Citing the significant quality of life benefits that oral chemotherapy drugs can provide over intravenously (IV) administered chemotherapy, Maryland’s cancer community, patient advocacy representatives and patients themselves called on the state legislature this week to pass key legislation that would ensure Maryland’s cancer patients are able to access their prescribed chemotherapy regimen of choice.

IV chemotherapy can lead to side effects including pain, hair loss, nausea, vomiting, and anemia, and can lead to added costs and logistical issues as patients must travel to cancer care facilities for treatment. Although oral chemotherapy drugs taken at home often result in fewer side effects, many health insurance plans’ coverage of orally administered chemotherapy is prohibitive due to higher copays, expensive deductibles or restrictive coverage limits.

“Oral chemotherapy drugs can often provide substantially greater comfort and convenience than IV administered chemotherapy, and Maryland’s cancer patients should have access to the treatments they prefer,” said Nancy Davenport-Ennis, founder and CEO of the National Patient Advocate Foundation (NPAF) and the Patient Advocate Foundation (PAF).

“We urge Maryland’s legislature to create parity in coverage and help individuals fighting cancer access the chemotherapy treatment of their choice without cost being an unrealistic barrier.”

The Kathleen A. Mathias Chemotherapy Parity Act of 2012 (Senate Bill 179) would prohibit insurers, nonprofit health service plans, and  health maintenance organizations (HMOs) from covering orally administered cancer chemotherapy on terms that are less favorable than coverage for IV administered cancer chemotherapy.

The bill is named in honor of the late Kathy Mathias, wife of Sen. Jim Mathias (D-38), who lost her 14-year battle with cancer last August. The legislation currently has 26 cosponsors in the Senate and will be heard before the Maryland House Health and Government Operations Committee on February 9.

In testimony this week before the Maryland Senate Finance Committee, Larry L. Lanier, NPAF Vice President of State Government Affairs, noted that parity in chemotherapy drug coverage remains an important issue for patients, with many contacting PAF on a regular basis in need of assistance to cover the cost of oral chemotherapy medications.

Additional testimony was provided by representatives from The Maryland/District of Columbia Society of Clinical Oncology, the Maryland State Medical Society (MedChi), the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS), additional Maryland-based advocates, and patients who would benefit from the passage of this legislation.

“Senate Bill 179 would help Maryland’s cancer patients receive the prescribed chemotherapy treatment of their choice, and could help many individuals experience fewer side effects, maintain their jobs, and spend more time at home with their loved ones during a very challenging time,” said Mary Edwards, a registered nurse from Owings Mills who has worked with numerous cancer patients over the years.

“We hope that our lawmakers will join the 15 other states and the District of Columbia in passing similar legislation, and help improve Maryland cancer patients’ physical and emotional well-being while providing them with the treatment choices they deserve.”

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In 1962, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital opened its doors amid an emotionally charged debate regarding how to treat childhood cancer. At that time, few children with the most common form of childhood cancer survived, and many physicians believed treatment was futile.

St. Jude physicians and researchers took a radically different approach, and these efforts proved pivotal in changing the way the world treats childhood cancer. St. Jude is recognized for playing a significant role in improving overall survival rates for childhood cancer, which have increased from 20 percent in 1962 to 80 percent today.

In recognition of this impact over the past 50 years, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam declared February “St. Jude Month” in the state of Tennessee. Founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas, the hospital opened February 4, 1962.

“In the nearly four decades I’ve been at St. Jude, I’ve had the privilege of watching the organization grow from one star-shaped building to a sprawling campus of about 2.5 million square feet of research, clinical and administrative space,” said Dr. William E. Evans, St. Jude director and CEO.

“When I started, there were a few hundred people on staff. Now we have more than 3,700 employees. Driven by our patients, and thanks to our employees, our colleagues at ALSAC and the public support they generate, St. Jude will only continue to grow and flourish in the years to come.”

