to the drugs of interest. The most active, least toxic combinations are then recommended. In a report at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting of 2013, we showed a 2.02 higher response rate (P < 0.001) and a 1.44 improvement in one year survival (P < 0.02) for patients who received assay-guided therapy. This established the predicative validity of the functional approach.

It is important for patients to realize that cancer is an unbalanced system, not just an abnormal cell. Cancer as a disease goes beyond the cell or even the tumor to affect the body itself. Alterations in immunity, metabolism and physiology contribute to the good or bad outcomes of every patient. Patients should seek to normalize their lifestyle, improve their diets, maintain an active exercise program, reduce their weight to lean body weight, and may in some circumstances consider nutritional supplements and/or appropriately selected natural products that may augment their wellbeing.

The human body is a complicated machine and each part resonates with every other part. A good diet, a good night’s sleep and avoidance of an unhealthy lifestyle, as much as they may sound like your mother’s advice, is indeed very good advice.

Every cancer patient has the right to get better. As a patient, you should take charge of your cancer and make smart decisions. Afterall, no one is more interested in saving your life than you.

Of Cells, Proteins and Cancer Drug Development

Our recent presentation at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting reported our work with a novel class of compounds known as the HSP90 inhibitors. AACR 2015-HSP90 Abstract

The field began decades earlier when it was found that certain proteins in cells were required to protect the function of other newly formed proteins hormone receptors and signaling molecules. Estrogen and androgen receptors, among others, require careful attention following their manufacture or they will find themselves in the cellular waste bin.

As each new protein is formed it risks digestion at the hands of a garbage disposal-like device known as a proteasome (named for its protein digesting capabilities). To the rescue comes HSP90 that chaperones these newly created proteins through the cell and protects them until they can assume their important roles in cell function and survival.

Recognizing that these proteins were critical for cell viability, investigators at Sloan-Kettering and others developed a number of molecules to block HSP90. The original compounds known as ansamycins underwent clinical trials with evidence of activity in some breast cancers. The next generation of compounds was tested in other diseases. Though the clinical results have been mixed, the concept remains attractive.

We compared two drugs of this type and showed that they shared similar function but had different chemical properties and that the concentrations required to kill cells differed. What is interesting is the activity of these drugs seems to be patient-specific. That is, each patient, whether they had breast or lung cancer, showed a unique profile that was not directly connected to the type of cancer they had. This has important implications.

Today, pharmaceutical companies develop drugs by disease type. Compounds enter Phase II trials with 30 to 50 lung cancer patients treated, then 30 to 50 breast cancer patients treated and so on. This continues until (it is hoped) one of the diseases provides a favorable profile and the data is submitted to the FDA for a disease-specific approval. As home runs are rare, most drugs never see the light of day failing to provide sufficient response in any disease to warrant the enormous expense of bringing them to market.

What we found with the HSP90 inhibitors is that some breast cancers are extremely sensitive while others are not. Similarly some lung cancers are extremely sensitive while others are resistant. This forces us once again to confront the fact that cancer patients are unique.

Pharmaceutical companies exploring the role of targeted agents like the HSP90 inhibitors must learn to incorporate patient individuality into the drug development process. Failing to do so not only risks the loss of billions of dollars but more importantly denies patients access to active novel agents.

The future of drug development can be bright if the pharmaceutical industry embraces the concept that each patient’s profile of response is unique and that these responses reflect patient-specific, not diagnosis-based drivers. Clinical trials must incorporate individual patient profiles. Drugs could be made more available once Phase I studies were complete by using biomarkers for response, such as the EVA-PCD assay, which has the capacity to enhance access and streamline drug development.

The Cost of Chemotherapy Comes Home to Roost

Medical care in the United States is a $2.7 trillion industry. That translates into almost $8,000 per person per year. One of the most expensive aspects is cancer care. This has caught the attention of the medical oncology community. A highly touted editorial in the October, 2012 New York Times described the unwillingness of physicians at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to add a new and expensive drug to their formulary. The authors opined that the new drug provided outcomes similar to those for an existing drug, yet cost twice the price.

