STUDY: 'BAY DRUG' HELPS KIDNEY CANCER PATIENTS

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STUDY: 'BAY DRUG' HELPS KIDNEY CANCER PATIENTS
29 September 2006 - University of Chicago

Each year, about 36,000 people in the United states will be told they have kidney cancer. One-third of them will die. Researchers are now taking a look at a new treatment for patients in whom kidney cancer has spread.

Donald Jeffers was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1981. His kidney was removed, but the cancer came back.

He has tried several treatments, including a drug originally tested for colon cancer. "We took a little bit of a broader view and said, 'well, yes, this might be important in colon cancer, but let's take a look in other cancers as well,'" explained University of Chicago Medical Center oncologist Dr. Walter Stadler.

That proved to be a monumental step.

The drug, which researchers call the "BAY drug" (shorthand for its technical name, BAY-43-9006), inhibits cancer cell growth and cuts off blood supply to the tumor. It did not work for colon cancer.

"Surprisingly, we found that the patients with metastatic kidney cancer were experiencing tumor shrinkages," Dr. Stadler said. Forty-two percent of their tumors shrank and 26 percent of the tumors stabilized.

With standard care, fewer than 15 percent of patients are helped.

"I think this is one of the most exciting things, I think, that has been happening in kidney cancer," Dr. Stadler said.

After starting the drug treatment, Donald Jeffers' tumor shrank in half.

"It was a great feeling," Jeffers said. "It's saying something worked. My outlook is better now than it probably was eight years ago."

The treatment is given in just two pills a day and does not have significant or serious side effects. A larger study of 800 patients began in October.

http://www-uchicago.edu

About: University of Chicago
The University of Chicago was founded in 1890 by the American Baptist Education Society and oil magnate John D. Rockefeller. The land for the new university, in the recently annexed suburb of Hyde Park, was donated by Marshall Field, owner of the Chicago department store that bears his name.

In 1929, Robert Hutchins became the University's fifth president. During his tenure, Hutchins established many of the undergraduate curricular innovations that the University is known for today. These included a curriculum dedicated specifically to interdisciplinary education, comprehensive examinations instead of course grades, courses focused on the study of original documents and classic works, and an emphasis on discussion, rather than lectures.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the University began to add modern buildings to the formerly all-Gothic campus.

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