UofL cancer drug shows promise in clinical trials

A second patient with late-stage renal cancer is responding well to a new drug discovered by University of Louisville researchers in a Phase I clinical trial being conducted at UofL's James Graham Brown Cancer Center.

After being treated with a drug derived from guanine-rich oligonucleotides (GROs) -- a compound discovered by UofL faculty Paula Bates, Ph.D., Donald Miller, M.D., Ph.D., and John Trent, Ph.D. -- the patient's tumors have shrunk 70 percent, according to Damien Laber, M.D., principal investigator in the trial.

"Across the board, patients are responding well with fewer side effects than other available treatments," Miller said. "This particular patient's results are very exciting, because the patient had relapsed after three prior therapies with common cancer drugs."

Miller, director of the James Graham Brown Cancer Center and associate vice president for health affairs at UofL, presented full data from the trial Oct. 1 at the European Society of Medical Oncology annual conference in Istanbul, Turkey.

The clinical trial at the Brown Cancer Center includes 12 patients with renal cancer and five with lung cancer. The trial is sponsored by Antisoma PLC, which acquired Louisville-based Aptamera in October 2005. Aptamera was founded by Bates, Miller and Trent to bring GRO-based therapies to market.

GROs are short pieces of synthetic DNA that work by binding tightly to a specific protein present on the surface of cancer cells, interfering with tumor growth. Because the compounds select cancer cells over normal cells, GRO-based therapies have fewer side effects than many traditional cancer drugs.

"This is just one of many targeted drugs in the pipeline at the Brown Cancer Center and UofL, and we are doing everything we can to move these new therapies from the lab to the patients as swiftly as possible," Miller said.