| Show HEA with the help ON d so:ne men ending medical advances are offering hope for thousands courneous PA ADE R Catn re 1E 0 e (I) tor Called Granulocyte Colony THE 40 YEARS I HAVE written about and explored the vt cance tragedy er have IoPowerful optimism s new c n tific evidence backs up the vision The scientists that a cure for many all now incurable breast cancers soon may be realized In two or three years they expect to know That's because several hundred incredibly brave women will be putting their lives on the line for science They also will be doing it for the 150000 American women stricken with breast cancer each year The disease which often is discovered as a terrifying lump in the breast kills 44000 women annually in this country The women volunteering to test the promising cure all have advanced breast cancer Some already have begun to take into their systems the strongest known chemicals combination of And if all goes as the scientists hope the drugs being tested by these heroic women will rout the cancer while leaving all other organs mostly unharmed Hazel Greaves 39 mother of two young daughters in Delray Beach Fla stands on the front lines of the research "I suppose I am a guinea pig" she says "but I am quite happy to be one—I feel a great deal better already" In the summer of 1989 Mrs Greaves had lost 25 pounds for no known reason Severe constant fatigue laid her low In October physicians told hen A quickly growing cancer was spreading in her breast The doctors sent her to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda Md There in 12 three- - to four-wee-k cycles medical scientists dispensed high doses of four chemicals known to kill cancers Mrs Greaves however could not tolerate the doses needed to kill the cancer Those same drugs also destroy the bone matrow—the soft tissue in the bones that makes blood And without bone marrow she soon would have no red blood am a guinea Pie Ws Hazel Greaves 39 of Delray Beach Fla "But I feel nhopeful better &heady" Blood-cegrowth-fact- Sloan-Ketteri- a 1 anti-canc- N or anti-canc- er serum protected her bone marrow during chemotherapy C C anti-canc- er anti-canc- (G-CS- F) "I suppose I 1 1 Stimu- it stimulates lating Factor blood-ce- ll growth It protected the 20 women in Dr Dorrss care The next step is being planned by Dr Larry Norton also of Memorial Cancer Center He will enroll cases of breast women with high-ris- k cancer in a study of Granulocyte Macrophage CSE The women first will get GM-CS- F er and high doses of drugs Months later half the women will and drugs The get GM-CS- F others will get drugs but no GM-CS- E Participating as these women will do in a study to test a lifesaving drug and not knowing whether you are getting that drug yourself is a test of courage "It is a highly motivated patient who wants to try something more than she can get in her doctor's office" says Dr Joyce O'Shaughnessy a senior investigator at the NCI In a clinical trial she adds you get good standard therapy and take a e chance at getting some-thing even better as well Scientists contend I 6 er that higher doses of g drugs ' cancer-killin- p wtv 1 cells no protection against germs "In between cycles at home in Florida I injected what doctors called a growth-factserum with a small insulin-typ- e syringe" she says That growth factor found naturally in tiny amounts in blood safeguarded Hazel Greaves1 bone marrow Her chemotherapy has ended doctors have found no sign of cancer Dr Andrew Doff senior investigator at the NCI reports that the kind of therapy given to Mrs Greaves also partially or completely shrank the cancers in 20 other patients with advanced breast cancer "This is all very preliminary" Dr Doff says cautiously "But this is the direction we are going in" Dr Paul A Marks president of Memorial Cancer Center in or Sloan-Ketteri- ng a Dr Andrew Derr of the National Cancer Institute says the growth-factserum is now but promising 1 41 mean higher cure rates There's no proof yet but in a couple of years they expect to know for sure It could turn Out that taking the growth factor and drugs is not best for the patient Large amounts of the cancer drugs could severely injure other organs sometimes fatally Growth factor cannot protect you against such damage Nearly 100 years of research have led up to this exciting moment In the 19th century every woman who developed breast cancer died of it The cancer cells eventually invaded other areas of the body choked off blood supplies and squeezed normal cells In 1894 the first mastectomy—removal of the cancerous breast—was high-do- or New York City told me "We don't heed statistics to know we have the real thing at last Still we do have to prove it' Dr Marks and I were high school classmates 45 years ago and are friends now I do not doubt his estimate of the future of breast cancer He credits the latest advance to other researchers at Memorial and around the world In particular Marks cites the work of Drs Janice Gabrilove and Malcolm Moore the Memorial scientists who first identified and purified the growth fac se continued BY EARL UBELL PAGE 18 ----- - SEPTEMBER 30 1990 PARADE MAGAZINE I I S t I t ( I C |