A subsequent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology from MD Anderson (Cancer Drugs in the United States: Justum Pretium – The Just Price) further examined the cost of cancer therapy, profit margins and some of the drivers. Among the points raised was the fact that the monthly cost of chemotherapy had more than doubled from $4,500 to $10,000 in just one decade. Furthermore, of twelve anticancer drugs approved in 2012, only three prolonged survival and for 2 of 3 by less than two months. Despite these marginal benefits, nine of the twelve drugs were priced at more than $10,000 a month.

This caught the attention of the media with 60 Minutes recently conducting an interview with the authors of the New York Times editorial. While Lesley Stahl pointedly decried the rather marginal 4 – 6% markups that many physicians apply to cover their costs of chemotherapy drug administration, there are in fact much darker forces at work.

The cost of cancer drug development reflects the expense of human subject trials, cost of R & D, the regulatory burden, as well as an extraordinary new drug failure rate. Fully 50% of new agents fail at Phase III (the last and most expensive type of study). Phase III trials cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. An article in Forbes magazine stated that the average drug approved by the FDA now costs, not the one billion dollars often cited but instead five billion dollars when one factors in the failures against the rare successes.

Drug development begins with a novel idea, a small molecule and a few preliminary results. At this point the expenses are low but the drug is of little commercial value. As one moves from cell lines to animal models, the price goes up but the value remains low. The cost of formulation, toxicology and animal studies continue to add up but doesn’t influence interest in the agent. Then come human studies as the Phase I trials begin. Specialized institutions across the United States accept contracts with the pharmaceutical industry to examine the tolerability of the drug. I use that term advisably as the intent of Phase I trials is only to determine safety not efficacy. If the drug proves tolerable, it then moves to Phase II to explore it’s activity against cancer. This is where the money starts flowing.

Phase II clinical trials are conducted by university medical centers. Each patient accrued costs the pharmaceutical sponsors from $25,000 to more than $50,000 per patient. As drugs are tested in many schedules against many diseases it can take hundreds or even thousands of patients for statistical analysis. Nonetheless, a successful Phase II trial showing meaningful benefit in a cancer population generates a buzz and the drug’s value begins to gain traction. With hundreds of millions already expended, the final testing pits the new drug against an existing standard in one or more Phase III trials. Endpoints like progression-free-survival must then fold into overall survival if the drug has any hope to gain full approval by the FDA. These registration trials at the national or international Phase III level cost up to $100,000 per patient and most of the participating institutions are university-based medical centers or their affiliates.

So, why do chemotherapy drugs cost so much? While it may be convenient to point fingers at the pharmaceutical industry, private practitioners or the smaller institutions, the university medical centers and their affiliates have added greatly to the costs of drug development as have the increasingly byzantine regulatory standards that have so encumbered the process that it is now increasingly only a rich man’s game.

We applaud the investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering for focusing attention upon this important matter. We applaud 60 Minutes and the authors of the Journal of Clinical Oncology editorial for their exploration of the same. While the willingness of these physicians to raise the issue is laudable, the solution may be somewhat more complex than these authors have been willing to admit. Before we vilify private practitioners who have time and again proven to be more efficient and less expensive purveyors of cancer care than their university brethren we should examine other drivers.

To wit, a review of one of the NY Times editorial author’s conflicts of interest statement listed in the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology proceedings revealed that his co-presenters at this national meeting disclosed fully 16 separate pharmaceutical affiliations for employment or leadership positions, consultant or advisory roles, stock ownership, honoraria, research funds, expert testimony, or other remuneration. With the research community enjoying these levels of compensation, it must be surmised that the costs of clinical trials reflect in part these expenditures. When one adds to this, the increasingly burdensome regulatory environment, the cost of cancer chemotherapy development appears to have plenty of blame to go around.

