For Immediate Use
June 14, 2000
Kim Irwin ([email protected])
(310) 206-2805
Kambra McConnel ([email protected])
(310) 206-3769
COMMUNITY UROLOGISTS TEAM UP WITH UCLA JONSSON CANCER CENTER SCIENTISTS TO OFFER LEADING-EDGE CLINICAL TRIALS FOR PROSTATE CANCER
Without leaving their own neighborhoods, community prostate cancer patients in five Southern California counties can, for the first time, get experimental treatments they otherwise could not receive.
Urologists in more than 35 offices in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Ventura and Kern counties now offer these leading-edge clinical trials, many of which are only available through UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center.
The opportunity to provide sophisticated care and the need to expand prostate cancer research prompted the formation of the community urologists network, called the Southern California Prostate Cancer Study Group. The group will deliver university-caliber, new experimental therapies to patients who won't have to travel far from their own homes, said Dr. Fairooz Kabbinavar, a UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center oncologist and researcher and the director of the Southern California Prostate Cancer Study Group.
"The conventional treatments we have right now for advanced prostate cancer don't impact survival rates," Kabbinavar said. "This study group will be doing research with new, novel and innovative targeted therapies. We want to move our research into the community urology offices, where the majority of patients are."
This is the only prostate cancer research network of its kind in the nation, Kabbinavar said. And its formation comes at a time when more and more attention is being focused on prostate cancer, particularly in light of the recent diagnoses of high profile men such as former Sen. Bob Dole, New York Yankees coach Joe Torre, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Kabbinavar said he hopes the Southern California Prostate Cancer Study Group will push forward research for new treatments to replace conventional therapies.
Clinical trials available in Southern California Prostate Cancer Study Group community urology offices will focus on experimental and novel approaches to the disease. These include an experimental treatment for cancer-related anemia, novel chemotherapy combinations and new drugs that target abnormalities in the cancer cell, including a tumor's blood supply.
Dr. Dennis Slamon, Director for Clinical and Translational Research at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center, said a great need exists for a community-based cancer research network focusing on prostate cancer.
"This is a major disease. We're in desperate need of research to find more effective treatment strategies for men whose cancer is not caught early enough to be cured by surgery and radiation," said Slamon, a renowned cancer researcher who also heads up the Revlon/UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program. "Many of our current approaches to this disease are not terribly effective.
"Our sole objective in forming this study group is to make progress by giving community-based patients access to clinical trials while advancing our knowledge in this field."
Community urology offices comprising the Southern California Prostate Cancer Study Group include sites in Anaheim, Bakersfield (eight sites), Culver City, Chino, Encino (two sites), Fullerton, Huntington Beach, Laguna Hills, Lancaster (two sites), Long Beach, Los Angeles, Mission Viejo, Northridge, Oxnard, Palm Springs, Pasadena, Rancho Mirage (two sites), San Bernardino, Santa Ana, Tarzana, Thousand Oaks (two sites), Torrance (three sites), Upland, West Hills (two sites) and Westlake Village.
Kabbinavar will add 10 to 15 urology practices in Las Vegas and Henderson, Nev., San Diego and other areas to the study group soon.
Study group urologists will meet over Father's Day weekend in Universal City to discuss strategies to fight prostate cancer, which kills 40,000 American men a year. The June 17-18 meeting date was not chosen by chance.
"This disease is killing too many men; our fathers, brothers, sons, colleagues and friends," Kabbinavar said. "We need to do something about the disease now. For this reason, community urologists and a team of UCLA scientists have joined forces to fight prostate cancer together. We need to base our attack on an understanding of prostate cancer biology developed in the lab."
And that means using targeted, experimental therapies -- so-called smart bomb drugs that attack only cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone. Several such molecularly targeted therapies will be tested in the study group, including a class of drugs called angiogenesis inhibitors that cut off the blood supply to the tumor.
Dr. Jay Young of South Coast Urological Medical Group in Laguna Hills is part of the study group. Young has been treating patients in his Orange County urology office for more than 30 years, and he now can offer his patients experimental treatments they couldn't get before.
"We're offering something to our patients that is not readily accessible in this area," Young said, adding that it's also more convenient for patients to receive experimental treatments in an office closer to home. "Given their medical problems and age, it would be a great challenge for many of my patients to get to Westwood. It's significantly easier for them to be treated locally whenever possible."
Dr. Joy Paul of South Bay Urology in Torrance agrees that offering cutting-edge treatments close to home is important.
"We deal with a lot of prostate cancer patients in this area and we can help them when cancers are detected early," said Paul, a UCLA-trained physician who's been practicing urology in the South Bay for more than 20 years. "But once prostate cancer gets to the later stages, all the usual treatments don't work and we're at a loss. I'm happy that my patients will now have the potential benefit of the cutting-edge research going on at the Jonsson Cancer Center."
Dr. Patrick J. Cannon, an Encino urologist, is among those in the study group offering an experimental anemia drug to his San Fernando Valley patients. The clinical trial has proved invaluable to at least one of his patients, a man who has been dealing with prostate cancer for 18 years. The side effects of the patient's cancer-related anemia were debilitating, but the drug is making a significant difference, Cannon said.
"It has turned his quality of life completely around," said Cannon, who also is a member of UCLA's clinical faculty.
The Southern California Prostate Cancer Study Group, Cannon said, "takes state-of-the-art research to the level of community medicine."
"We're developing a good relationship that will help patients throughout Southern California," he said.
Offering clinical trials in the community is not new at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center. Several years ago, researchers and physicians developed the UCLA Community-based Oncology Research Network, a group of more than 40 practices in California, Nevada and Arizona that offer experimental treatments for a variety of cancers. But focusing a research network on one disease is new, Kabbinavar said. In fact, it was the community urologists who approached UCLA cancer researchers with a request to form a cancer-specific network.
"We're putting a lot of focus on this disease and we hope to develop more effective treatments to fight prostate cancer," Kabbinavar said. "It's time we start to more directly and effectively tackle a disease that affects so many men in this country."
The Southern California Prostate Cancer Study Group is funded in part through monies raised by cancer philanthropist Lilly Tartikoff, the Entertainment Industry Foundation and CaPCURE.
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For more information about UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center, its people and resources, visit our site on the World Wide Web at http://www.cancer.mednet.ucla.edu.
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