A group of cancer specialists with offices throughout Santa Barbara County is looking for patients to participate in a clinical trial testing the effectiveness of a new lung cancer vaccine.
Lucanix isn’t a cure for lung cancer, but is a therapeutic vaccine that works with the immune system to target the disease and extend a patient’s quality of life.
“This is the first vaccine that has been shown to improve survival in lung cancer patients,” said Dr. Alan Bryce, who will be running the trial out of the Santa Barbara Hematology Oncology Medical Group’s office in Lompoc.
The vaccine is being tested in approximately 60 centers worldwide, including the office in Lompoc, another Hematology Oncology Medical Group office in Solvang, and the Cancer Center of Santa Barbara. This will be the final step of vaccine development before the doctors seek approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“It’s taken 30 years to get to this point. It’s very exciting that we’re here now,” Bryce said. “We’re going to be able to offer people a cancer treatment with less toxicity that gives them more time. It’s not curative, but it increases the time patients stay in remission after radiation. We want quantity and quality of life.”
Lung cancer is currently the most deadly of all cancers affecting both men and women. The survival rate of patients is especially low because of the lack of detection methods available for that particular kind of cancer, Bryce explained.
“Doing trials like this is how we move toward improved treatment and, one day, a cure,” he said. “It also allows patients to get cutting-edge treatment they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. You’ll probably have to wait a couple of years to get this outside of a trial.”
The trial is open to only 506 patients and is expected to begin in about three weeks, Bryce said. It’s the first of several trials
that will be available to cancer patients in Santa Barbara County, however patients don’t have to live in the county to receive treatment.
To participate in the trial, patients must be between the ages of 18 and 75, and be in the advanced stages of the disease. Also, they must have completed initial stages of chemotherapy.
Once enrolled, participants will receive a monthly injection of either the vaccine or a placebo, and then will be closely monitored. The injections will be given monthly for 18 months and then once again at 21 and 24 months, in the absence of disease progression.
According to information from the Cancer Center of Santa Barbara, participants have a two-in-three chance of receiving the vaccine over the placebo.
For more information about the trial and how to become a participant, visit ccsb.org or call the Hematology Oncology Medical Group’s Lompoc office at 686-5370.
This article appears in Feb 11-18, 2010.