With Cancer, Don’t Ask the Experts

I was recently provided a video link to a December 2013 TEDx conference presentation entitled, “Big Data Meets Cancer” by Neil Hunt, product manager for Netflix. Mr. Hunt’s background has nothing to do with cancer or cancer research. His expertise is in technology, product development, leadership and strategy and has personally shepherded Netflix to its current market dominance. With his background and lack of expertise in cancer, he is an ideal person to examine cancer research from a fresh perspective.

Mr. Hunt begins with a (admittedly) simplistic look at cancer research today. Because he is a data guy, naïve to all of the reasons why cancer cannot be cured, he can look anew at how it might be cured. Using a graphic, he defines cancer as “a long-tail disease” made up of outliers. He points out that most 20th century medical successes have been in the common diseases that fall close to the thick end of the curve. As one moves to the less common illnesses data becomes more scant. Echoing a new conceptual thinking, he points out that cancer is not a single disease but many, possibly thousands.  His concept is to accumulate all of the individual patient data to allow investigators to explore patterns and trends: a bottom up model of cancer biology. Many of his points bear consideration.

For those of you who have read these blogs, you know that I am an adherent to the concept of personalized cancer care. I have articulated repeatedly that cancer patients must be treated as individuals. Each tumor must be profiled using available platforms so that time and resources will not be wasted. We have used the same term “N-of-1” (a clinical trial for one patient) that Mr. Hunt uses in his discussion. He provides two anecdotes regarding patients who benefitted dramatically from unexpected treatment choices. His rallying cry is that contemporary clinical trials are failing. Again, this is an issue that I have addressed many times. He then describes broad-brush clinical protocols as the “tyranny of the average.”

The remainder of the discussion focuses upon possible solutions. Among the obvious hurdles:
1.    Cancer centers are hesitant to share data.
2.    The publication process is slow.
3.    Few are willing to publish negative trials.

To counter these challenges, he points out that small organizations are more incentivized to share and that successes in long-tail diseases can resurrect failed drugs, thereby repaying the costs. Several points were particularly resonant as he pointed out that early adopters face outsized resistance but their perseverance against adversity ultimately evolves the field. He sees this as a win-win-win scenario with patients receiving better care, physicians witnessing better outcomes, and pharmaceutical companies gaining more rapid approval of drugs.

As I watched, it occurred to me that Mr. Hunt was articulating many points that we have raised for over the last decade. As an outsider, he can see, only too clearly, the shortcomings of current methods. His clear perceptions reflect the luxury of distance from the field he is describing. Mr. Hunt’s grasp of cancer research is direct and open-minded. Many problems need fresh eyes. Indeed as we confront problems as complex as cancer it may be best not to ask the experts.

What is Cancer Research?

According to Wikipedia, cancer research is “basic research into cancer in order to identify causes and develop strategies for prevention, diagnosis, treatments and cure.” At face value this seems self-evident, yet “cancer research” means different things to different people.

Most cancer patients think of cancer research as the effort to achieve the best possible outcome for individual patients. Taxpayers and donors to charitable organizations also tend to view the process through the lens of therapeutics. But patient treatment is but a small part of cancer research. One of the largest cancer research organizations, the American Cancer Society, was the subject of an investigative report by Channel 2 in Atlanta, Georgia. They found that this billion dollar organization spent 32% of the money it raised on raising money. What of the other 68%? How much of that money actually goes to patient care? When one factors in education, transportation, administration, PR, salaries and basic research, actual patient care support is close to the bottom of the list.

More instructive is an examination of how people engaged in cancer research define their work. On one side are clinical investigators (trialists) who administer the treatments developed in the laboratories of scientists after pre-clinical analyses. On the other side are the basic researchers whose job it is to answer questions and resolve scientific dilemmas. They are granted enormous amounts of money to delve into the deepest intricacies of cancer biology, genomics, transcriptomic and proteomics in an effort to better understand the etiology (causation) of this dreaded disease.