The history of St. Jude is marked with milestones in the treatment of pediatric cancer and other childhood illnesses. In 1971, St. Jude investigators showed that the combination of chemotherapy and radiation cured at least half of all children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

The most common form of childhood cancer, ALL, was previously considered almost universally fatal. Today, St. Jude patients with ALL have a 94 percent survival rate. In 1984, a St. Jude patient with sickle cell disease was the first to be cured with a bone marrow transplant.

St. Jude is currently engaged in the largest effort in the world to do whole genome sequencing of pediatric cancer tumors. The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project collaboration has already produced significant new findings related to aggressive forms of pediatric leukemia, eye tumors and brain tumors.

“St. Jude has a legacy of taking on the toughest of pediatric cancer questions, and that focus won’t change,” said James R. Downing, M.D., scientific director and deputy director at St. Jude. “We’re uniquely positioned as an institution to move research and treatment ahead. From the genetic data we collect from the genome project, we’re creating the foundation of knowledge to deliver the next decades’ childhood cancer discoveries and treatments.”

Throughout its five decades, St. Jude research has included work in cancer biology and genomics, pharmacogenomics, gene therapy, bone marrow transplant, drug discovery, radiation treatment, blood diseases and infectious diseases, integrated into a long series of innovative clinical trials.

According to Joseph Laver, M.D., St. Jude clinical director, “the unsurpassed family-centered care that is provided at St. Jude stems from the multidisciplinary team approach that has been a hallmark of St. Jude since the doors opened in 1962.”

“Looking toward the future, St. Jude is a national resource with a global mission and will continue to enhance its leadership as a resource for children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases,” Evans said. “Even though we’ve grown significantly, our mission has never wavered.

We’ve created a collaborative culture whose team members demonstrate unceasing compassion for our patients and families, innovation in our treatment and research, and quality in everything we do.”

Image Courtesy of   https://www.facebook.com/stjude

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Nanotechnology is the rapidly growing frontiers of scientific research. Nanomedicine, a branch in the field, is set to revolutionize drug delivery to cancer cells. The procedure involves getting the chemotherapeutic drugs to the cancer cells, which is a challenge using current medicine and getting these cancer cells to absorb these drugs, an even greater challenge.

Remarkable drug delivery success was reported recently by the nanotechnology research team of Omid Farokhzad, MD, Brigham and Women Hospital (BWH) in the Department of Anesthesiology Perioperative and Pain medicine and Research.

The study is electronically published in ACS Nano. The BWH team in collaboration with researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Massachusetts General Hospital created a drug delivery system that is able to effectively deliver large amounts of chemotherapeutic drugs to prostate cancer cells.

Developing a drug delivery systems is all about precision and it is analogous to the process of designing a car. In this process you build a ‘vehicle’ with very desirable qualities, place a passenger inside (drug molecule) and send it to a destination (cancer cells). The vehicle used by this research are chemical compounds called ligands.

Most ligands mainly have the ability to bind to cells. This research team employed a strategy that allowed them to select specific ligands that were able to bind to prostate cancer cells, distinguish between cancer and non-cancer cells and were easily swallowed by cancer cells. The desirable qualities possessed by ligands is due to the nanoparticle which was added to it during design.

‘’Most ligands are engulfed by cells, but not efficiently’’ said Farokhzad. ‘’We designed one that is intended to be engulfed.’’ A major breakthrough in cancer therapy. Now significant amounts of drugs can be delivered to the cancer without harming other cells.

Cancer cells carry multiple markers or identifiers which interact with ligands, the ligand-nanoparticles component are able interact with a lot of these cancer markers. This strategy produces a versatility and potency that is not available in other drug delivery systems.

Currently, the available strategies used in cancer therapy involved combining nanoparticles with ligands to target well known cancer markers. This has always been a flawed strategy because “most cancer cells do not have identifiable cell surface markers which distinguishes them from normal cells,” according to the study’s lead author Zeyu Xiao a reseacher in BWH.

‘’In this study we developed a unique strategy that enables the nanoparticles to specifically target and efficiently be engulfed into any desired types and sub-types of cancer cells, even if their cancer markers are unknown’’ said Xiao ‘’ Our strategy simplifies the development process of targete nanoparticles and broadens their application in cancer therapy’’.

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