Arsenal of Hope: Revolution in Genetics Creates New Weapons in the War on Cancer

Abstract

[The following article appeared in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, issue of May 6, 1998. Blocking a ‘Helper Protein'] The war on cancer, fought for three decades marked by failure and frustration, suddenly is in overdrive. Just a few weeks ago, reports rocked the medical world about two drugs that show promise in preventing breast cancer. This week, Wall Street and Main Street alike went wild over word of a bold experimental drug that wiped out tumors in mice. These approaches are in very early stages of development and, even if all goes well, will require years of human testing before they can move into widespread usage. But they underscore a much bigger story: A quiet revolution in genetics has brought scientists closer than ever before to finding an actual cure for cancer. The drugs that made headlines this week use the promising approach of blocking a tumor's blood vessels. Even farther along in development, however, is a whole new generation of gene-based drugs aimed at a strikingly broad range of cancers. Human testing is already under way for this new arsenal, which looks to be far more powerful and far less toxic than anything tried before. Some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies are pursuing the drugs, which attack cancer in a way entirely different from chemotherapy or radiation, the standard therapies. Where chemo and radiation assault all cells, cancerous and healthy alike, causing severe and even lethal side-effects, the new gene-based chemicals are precisely targeted. They take direct aim at the genetic machinery inside malignant cells to disable defective or mutated genes that provide the marching orders for unchecked growth. Except for one far-along drug from Genentech Inc., it will still take several years to know whether these drugs can live up to their promise. But even guarded scientists are saying that the first new and highly effective therapy in decades is at hand, one likely to change forever the way cancer is treated. “This is the dawn of the future of cancer therapy,” says Richard Klausner, director of the National Cancer Institute. And J. Michael Bishop, a Nobel laureate in cancer research, says: “For the first time in my life, I believe we will eventually be able to conquer cancer.” The target genes that hold this promise were discovered over the past 25 years, largely the result of a surge in federally funded research after President Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971. But only in the past five years or so have scientists unraveled enough details of how genes operate to try to turn them off with drugs. Now genetic targeting has become the focus for developing most kinds of drugs, and the new anticancer compounds are leading the way. It adds up to nothing less than a new golden age of biology. The war is being waged by corporate drug giants in a race for profits, their crack research teams working in secret and often unaware of the progress at rival labs. For years, many drug makers left most cancer research to university and government labs because it was a costly crap shoot. Now even some companies that never focused on cancer before are in hot pursuit, among them Merck & Co., Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson. The first of the gene-based drugs could win federal approval by year end. It is Genentech's Herceptin, which attacks a virulent form of breast cancer. Other companies are tackling a far broader range of cancers. Human testing of gene-based weapons against cancers of the lung, colon, pancreas and other organs has begun at Merck, Schering-Plough Corp. and J&J. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Warner-Lambert Co. are close behind. Drugs targeting tumors in the prostate, breast, head and neck, based on a different gene, have entered human testing at Pfizer Inc. and Zeneca Group PLC. Novartis AG and Warner-Lambert are close behind. Originally, scientists just hoped gene-based cancer drugs would be strong enough to hinder or halt tumors' growth. In a great surprise, several of the drugs have surpassed