In examining this disjointed field, I considered my own area of work. I am a clinical investigator who also conducts research in a laboratory. As such, I straddle the fence between basic research and clinical science. This is increasingly dangerous ground, as the gap between scientists and clinicians grows wider by the day. Most clinical investigators have, at best, a passing understanding of molecular biology, and most molecular biologist have absolutely no idea what clinical medicine is. This is unfortunate, for it is the greater blending of science with clinical therapy that will lead to better outcomes. Pondering this dichotomy I recognized that my job is first and foremost to save lives and to alleviate suffering. For me, the laboratory is a means to an end. It is a tool that I use to resolve clinical questions. What drug, what combination, what sequence? These questions are best answered in the laboratory, not in patients, wherever possible.

For the basic scientist the task is to answer a question. For them the laboratory is an end unto itself. They use multiple parameters to examine the same question from different angles, seeking to control every variable. A good scientific paper will use genomic (DNA), transcriptomic (RNA), and proteomic (protein expression) analyses until the issues have all been resolved to their satisfaction. In the literature this is known as “elegant” science. The operative term here is control. The scientist controls the experiment, controls the environment, controls the outcome, and controls the publication process. They are in charge.

What of the poor clinical investigator, who must, per force of necessity, be humble. They are not in control of the clinical environment and rarely understand the intricacies of the metabolic, genomic and proteomic events taking place before their eyes. They must approximate, sometimes guess and then act. For the clinician, the laboratory is an opportunity to answer practical real-world questions, not nuanced theoretical principles.

The greatest criticism that a scientist can level at an opponent is a lack of focus, defined as the inability to drill down onto the essence of the question. These scientists sit on study sections, review manuscripts and fund grants. Over decades they have been allowed to define the best research as the most narrowly focused. Incrementalists have out-stripped, out-funded and out-maneuvered big thinkers. While basic researchers examine which residue on the EGFr domain becomes phosphorylated, clinical physicians must do hand-to-hand combat with the end result of these mutations: non-small cell lung cancer.

Medical history instructs that big questions are best answered when prepared minds (William Withering, Ignaz Semmelweis, etc.) pursue scientific answers to real clinical questions. Unfortunately, today’s clinicians have been relegated to the role of “hypothesis testers.” This has led to a profusion of blind alleys, failed clinical trials and the expenditure of billions of dollars on extremely “interesting questions.”

George Bernard Shaw said, “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” Increasingly, cancer research has become two distinctly different disciplines divided by a common name.

The Meaning of Meaningful Improvement in Lung Cancer

When asked to define what constituted pornography in his 1964 Supreme Court decision (Jacobellis versus Ohio 1964) Justice Potter Stewart stated, “I know it when I see it.” When I reviewed an article on the changing landscape of clinical trials in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (Shifting patterns in the interpretation of phase 3 clinical trial outcomes in advanced non-small cell lung cancer: The bar is dropping, Sacher A. G. et al, J Clin Oncol May 10, 2014), Justice Stewart came to mind.

The authors selected 203 NSCLC trials from a total of 245 studies conducted between 1980 and 2010. They compared how often the studies met their endpoints with how often the study authors’ called the results “positive.” Among the findings, it seems that earlier studies (before the year 2000) were geared for overall survival, while later studies (after 2000) overwhelmingly favored progression free survival. Although patient survivals changed little, the number of trials reported as successful increased dramatically.

Non-small cell lung cancer

Progression-free survival measures how long it takes for a patient to fail treatment. That is, for the disease to worsen on therapy. Its use increased after 2000 when Docetaxel, for the first time, provided a survival advantage in recurrent disease.

The FDA’s willingness to accept progression-free survival for drug approval was originally based on their expectation that the benefit would be “substantial and robust” but they did not define the term. One group has suggested that improvements should be of the magnitude of 50 percent. Another went even further suggesting a doubling of the survival advantage.

Unfortunately, the trend has been just the opposite. Trials from the 1980s on average gave a 3.9 month improvement, which fell to a meager 0.9 months after 2000.

