THE RESEARCH

Imagine if something could teach your body to seek out and destroy cancer cells as they

develop!

As we often hear, enormous progress has been made in breast cancer treatment – yet up to 40% of

people diagnosed with breast cancer still relapse and die from the disease.  It affects women and men in

the prime of their lives, and their children.  We need to do better.

Climb for Hope raises funds to support the development of a completely new way to treat breast

cancer. Most treatments target the cancer directly, but a breast cancer vaccine changes the way your body

sees and reacts to the cancer. Since cancer cells come from your own tissues, your immune system

recognizes it as you.  This study is using a vaccine to re-program your immune system to recognize

cancer cells as a foreign enemy, and a target for destruction.

Typically, you think of a vaccine for disease prevention. This research uses vaccines as one tool

to treat cancer; the vaccines have to be combined with other drugs so that you can get the best direct

treatment effect and the best immune effect simultaneously.  The research translates important

observations from the laboratory to the patient bedside.  This study maintains a strong focus on Stage IV

breast cancer, which remains incurable and understudied.

Tangible Research Accomplishments

 Dr. Emens and her team completed the first clinical trial combining the breast cancer vaccine with very

low doses of chemotherapy in 28 patients with Stage IV breast cancer. They learned that the vaccine is

safe and bioactive, and it produces new immune responses to breast cancer.
 Vaccine testing continues in combination with low dose chemotherapy and Trastuzumab, a drug for

HER-2+ breast cancer that is the single largest advance in breast cancer treatment in the last 50 years.

 A clinical trial just launched that will use the vaccine after standard treatment for early breast cancer.

Here, the vaccine may be an extra insurance policy to ensure that the cancer will not return in an

incurable stage. This is where vaccines have their greatest potential in cancer treatment.

 The research is using the blood from vaccinated patients to determine what it reacts to. This target

discovery could lead to the development of the next powerful drug for breast cancer treatment.

Prostate Cancer Patients Find Hope with Natural Remedy, PC Hope, Books Indicate

Research has shown and doctors are writing that for men with prostate cancer, Nutrition 2000 Info’s PC

Hope is associated with significant improvements in quality of life, reductions in patients’ pain rating,

and a decline in PSA levels for prostate cancer patients without the major side effects of traditional

treatment.

(PRWEB) January 14, 2005 -- Three books written by distinguished doctors indicate that an

herbal supplement for prostate cancer patients by Nutrition 2000 Info called PC Hope, along with a

comprehensive wellness plan, shows a lowering of PSA levels for prostate cancer patients and

significantly reduces pain and improves the quality of cancer patients' lives.

The books were written regarding a remedy similar to PC Hope, called PC SPES. (“Spes” is the Latin

word for hope.) PC Hope has the same eight herbs that were in PC SPES, plus the addition of magnesium,

plant sterolins, and quercetin enhance the synergistic effects experienced by men who took PC SPES.
In the book by board-certified neurosurgeon Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., called “Natural Strategies for

Cancer Patients,” he states that “PC SPES is a combination of eight highly concentrated Chinese herbs

that have been found to be very effective against...prostate cancers. Its mechanism of action involves the

inhibition of the systems used by the cancer cells for their growth and survival. It has been shown to

inhibit cancer cell reproduction, suppress growth factors that contribute to the tumor growth, stimulate the

p53 gene, and induce apoptosis in the cancer cells. Several clinical trials using PC SPES have shown the

herbal combination to be a valuable option for patients with prostate cancer.” He also writes that of a

group of prostate cancer patients tested, PSA levels remained low in 88% percent of them. In some

prostate cancer patients, PSA levels fell to even undetectable amounts over time.

“'The Prostate Miracle' New Natural Therapies That Can Save Your Life” written by Jesse A. Stoff,

M.D., a Certified Naturopathic Physician and a licensed Homeopathic Physician, and Dallas Clouatre,

Ph.D., says, “The usual approach to treating prostate cancer is to treat the cancer, not the patient. PC

SPES is different. The eight Chinese herbs have multiple effects that make this compound suitable to

individuals whose health and basic constitutions vary widely…. [By acting as an antiviral, PC SPES may

help to partially relieve the burden on the immune system. PC SPES also has anti inflammatory benefits,

and these again, support the immune system and may help to inhibit one of the ways in which cancers

spread and metastasize. Moreover, its actions against benign hyperplasia may serve to improve the quality

of life, even aside from its effects upon prostate cancer itself and is another indication for its use that I

employ in my practice.”

Chief medical correspondent for NBC News Dr. Bob Arnot writes in his book “The Prostate Cancer

Protection Plan” about the stages of prostate cancer and how they are affected by PC SPES. “Dr. Eric

Small studied 33 patients who were at late stage but were responsive to hormone therapy. He found 100

percent of these patients showed a more than 50 percent reduction in PSA and 74 percent had a more than

50 percent decrease in tumor volume.” Some patients who have progressive prostate cancer after
undergoing hormone treatment are considered hormone-resistant cancer patients. The book cites a

prostate cancer study in which “37 patients had hormone-resistant prostate cancer…. Still, even though

many see PC SPES working primarily as hormone therapy, Dr. Small also saw a drop of about 50 to 60

percent in this group. This tells us that PC SPES has nonhormonal effects. Dr. B.L. Pfeifer reported a 70

percent reduction in PSA among his study patients….”

