The beginning
Hello and welcome to the first edition of the Walking with Jane NET Cancer News Podcast. I’m Harry Proudfoot, the chairman of Walking with Jane, and I’ll be your host for these weekly audio podcasts. Our hope is to bring you up-to-date on what is happening in the Carcinoid/NET cancer community, both in terms of the latest research and treatment and in terms of fundraising and awareness events going on across the world.
If you have news you’d like to share with that community—whether it be a piece of research or an event—please send an email with the details to walkingwithjane@gmail.com. We’ll check it out and get a story on the air as quickly as we can. We will also post confirmed fundraising and awareness events on our calendar page at walkingwithjane.org.
AdVince virus close to initial trial
Our lead story this week is about the Uppsala Oncolytic Virus trials researchers hope to begin this spring in Sweden. The initial test will be on pancreatic NETs patients. But all of this is pending approval from the Swedish Medical Product Agency’ of the researchers application. That application is supposed to be filed in either February or March of this year.
The treatment has been renamed AdVince for the late Vince Hamilton, whose large donation has made clinical trials possible. Hamilton, who owned Tethys Oil, died of NET cancer in March of 2014.
The AdVince for the trials has been produced and purified and the protocols for the trials are being finalized. This initial human trial will begin with dose escalation to demonstrate the virus is safe for human use. Researchers will try four different dosages with three to six patients in each dosage group.
The AdVince virus is programmed to attack NET cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue alone. The hope is the virus will destroy the tumors it finds. If it works as hoped, it could offer patients the possibility of a cure.
The trial is six months behind where researchers hoped it would be at this point.
CFCF immunotherapy initiative
Another possible cure may come from research into immunotherapy. The Caring for Carcinoid Foundation has announced it will fund three separate initiatives on this potential treatment, including a clinical trial involving a combination of two immunotherapy drugs already in trials for other cancers. That trial will take place under the direction of Dr. Pamela Kunz of Stanford University who will lead an interdisciplinary team.
Immunotherapy expert Dr. Carl June, and neuroendocrine tumor researcher Dr. Xianxin Hua, both from the University of Pennsylvania will head a separate project that will develop immunotherapies specifically for NET cancers. They plan to modify CAR T-cells to target and kill neuroendocrine tumor cells, a method used in patients with other cancers that has had strong successes.
The final piece of the CFCF initiative will fund basic research into the immune characteristics of NET cancer tumors to guide the organization’s testing of immunotherapy treatments. The Foundation is inviting researchers to apply for grants for studies in this area of research.
Initial funding for all three of these initiatives will come from a one million dollar grant to the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation from the TripAdvisor Charitable Foundation. Caring for Carcinoid’s executive director Ron Hollander sees that grant as, Quote, a challenge to CFCF and the entire NET community to rapidly raise the remaining one million dollars to pursue these exciting projects. UnQuote.
You can find a link to the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation contributions page on our website at walkingwithjane.org/contribute. We hope to have a series of stories on immunotherapy and cancer in the next few weeks on our website.
Lanreotide study presented at symposium
Meanwhile, efforts continue to find therapies to slow down NET cancer tumors and improve the quality of life for the approximately 112,000 known patients with NET cancer. This week’s Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium in San Francisco will include a presentation and two posters on the CLARINET phase three trial of lanreotide. That drug was approved for NET cancer patients in December of 2014 by the FDA based on that trial.
The drug, which is marketed by Ipsen Pharmaceuticals under the trade name , showed a minimum 22 month progression free survival, though the data had not fully matured at the time the study was reported to the FDA. Like Sandostatin, the drug is injected in a clinical setting.
NETwalkers Alliance new team name
Finally, Walking with Jane will walk in this year’s Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk again t with our partners from Caring for Carcinoid, the Program in Neuroendocrine and Carcinoid Tumors at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Kulke’s Krewe. But the team will have a new name this year: the NETwalkers Alliance. Our team name last year was so long the Jimmy Fund Walk organizers had to reduce the size of the print and extend the name over two lines in publicity materials.
Fundraisers for the team have already begun and will include the Hank Landers Memorial Golf Tournament, letter writing campaigns and other events that are still on the drawing board. The team hopes to raise at least $100,000 this year for NET cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Be well
That’s it for this week. If you would like a transcript of this broadcast, you can find one at walkingwithjane.org/news. That transcript will also provide links to more detailed information about any of these stories.
This is Harry Proudfoot. Until next time, be well.