What are patients and their physicians to make of these trends? First, the large clinical trials, that are so common today, are much more likely to achieve significance. The troubling corollary is that statistical significance is not the same as clinical relevance. The “publish or perish” climate, combined with the skyrocketing cost of drug development has placed inordinate demands upon investigators and their sponsors to achieve “positive results.” Fearing failure, many pharmaceutical companies sponsor “safe” trials that provide incremental advances but few breakthroughs.

Meaningful advances in oncology are generally quite evident. The first use of Interferon alpha for the treatment of hairy cell leukemia provided a response rate of 100 percent and earned a lead article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) with only seven patients!

Similarly the 57 percent response rate for Crizotinib in ALK positive lung cancer required only 82 patients for a place in the NEJM. Unfortunately, the failure of contemporary investigators to identify more “paradigm changing therapies” has forced many to lower the bar.

The clear solution to the problem is the better selection of candidates for therapy. Despite advances in molecular biopsy a paucity of truly effective companion diagnostics exist. Outside of EGFR, ALK, and ROS-1, it is anybody’s guess how to manage the vast majority of non-small cell lung cancer patients.

While we expand our armamentarium and develop better companion diagnostics, today we can apply measures of cellular response (as found in an EVA-PCD assay)
that capture all of operative mechanisms of sensitivity for all classes of drugs. While it is not always possible to know why a patient will respond, it is possible to know that they will respond. In the words of Judge Stewart, when it comes to a responsive lung cancer patient “I know it when I see it.”

Every Cancer Patient’s Outcome is Important

Clinical oncologists can be divided into different camps. There are those who see patient outcomes as a means-to-an-end. Each clinical response provides a data point and when those data points reach critical mass they become reportable. These are the trialists. They see the world through a utilitarian lens. They use aggregate data, through sufficient patient accrual, to achieve significance. This, they hope, will lead practice-changing observations. Trialists populate academic centers and an ever-expanding number of “mega medical groups” that are now gobbling up private oncology practices. They apply metrics to gauge success, as their focus has moved away from individual patient needs toward the achievement of a “greater good” for the population as a whole. Statistical significance is the currency of their realm and clinical protocols their preferred tool.

In the other camp reside physicians, that dwindling cadre of doctors whose principal focus is the good response of each individual patient. They are the practitioners who eke out a living in an environment of diminishing returns. Having relinquished both autonomy and income over recent years, their one remaining reward is the benefit they can bring to each patient. With neither the desire nor ability to publish their results, individual patient survival becomes their paramount goal. Their job is to alleviate suffering, provide comfort and sponsor the health of their clients. Patients preparing to meet with a cancer specialist should consider carefully who is treating them – and why.

I was reminded of this when a 48-year-old gentleman recently requested an opinion. He had presented to an emergency room with a month-long history of sharp abdominal pain. The CT scan revealed extensive intra-abdominal disease, which upon endoscopic biopsy, proved to be of gastric (stomach) origin. He was immediately referred to an accomplished university-based clinical investigator for consultation.

Metastatic gastric cancer is a very difficult disease to treat. One bright spot has been the discovery that 20 percent of patients carry an epidermal growth factor receptor (HER-2) mutation that enables them to receive Herceptin-based therapy. As luck would have it, this patient did not carry the HER-2 mutation. The university investigator explained that there were limited treatment options. In light of his metastatic presentation, the doctor felt that aggressive, multi-agent chemotherapy might only engender toxicity. The patient was offered either single agent 5-FU for palliation or the opportunity to participate in a clinical trial. The patient considered his options and chose to seek an opinion with me.

I reviewed the patient’s status and explained that while the opinion of the university investigator was valid it might underestimate the patient’s individual chance of response. I explained that gastric cancer statistics, like all medical statistics, are population based. That is, a 20 percent response rate does not mean that every patient gets 20 percent better, but instead, that 20 out of every 100 respond while 80 do not. Our job was to find out which group he belonged to.

The patient decided to undergo a biopsy and submitted tissue to Rational Therapeutics for EVA-PCD® analysis. The results were strikingly favorable with several drug combinations revealing both activity and synergy. After careful comparison, I recommended the combination of a Cisplatin, Taxotere and 5-FU (DCF), a regimen originally developed at the MD Anderson almost 10 years earlier.

