Posted on March 22, 2004 at 12:54 p.m.

Note to editors: UAB's Comprehensive Cancer Center played a major role in testing recently approved drugs for colon cancer. Dr. Albert F. LoBuglio is director of the Cancer Center.

By Albert F. LoBuglio, M.D.
Director, UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center
Evalina B. Spencer Professor of Oncology

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death, claiming the lives of 57,000 Americans each year. Within the past month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two new drugs to treat patients with advanced stages of this disease — Erbitux and Avastin. What Alabamians may not know is that the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center played an important role in the process that lead to approvals of these novel agents.

Before a drug receives FDA approval, it undergoes years of rigorous laboratory studies and patient trials. As the only comprehensive cancer center in a five-state area, the UAB Cancer Center is a national leader in such “bench-to-bedside” research, which provides our patients cutting-edge therapies unavailable elsewhere. The large number of patients enrolled in the studies of Erbitux and Avastin made the Cancer Center one of the major sites for both these pivotal clinical trials, which earned FDA approval for the drugs.

Because of our large contribution to the trials, the FDA carried out an intensive review of patient charts and research records at our Cancer Center. On February 12 Erbitux became the first monoclonal antibody approved for colon cancer. Avastin was approved February 26. (Avastin had another “first” — it’s the only FDA-approved drug that works by preventing the formation of new blood vessels.) Today physicians across the United States are using these agents to shrink cancerous tumors. This is promising news for a population of patients who, until recent years, have had few treatment options.

It’s no lucky break that the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center has been an international leader in the development and research of the class of drugs to which Avastin and Eribitux belong. Called “monoclonal antibodies,” such pharmaceutical agents are laboratory-produced molecules that bind to specific sites on tumor cells, interfering with tumor growth. Monoclonal antibody technology long has been one of the Cancer Center’s priorities. Our investigators were the first in the world to administer the original monoclonal antibodies, and have worked for more than two decades designing and administering clinical trials using this approach.

In fact, the Cancer Center has been significantly involved with the study of every FDA-approved monoclonal antibody, including Rituxan and Zevalin, which are used to treat non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and Herceptin, used to treat some types of breast cancer. We are currently developing several new promising monoclonal antibodies.

The success of the recent drug approvals, and all of our research endeavors, would not be possible without a dedicated team of physicians, scientists, nurses and staff working toward our common goal: improved quality-of-life and survival for patients with cancer. This goal extends throughout all of our research and patient care. It is our patients, and those treated elsewhere with these breakthrough drugs, who ultimately benefit from research at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Albert F. LoBuglio, M.D.
Director, UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center
Evalina B. Spencer Professor of Oncology