March15, 2001
The basis for a breakthrough "guided missile" therapy for breast cancer, first tested in a human at the UAB Comprehensive
Cancer Center, is touted in this week's New England Journal of Medicine (NJME) as having a high potential for treating other kinds of cancer.
A new UAB professor, Matthias H. Kraus, MD, was a part of the effort that
originally identified the genetic target for Herceptin. In 1999 the drug
became the first monoclonal antibody treatment to receive government
approval for cancer treatment. Monoclonal antibodies provide a highly
tailored treatment approach as opposed to broader, systemic drug treatments
that generally cause more side effects. The Cancer Center
has a long history of interest in monoclonal antibodies. The center
participated in the original clinical trials of the drug, enrolling a
Houston TX woman as the very first participant in the study.
The prestigious NEJM recently published the first study that favorably compares
a combination of Herceptin and chemotherapy with chemotherapy alone in women
whose tumors produce an excess of ErbB/EGFR (epidermal growth factor-receptor). Over-expression of the growth factor receptor is associated with higher aggressiveness of breast tumors.
Previous studies compared Herceptin alone against conventional therapy.
Herceptin, known generically as trastuzumab, is a genetically engineered
molecule that blocks the aberrant receptor activity involved in growth that
is characteristic of cancer. Some 25 to 30% of breast cancer patients
exhibit this genetic characteristic.
In an accompanying editorial, the NEJM said the study is "the beginning of an important new era in cancer treatment, since many more such targeted
therapies are now
undergoing clinical evaluation."
Dr. Kraus, who recently joined the Cancer Center as an
Avon Breast Cancer Scholar, was a scientist at the National Institutes of
Health laboratory that identified the molecule (called ErbB2 or HER2) as one
of the receptors that eventually became Herceptin's target.
Dr. Kraus said, "My research continues to focus on genetic control of
transformation with particular refrence to functional aspects of signal
transduction by ErbB receptor tyorsine kinases in transformation and
cancer." Formerly director of the Milan Cancer Institute, he was recruited to UAB as one of a handful of new faculty made possible by a gift last year from the
Avon Products Foundation. Dr. Kraus said he was attracted to UAB and the
Cancer Center by their strong history in translational medicine —
"bringing basic research discoveries to clinical application."
Mansoor Saleh, MD, UAB Cancer Center associate director of clinical
networks, directed the center's participation in the first clinical trial of
Herceptin and was an investigator in the study featured in NEJM.
Also identified as an investigator in the publication today was M.
Schreeder, MD, of Huntsville, who is part of the UAB cancer trials network.