On March 12th, the patient began treatment on an every-other-week schedule. As he did not circulate tumor markers like CEA or CA 19-9, there was no easy measure of his response so I elected to repeat the PET/CT after just two cycles. Much to my delight, the patient had achieved a complete remission with resolution of all measurable disease, including the bulky abdominal masses, numerous lymph nodes and the stomach. As I described the remarkable PET/CT results, the patient’s wife began to weep. Her husband, the father of their two young children, wasn’t dying after all. He was no longer a grim cancer statistic. With mother’s day approaching, this was the first good news that they had received in six months. At once, the patient began to discuss business trips, travel plans and family outings. He breathed a slow sigh of relief as he realized that, once again, he had a life.

Good outcomes, even in the worst diseases, occur in all oncology practices. Every doctor can regale you with the story of a patient who responded beautifully and went on to survive years beyond everyone’s expectations. The reason we remember these stories is because they occur so infrequently. Complete remissions in metastatic gastric cancer are vanishingly rare. That is the reason that the university investigator offered single agent 5-FU. It’s easy, nontoxic, well tolerated, but it also cures no one. The rationale is well established: Why poison patient’s you cannot cure? Playing the averages, this strategy is a winner. Yet, on an individual patient basis it may, in fact, be a very big loser.

What are we to do with the “non-average” patient? What about the outliers? Should we not, at least, try to find them? We do it with stocks, racehorses, Indy-drivers, real-estate investments and every underdog sports team in every league. It’s the outliers after all that we call winners.

Cancer patients are not clinical trial subjects. They are unique individuals with their own very unique biology. Every patient is an experiment in real time, an “N of 1.” We must respect the dignity of each individual and we are duty-bound to apply every tool at our disposal to assist him or her in the pursuit of his or her own very personal best outcome – providing truly personalized cancer treatment. This patient did not have a 20 percent response. Instead, he was one of the fortunate few who responded very well. And for him that response was 100 percent.

Why Do Cancer Surgeons Cure More Patients Than Medical Oncologists?

Surgery remains the most curative form of cancer treatment. While the reasons for this are many, the most obvious being earlier stage of disease and the better performance status of the patients, there are other factors at work. Surgeons tend to be rugged individualists, prepared to make life and death decisions at a moment’s notice. The surgeon who enters the pelvis expecting an ovarian cyst only to find disseminated ovarian cancer must be prepared to conduct a total hysterectomy and bilateral ovary removal if he/she is to save the patient’s life. It is these types of aggressive interventions that have that revolutionized the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer.

What of the medical oncologists who, with the exception of leukemia and some lymphomas, confront diseases that are difficult to eradicate and for which treatments can be toxic? Trained as incrementalists, they do not expect cures so much as palliation. Their role is not to make hard decisions, but instead to rely upon precedence. Educated in the school of small advances, these physicians are not rewarded for individual successes but they are harshly criticized for any departures from community standards.

Deprived of the opportunity to make bold decisions, medical oncologists follow opinion leaders who instruct them to accrue to standardized protocols. As meaningful advances are few and far between, enormous numbers of patients must be accrued to provide sample sizes with any hope of achieving statistical significance. Among the most disturbing examples of this approach was a trial reported in patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer. The study compared single agent gemcitabine to gemcitabine plus erlotinib. The trial achieved an improvement in survival that led the FDA to approve the two-drug combination. Yet, the actual improvement in median survival was a mere 10 days. The authors beamed, “To our knowledge, this randomized phase III trial is the first to demonstrate statistically significantly improved survival in advanced pancreatic cancer by adding any agent to gemcitabine.” (Moore, MJ et al J Clin Oncol, 2007). To the average observer however, a clinical trial that required 569 patients to improve median survival from 5.91 months to 6.24 months (10 days) would hardly seem cause for celebration.

