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NEWS / THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
SCIENCE
University runs clinical trial of breakthrough anti-ovarian cancer drug
BY TIM DWYER
tdwyer@kansan.com
The University of Kansas Cancer Center has begun running a Phase I clinical trial of the anti-ovarian cancer drug Nanotax. Nanotax is a breakthrough drug because, unlike other anti-cancer drugs, it is water-soluble.
Charles Decedeue, Valentino Stella, Bala Subramaniam and Roger Raewski worked in the KU Higuchi Biosciences Center developing Nanotax. Last year the American Cancer Society estimated that there were just under 22,000 new cases of ovarian cancer and 14,600 deaths caused by it in the United States.
The clinical trial at the University
comes 13 years after Nanotax was first conceived. It is one of three active clinical trials for ovarian cancer treatment in Kansas, and it's the only one still recruiting patients. The trial is classified as Phase I because it tests the drug in a small group.
Decedee said he wasn't allowed to give out numbers because the clinical trial was not finalized, but he offered an optimistic analysis.
"The only thing I can tell you so far is that we have not seen any adverse effects to the drug or the procedure," Decedue said. "That's as good as it gets in a Phase I trial."
Nanotax is the brainchild of Stella and Subramaniam, who came up with an idea while contemplating a way to improve the delivery of oncology drugs that are not water-soluble. This creates a problem because a drug has to dissolve in the bloodstream to be effective at what Decedue called "the site of action," or where a drug needs to work to alleviate whatever aliment a person might have.
"This is a problem with, particularly, anti-cancer drugs, pretty broadly across the spectrum of anti-cancer drugs." Decedue said. "They tend to have very, very, very poor water solubility."
One cancer drug that suffers from a distinct lack of water-solubility is paclitaxel, which is sold as Taxol. Stella and Subramaniam wanted to break down paclitaxel into particles just hundreds
of nanometers wide. To put that into perspective, a human hair is around 100 micrometers in diameter. There are 1,000 nanometers in one micrometer.
"That idea has been around for a while," Stella said. "That was sort of a combination of effort from a number of people, Roger Rajewski, Bala Subramaniam and myself."
The team used carbon dioxide as a solvent to make nanoparticles of the Taxol. They filed a patient for the process they discovered more than a decade ago in 1997, and if production of Nanotax goes mainstream, it will break down all paclitaxel into nanoparticles here in Lawrence.
Once they were able to break paclitaxel down to the nanoparticle
form they needed, they worked with Kathy Roby, a research associate professor of anatomy and cell biology, who did two studies with mice infected with ovarian cancer.
Roby injected Taxol and Nanotax into the tails of mice with the cancer and injected both directly into the space that contains the ovaries and other organs. The average lifespan of the mice, once infected, is about 80 days, Decedue said.
When injected into the tails, Nanotax performed just as well as the already established drug Taxol, prolonging life in the infected mice by 20 to 25 days. When injected into the space near the ovaries, however, Nanotax prolonged life by 90 to 140 days, while Taxol stayed in the 20-to-25 day range.
"This was the exciting piece of data that told us we had something that might be worth pursuing," Decedue said. "And this was around the time that the company really took off."
That was around 2000, and for the next decade, the trio of doctors went into the long process of getting Federal Drug Administration approval to begin a Phase I clinical trial, which is the first step of testing the drug on people.
"No matter how good your animal testing is, humans are different than any other animal." Decedue said. "While it is indeed a science, there is an awful lot of art to it. We're the experts at that."
Edited by Allyson Shaw
Fast track to the real world
Zac Ansaldo, a senior from Stillwell, discusses job opportunities Wednesday inside the Kansas Union with a representative for Chicago-based Command Transportation. The University Career Center and the Office of Multicultural Affairs held the event from 2 to 6 p.m.
STATE
Reporter called to court about source
WICHITA — A Kansas judge found a subpoenaed newspaper reporter in contempt and fined her $1,000 a day after she failed to show up to testify Wednesday about a jailhouse interview and
her sources in a murder investigation.
District Judge Daniel Love ordered Dodge City Daily Globe reporter Claire O'Brien to appear Friday at a rescheduled inquisition.
At the heart of the subpoena is an Oct. 13 Daily Globe story based on O'Brien's jailhouse interview with Sam Bonilla, who
has been charged with second-degree murder and attempted murder.
"I feel the choice is a personal and private one and has to be driven by my own ethics in the end," she said Wednesday.
Associated Press
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Texas, holds a British Enfield rifle in his Capitol Hill office in October 1988. According to a hospital spokesperson, Wilson, 76, died Wednesday of cardiopulmonary arrest in Lukyn, Texas.
NATIONAL
Congressman dies at 76
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DALLAS — Charlie Wilson, the fun-loving Texas congressman whose backroom dealmaking funneled millions of dollars in weapons to Afghanistan, allowing the country's underdog mujahedeen rebels to beat back the mighty Soviet Red Army, died Wednesday. He was 76
Wilson died at Memorial Medical Center-Lufkin after having difficulty breathing after attending a meeting in the eastern Texas town where he lived, said hospital spokeswoman Yana Ogletree. Wilson was pronounced dead on arrival, and the preliminary cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest, she said.
Wilson represented Texas' 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House from 1973 to 1996 and was known in Washington as "Good Time Charlie" for his reputation as a hard-drinking womanizer. He once called former congresswoman Pat Schroeder "Babycakes," and tried to take a beauty queen with him on a government trip to Afghanistan.
"People like me didn't fulfill our responsibilities once the war was over," Wilson said in a September 2001 interview with The Associated Press. "We allowed this vacuum to occur in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which enraged a lot of people. That was as much my fault as it was a lot of others."
Wilson, a Democrat, was considered both a progressive and a defense hawk. While his efforts to arm the mujahedeen in the 1980s were a success — spurring a victory that helped speed the downfall of the Soviet Union — he was unable to keep the money flowing after the Soviets left. Afghanistan plunged into chaos, creating an opening eventually filled by the Taliban, which harbored al-Qaida terrorists.
After the Sept. 11 attacks — carried out by al-Qaida terrorists trained in Afghanistan — the U.S. ended up invading the country it had once helped liberate.
His efforts to help the Afghan rebels — as well as his partying ways — were portrayed in the movie and book "Charlie Wilson's War." In an interview with The
Associated Press after the book was published in 2003, he said he wasn't worried about details of his wild side being portrayed.
"I would remind you that I was not married at the time," Wilson said.
Charles Wilson was born June 1, 1933, in Trinity. He attended Sam Houston State University in Huntsville before earning his bachelor's degree from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1956.
"Charlie was a giant. We have lost a giant. There won't be another like him," Temple said at a hospital news conference announcing Wilson's death.
Wilson served as a Naval lieutenant between 1956-60, then entered politics by volunteering for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. He served in the Texas House and in the Texas Senate before being elected to the U.S. House in 1972.
Vickers, now assistant secretary of defense for special operations,
Longtime friend Buddy Temple, who was with Wilson when he collapsed Wednesday, said that despite Wilson's reputation as a playboy, he was serious about representing east Texas, including helping to create the Big Thicket National Preserve.
said Wednesday that Wilson was a "great American patriot who played a pivotal role in a world-changing event — the defeat of the Red Army in Afghanistan, which led to the collapse of communism and the Soviet empire."
Wilson is survived by his wife Barbara, whom he married in 1999, and a sister.