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| |  AACR-EORTC-NCI: Suramin Plus Chemotherapy Regimens Appear To Give Cancer-Fighting Drugs Greater Impact By Ed Susman Special to DG News MIAMI BEACH, FL -- November 1, 2001 -- The addition of low levels of the drug suramin -- generally used in treatment of parasitic infections in Africa -- to chemotherapy regimens appear to give the cancer-fighting drugs a boost, even among patients for whom the drugs have working. "The results we have seen in this Phase 1 study -- stable disease or partial responses in eight of 12 patients -- is better than anything that has been previously published," said Dr. Miguel Villalona-Calero, assistant professor of internal medicine at the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States. Dr. Villalona-Calero explained that the researchers believed that low levels of suramin would be able to reduce the basic fibroblastic growth factors found in overabundance on tumors. By reducing that bFGF load, he suggested, the chemotherapeutic drugs would be able to better attack the tumors -- in this case non-small cell lung cancer. The goal of the study, supported by the university's research center, was to find the dose of suramin that would prevent the tumor cell activity from hindering the antitumor activity of cell-cycle late-acting drugs -- a combination of paclitaxel and carboplatin, he said. Eventually, the patients were given 160 mg of suramin on the first day of the treatment, followed by 80 mg on the second day to achieve the blood concentration of the drug to accomplish its effect on bFGF. Of the 12 patients in the study, Dr. Villalona-Calero reported disease progression in four patients after three to nine months of stable disease. But in the other eight patients, objective partial responses or stable disease has been observed for at least as long as 12 months, he said during a poster presentation at the 12th annual joint meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer and the National Cancer Institute of the United States. "Historically, in this disease we expect to see progression within 3.5 to four months following treatment," he said. "So we are encouraged by these results and we think that the extension of stable disease is evidence that our hypothesis is correct -- that the addition of suramin is the reason for the improved results." Generally, the patients tolerated the regimen. "The low doses of suramin utilized do not increase toxicities of paclitaxel and carboplatin," he explained. The two-day infusion schedule of suramin was repeated every three weeks. some patients have received as many as 85 courses of treatment. "I believe that we will be able to extrapolate these results to other chemotherapy regimens," Dr. Villalona-Calero said. He reported that he believed it would work similarly with fluorouracil, Adriamycin and paclitaxel treatments in both pretreated and treatment-naive patients. Those studies are under way, he said.
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