Medical oncologists have become so accustomed to these marginal advances that they are unmoved to depart from standard protocols lest they be accused of breeching guidelines. This might be acceptable if chemotherapy provided meaningful benefits, but the extremely modest advantages provided by even the best clinical trials scream for medical oncologists to think, well, more like surgeons.

While community oncologists think it heresy to step around a National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guideline, investigators at the best institutions, the opinion leaders, have begun to question the merit of blind protocol accrual and come to recognize that many critical questions cannot be easily answered through the current trial process. Questions such as the role of liver resection for colon cancer patients with disease spread to the liver or the role of additional chemotherapy after that liver surgery, simply may not lend themselves to randomized trials. In a review of the topic by one of the leading investigators in the field, Dr. Nancy Kemeny from Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York examined this dilemma, “The management plan for each patient should be decided by a multidisciplinary team, it may not be possible or ethically defensible to perform large randomized adjuvant trials comparing chemotherapy with surgery alone or comparing modern chemotherapy with older regimens. It may be reasonable to extrapolate from adjuvant trials and meta-analyses showing predominantly disease-free survival benefit. Each decision on postoperative chemotherapy should be viewed in context of prior treatment, surgical preference and individual patient characteristics.”

How refreshing. Finally a clinical investigator has recognized that patients must be managed on an “individual basis” regardless of what the clinical trial data does or does not support.

The concept of personalized medicine flies in the face of contemporary guideline driven treatment. Individualized care is on a collision course with the NCCN. It is time for medical oncologists to reclaim the high ground in doing what is right for patients, using resources that enable them to make smart decisions and to eschew standardized care. In cancer, the dictum “one size fits all” is more accurately “one size fits none.”

Is It Ethical to Deny Cancer Patients Functional Analyses?

The ethical standards that govern human experimentation have become an important topic of discussion. Clinical trials are conducted to resolve medical questions while protecting the rights and well-being of the participants. Human subject committees known as Institutional Review Boards (IRB’s) not only confront questions of protocol design and patient protection but also the appropriateness of the questions to be answered. The Belmont Report (1979) defined three fundamental principles i) respect for persons, ii) beneficence and iii) justice. These have been incorporated into regulatory guidelines codified in the code of federal regulations like 45 CFR 46.111. One historical experience offers an interesting perspective upon contemporary oncologic practice.

With advances in cardiac surgery in the1970s and 1980s, in both valvular and coronary artery bypass, an alarming amount of post-operative bleeding was being observed. To address this complication an enzyme inhibitor named Aprotinin was developed by Bayer pharmaceuticals. The drug works by preventing the body from breaking down blood clots (thrombolysis). This is critical for the prevention of postoperative bleeding. Concerns regarding its safety led to Aprotinin’s temporary withdrawal from the market, but those have been resolved and the drug is again available.

After Aprotinin’s introduction, clinical trials were conducted to test its efficacy. Initial results were highly favorable as the drug consistently reduced post-op bleeding. By December 1991, 455 patients had been evaluated providing strong statistical evidence that Aprotinin reduced bleeding by more than 70 percent. Despite this, trialists continued to accrue patients to Aprotinin versus “no treatment” studies. By December 1992, more than 2,000 patients had been accrued and by October of 1994, the number had increased to more than 3,800 patients. Yet the 75 percent risk reduction remained entirely unchanged. Thus, 3,400 patients at untold cost and hardship were subjected to the risk of bleeding to address a question that had long since been resolved.

In a 2005  analysis, Dean Fergusson et al, decried that it should have been evident to anyone who cared to review the literature that Aprotinin’s efficacy had been established. Further accrual to clinical trials beyond 1991 only exposed patients to unwarranted risk of bleeding, and had no possible chance of further establishing the clinical utility of the intervention. This stands as a striking lack of consideration for patient well-being. Fergusson’s review raises further questions about the ethics of conducting studies to prove already proven points. With this as a backdrop, it is instructive to examine functional profiling for the prediction of response to chemotherapy.

