A NEW drug has produced such significant results in the treatment of a rare form of leukaemia that doctors believe they are now “tantalisingly close” to curing the condition.
Preliminary results from a clinical trial of the drug involving patients at a number of Irish hospitals as well as hospitals in the US, UK and Berlin show a very significant fall in the level of abnormal cancer-induced protein in the blood of patients who are on the drug for just three months.
So significant have been the findings that doctors in Italy and a number of other countries now want to join the clinical trial, so their patients can access the drug called Tasigna for their patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), a rare cancer of the blood and bone marrow.
This type of cancer affects about 40 patients in Ireland each year.
The trial is being led by Prof Michael O’Dwyer, consultant haematologist at University College Hospital Galway (UCHG), and Dr Eibhlin Conneally, consultant haematologist at St James’s Hospital, Dublin, and is being undertaken in partnership with Prof Frank Giles, an Irish doctor based at the University of Texas Health Science Centre in San Antonio.
Dr Conneally said patients with CML were monitored by very sensitive blood tests and the results of these tests on patients taking the new drug were very promising.
“We know from the preliminary data how low the level of the protein is in their bloods at very early time points, so the likelihood is that they will continue to fall and therefore there is a much higher probability that people will be cured,” she said.
“We can see results at three months that we often wouldn’t see for a year on the older drug,” she added.
She explained that an older drug called Glivec was not suitable for all patients, as some developed resistance to it.
The new drug was like “a master key” for those with resistance, she said, and worked much faster with fewer side effects. While the new treatment is for only one type of leukaemia, she said, “the truth is the lessons that are learned from these disorders are probably applicable to other types of cancer”.
Prof Giles said this represented “a very significant step towards cure”.
About 20 Irish patients are now on the drug at hospitals in Galway, Dublin and Belfast.
Michael Lavelle from Bunnacurry on Achill Island, Co Mayo, was the first patient to be enrolled in the clinical trial. He began taking the drug in November 2008 shortly after being diagnosed with CML and will continue on it for another year.
“The treatment has worked very well for me,” he said, explaining that after just three months he had a bone marrow biopsy which showed his white cell count was reducing and was returning to a normal reading.
While the chances of being diagnosed with CML are 100,000 to one, his neighbour on Achill Island, Patricia Dever, was also diagnosed with the condition, back in 2003. She is still on the older drug Glivec and is doing well.
Prof O’Dwyer said the fact that both of them had been diagnosed with the condition was probably just down to chance.
The findings of the Irish-led clinical trial, in which patients are given a lower dose of the drug than in other ongoing trials elsewhere, are to be presented at the American Society of Haematology’s 51st annual meeting in New Orleans on December 5th.
The drug is made by the Novartis pharmaceutical company which is providing it free for clinical trial patients.