Two years ago Janet Vucinich discovered a swollen lymph node on her neck, it went away but when the lump came back she had it checked out. "It's lung in your liver and your bones."
Eighteen months of chemotherapy, cancer drugs and radiation brought hope but it was a clinical trial in the comprehensive blood and cancer center that may bring a cure. Two different oncologists that I'm in contact with said you've got to do this alk test, you've got to see if you're gonna test positive and so I did and found my way here."
The clinical trial is going on here at the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center. It is based on the alk gene which is found predominantly in female non smokers. A drug called Crizonib has been developed to target the gene and is being used in an international study that includes Bakersfield.
The big benefit of understanding the genetics of cancer is you can come up with medicines which are intelligent and target only the cancer cell and not necessarily the whole body. CBCC is one of a select number of sites to conduct the trial after their work with genetic studies for other major drugs for cancer like Herceptin and Tykerb.
The Pfizer based study is now in it's second phase testing a response in patients with this particular mutation. In the past what you expected was almost throwing a bomb in a place and expecting the bad guys to die and hoping that the good guys don't get hurt, now you can be pretty much be sure that you only attack the bad guys.
In a cancer cell, receptors are developed on it's surface, similar to a radio station with antennas on it, the staff at CBCC has targeted this new drug Crizonib specifically to counteract the signal the cancer cell is receiving. "This is the one I didn't want to get out of all of them this is the one I didn't want to get."
Pastor Ron Vietti knows well the value of participation in a clinical trial. Diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, he was given a terminal diagnosis. The pastor at Valley Bible Church in Bakersfield went to CBCC and became the first man in the world to take a drug called Gleevac.
The word experimental freaked my wife out but obviously I'm pastor and I have a lot of faith in God and I really believed at the time that this was the direction that God was leading me. My wife was fearful I was excited.
Gleevac was FDA approved for use and is now benefitting thousands of leukemia patients around the world.
And there are other benefits in these trials. This alk trial at CBCC has also found the gene in children with neuroblastoma.
So the drug Crizonib may also be useful and applicable in treatment for what is now considered a fatal tumor for children with the disease.