Beginning in 1997, a cumulative meta-analysis of 34 clinical trials (1,280 patients), which correlated drug response with clinical outcome was reported. Drug sensitive patients had a significantly higher objective response rate of 81 percent over the response rate of 13 percent for those found drug resistant (P < 0.0000001). This was met by the ASCO/Blue Cross-Blue Shield Technology Assessment published in Journal of Clinical Oncology (Schrag, D et al J Clin Oncol, 2004) that cried for further clinical trials. A subsequent meta-analysis correlated the outcome of 1929 patients with leukemia and lymphoma against laboratory results and again showed significantly superior outcomes for assay directed therapy (P <0.001) (Bosanquet AG, Proc. Amer Soc Hematology, 2007). In response, a second ASCO Guideline paper was published in 2011. (Burstein H et al J Clin Oncol, 2011) Although the authors were forced to concede the importance of the field, they concluded that “participation in clinical trials evaluating these technologies remains a priority.” Most recently we conducted a cumulative meta-analysis of 2581 treated patients that established that patients who receive laboratory “sensitive” drugs are 2.04 fold more likely to respond (p < 0.001) and 1.4 fold more likely to survive one year or more (p <0.02) (Apfel C. Proc Am Soc Clin Oncol 2013).

Each successive meta-analysis has concluded, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that human tumor functional analyses (e.g. EVA-PCD) identify effective drugs and eliminate ineffective drugs better than any other tool at the disposal of cancer physicians today. Not unlike those investigators who continued to accrue patients to trials testing Aprotinin, long after the result were in, oncologists today continue to clamor for trials to prove something which, to the dispassionate observer, is already patently obvious. If we now pose the question “Is it ethical to deny patients functional analyses to select chemotherapy?” the answer is a resounding No!

Rallying the Troops to Confront Cancer

The recent blog “Stand Up To Cancer Research!” described some of the pitfalls of modern cancer research and the clinical trial process. It has engendered an active discussion. It may be helpful to address some of issues raised. For those of you who did not have the opportunity to read that blog, it defined the difficulty that many patients encounter when they seek experimental treatments. Clinical trials are often only available at select centers, sometimes at great distances from patient’s homes. There can be rigid inclusionary and exclusionary criteria, and the pre-entry evaluations e.g. re-biopsy, CT/PET, etc. can be daunting, time consuming and inconvenient. Travel and accommodations may come at great personal expense.

I penned the blog, in part, to remind patients that they are ultimately in control of the process. One patient asked how can “we stand up to the system” describing herself a consumer while “they’ve got the goods.” This is the frustration many people feel. It should be remembered, however, that a substantial portion of research support comes from tax dollars and charitable donations. These are your dollars. If the system is not working, then those responsible must be held accountable. The American public has the power of the vote. Patient advocates can approach and lobby their representatives and demand improvements in the clinical trial process. To wit, the level of scrutiny and restriction upon access to new drugs must be re-examined. There is an army of well-trained clinical oncologists capable of delivering experimental drugs today. Not just the fully vetted, just-about-ready-for-prime-time agents currently found in phase III trials, but the really new exciting drugs. Once a drug has passed Phase I and found to be safe in patients, open up the accrual process. “Compassionate use” has virtually disappeared from the lexicon of cancer research. Twenty years ago I made a discovery in the laboratory. Working with the pharmaceutical company and the FDA, we were almost immediately granted access to a yet-to-be approved agent. The combination proved so effective that today it is one of the most widely used regimens in the world. That would not happen today. We simply cannot get access to the best drugs for our patients.

With the industrialization of medical care, growth of mega-medical systems and the increasing role of government, medicine must be viewed through a different lens. Changes in cancer research will require changes in cancer policy, and policy comes from political power. Cancer patients will need to identify legitimate spokespeople to take their concerns forward to their elected officials. While the current clinical trial process slowly grinds out new development, even the smartest, fastest trials take years to change practice. Every day, more than 1,500 cancer patients die in the United States alone. Cancer patients do not have time for clever doctors to pose interesting questions while they suffer the slings and arrows of ignoble, ineffective therapy. It is time for a change in cancer research, and patients must be the instrument for that change.