Summer 2001 Newsletter: Connections with Friends

“This is probably the most exciting time in the history of the war on cancer,” says Richard L. Schilsky, M.D., associate dean for clinical research in the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division, and medical consultant to the Cancer Research Foundation.

Research is shaping our future. Of the 1.2 million Americans who will be diagnosed with cancer this year, the number of cancer survivors will continue to climb – because of the dedicated work of cancer researchers.

This year, in the United States, there are hundreds of potential new drug compounds being developed to fight cancers, double the number only five years ago. Before new cancer therapies are made available to the public, they must be proven effective in clinical trials.

Clinical trials in the United States are administered by the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB), a national clinical research group sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. The Central Office is headquartered at the University of Chicago, and chaired by our medical consultant, Dr. Richard L. Schilsky. CALGB is a national network of 29 university medical centers, over 185 community hospitals and 3,000 physicians who collaborate in clinical research studies.

Here in Chicago, as a part of a current clinical trial, Dr. Schilsky is treating a patient with stomach-lining tumors with a new drug that seeks out tumor cells and delivers an anti-cancer drug. Dr. Nicholas Vogelzang, Director of the University of Chicago Cancer Research Center, is treating a kidney cancer patient using adult stem cells from the patient’s sibling. Dr. Thomas Gajewski of the University of Chicago is treating patients with metastatic melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer, in a clinical trial using a cancer vaccine. Thousands of cancer patients in Chicago, and all over the United States and the World, are currently participating in clinical trials which will lead to the approval of new and more powerful cancer therapies.

Basic research remains the cornerstone of our ability to make progress in all areas of cancer prevention, treatment and cure. Basic research, such as that supported by the Cancer Research Foundation for over 50 years, supplies the basis for clinical advances.

In the future, medical goals include developing a fingerprint of cancer in a particular patient, and designing anti-cancer drugs especially created to attack and eradicate a specific individual cancer without devastating side-effects, moving research progress from the bench to the bedside. Lance Armstrong, a cancer survivor who recently won the Tour de France for the third consecutive year, talks about his son, whose doctors will develop his molecular profile, so that, if necessary, any cancer can be identified and treated before he would even know he had it. Lance Armstrong’s son and all young children will grow into adults in a world where cancer is just another chronic disease. A mighty and worthy goal of research.

Merle Goldblatt Cohen
President