Research

The National Foundation for Cancer Research funds an array of research projects conducted by leading

scientists in the field of ovarian cancer research. Listed below are some notable ovarian cancer research

programs that NFCR currently supports:

Developing a New Model for Ovarian Cancer Treatment

Robert C. Bast, Jr., M.D., University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

Ovarian cancer continues to claim the lives of three out of four women with the disease, due mainly to the

persistence of drug-resistant cancer cells that survive despite standard chemotherapy. These resistant

cancer cells can remain dormant or "asleep" for years, only to awaken later and grow progressively until

they cause the death of the patient.

A key to understanding and perhaps killing off dormant ovarian cancer cells may lie in a recent discovery

by NFCR Project Director Robert C. Bast, Jr., M.D. Dr. Bast and his research team at the M.D. Anderson

Cancer Center found a gene called ARHI, which plays a critical role in the survival of dormant cancer

cells. The team further developed a new experimental model in which ARHI can be switched on and off

to closely mimic the actual tumor dormancy and regrowth that occurs in humans. This model will help

cancer researchers understand the molecular mechanism of cell dormancy and open the door to the

development of new treatments that eliminate these cells before they can become reactivated in the body.
In addition, because of the similarities between this new model and the actual disease in humans, new

therapeutics can be rapidly moved into clinical trials to treat ovarian cancer patients and give them

renewed hope.

Making Taxol Work More Effectively

Susan Band Horwitz, Ph.D., Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Paclitaxel, better known by its brand name, Taxol®, is one of the most widely used chemotherapy drugs

in the world. It has been used to treat over a million cancer patients with ovarian, breast, and lung cancer.

But Taxol is not a magic bullet - it gradually loses its effectiveness as tumors develop resistance to it

during treatment. Internationally renowned for her discovery of the molecular mechanism of Taxol,

NFCR Fellow Susan Band Horwitz, Ph.D., at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is now exploring

why tumor resistance to Taxol occurs and how to make the drug work better. Dr. Horwitz reasoned that

during chemotherapy treatment, tumor cells may activate a protective molecular pathway which renders

tumors resistant to Taxol. Once she had confirmed that alternate pathway, she proposed a combinatory

drug approach in which a second drug is used to inhibit the activated molecular pathway and make the

tumor cells regain sensitivity to Taxol. This rational combination strategy turned out to be very effective

in experiments with tumor models, and may soon enter clinical trials with cancer patients to confirm its

value as a treatment option.

Stopping Cancer's Lethal Spread

NFCR Center of Metastasis Research, University of Alabama (Birmingham)

Center Director: Danny Welch, Ph.D.

Two-thirds of ovarian cancer cases are diagnosed when the disease has already spread throughout the

abdomen and to distant organs, and only 30% of women with late stage ovarian cancer now survive five
years or longer. Very little is known about how cancer cells spread to distant sites in the body and many

researchers have shied away from the complex biology of metastatic cancer. 

At the NFCR Center for Metastasis Research, the Center Director Danny Welch, Ph.D., and his

collaborators from five universities across the United States are opening the research doors to an

understanding of the metastatic process. They have discovered six "metastasis suppressor genes"

including the BRMS1 gene found in metastatic breast and ovarian cancer. Using cancer cell lines and

DNA chip technology (microarray), they are identifying molecular factors (microRNAs) which may

mediate the suppression of cancer metastasis by BRMS1. The impact of this research is enormously

significant as it could lead to novel anti-cancer therapies that prevent breast and ovarian cancer from

spreading to distant organs, bringing the cancer under control and giving patients increased likelihood of

long term survival.

Fighting Ovarian Cancer on a Global Scale

NFCR-Tianjin Cancer Institute Joint Tissue Banking Facility in Tianjin, China

High quality cancer tissues and blood samples obtained directly from actual cancer patients are a most

valuable resource for cancer researchers. From these specimens, scientists can extract DNA, RNA, and

protein data to discover and analyze the underpinning molecular abnormalities of cancer.  NFCR and our

partner in China established a cancer tissue bank that systematically collects human cancer tissues, blood,

and other biospecimens, and preserves these precious samples for cancer research. To date, the tissue

bank has collected and systematically annotated over 19,000 cancer tissues and nearly 8,000 blood

samples, including about 400 ovarian tumor specimens and more than 200 blood samples from ovarian

cancer patients. These samples are well preserved to keep them suitable for research with all the cutting-

edge molecular techniques (such as DNA chip technology) for identifying new cancer biomarkers for

early detection and molecular targets for drug development. This international research facility is
currently partnering with two major pharmaceutical companies, Amgen and Pfizer, to develop early

diagnostic tests and more effective targeted cancer therapies. 

Further growth of the tissue bank will continue to promote collaborative efforts on molecular cancer

research for producing new life-saving treatments and diagnostic tools for patients around the world.