AP23573 Dr. Joe what do you think?

[JonathanS]

Hi everyone,

I have been researching options for my uncles' resistant cancer. (He has had carbo/taxol/etoposide and then gemcitabine when that failed). I wanted his onc. to give him CPT-11, but he thought that this trial by Ariad would help him more. I just wanted to put this out there for anyone who may be in the same situation. By the way, he is being treated at the University of Chicago Hospitals' Center for Advanced Medicine by Dr. Ezra Cohen and Dr. Everett Vokes. U.of C was ranked in the top ten cancer hospitals in the nation for those that are close by.

Also, another oncologist that I have a lot of respect for is Dr. Charles M. Rudin who used to be at U.of C, but now is heading thoracic onology at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. (just thought I'd throw that tidbit of info out there).

Jonathan

(4th yr. oncology nursing student) U. of Chicago

[kimblanchard]

Hi Jonathon, I was actually just at the international lung cancer consortium meeting at U of Chicago 2 weeks ago that Dr. Vokes chaired! Was a good conference, U of Chicago has some pretty impressive people.

From the treatments your uncle has been receiving, I'm assuming he has small cell lung ca? Carbo/etoposide/taxol is a regimen that MD Anderson used to tout for small cell, have not seen it used much in NSCLC although I guess they are all active drugs. The investigational agent you are referring to is one of the dozens of signal transduction inhibitors that are in development. I have to say I have zero experience with it although I know as a class the mTor inhibitors are very promising. Is it a phase 1 or phase 2 trial? If it's phase 1 I'd make sure that it is REALLY promising, if its phase 2 then it would probably be very reasonable. But we've not had that particular agent in trial here and I've not seen anything formally published on it so I can't help much.

By the way, you uncle has excellent doctors and if they are recommending this drug, I'd probably go with it.