World-first Melbourne trial shows tablet treatment ‘melt away’ blood cancer cells
A WORLD-first trial by Melbourne researchers has shown that some blood cancer cells “simply melt away” using a new tablet treatment.
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A WORLD-first trial by Melbourne researchers has shown that some blood cancer cells “simply melt away” using a new tablet treatment.
Three Victorian centres are behind a clinical trial that has seen 80 per cent of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia get a positive response to the new drug after all other treatments had failed.
And the drug, venetoclax, worked so well that 20 per cent of the patients were completely clear of the disease.
Results of the drug’s first human trials, conducted at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, will be published today in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.
The trials were the result of another Melbourne discovery, at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in the 1980s, of how the BCL-2 protein protected cancer cells.
Three decades of research since have led to the development of venetoclax by two pharmaceutical firms.
Prof Andrew Roberts, a Royal Melbourne Hospital haematologist and Hall Institute researcher, said the drug worked by overcoming BCL-2.
“Venetoclax selectively targets the interaction responsible for keeping leukaemia cells alive,” he said.
“In many cases, we’ve seen the cancerous cells simply melt away.”
Prof Roberts said some people in the phase one trial had been in remission for more than four years.
“This is a very exciting result for people who often had no other treatment options available,” he said.
The RMH, Peter Mac and Walter and Eliza Hall Institute are three of the 10 groups that will make up the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre, due to open in June.
Health Minister Jill Hennessy will today unveil the VCCC’s haematology ward.
“These groundbreaking results are exactly what the VCCC is all about — the world’s best clinicians, researchers and scientists working together to drive breakthroughs in cancer prevention, detection and treatment,” she said.
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