MELANOMA is a particularly aggressive form of skin cancer that resists
conventional treatments. But a new drug could make it vulnerable to chemotherapy
by throwing a DNA spanner into its defensive works.
In the first clinical trial of the drug, called G3139, 43 per cent of the 14
patients saw a measurable shrinkage in their tumours after treatment, says
Burkhard Jansen of Vienna University. One patient has been in complete remission
for almost two months.
鈥淚 am excited about this. But I鈥檓 waiting,鈥� says Donald Coffey of Johns
Hopkins University, cautioning that the Austrian trial involved only a small
number of patients. He says a larger trial will be needed before drawing firm
conclusions.
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The key to most melanomas鈥� resistance to chemotherapy is a protein called
Bcl-2. 鈥淏cl-2 is a kind of shield that protects the cell from
chemotherapy-induced cell death,鈥� says Jansen. G3139 is an 鈥渁ntisense鈥� drug, a
small fragment of DNA that prevents the Bcl-2 protein being made by binding onto
messenger RNA copies of the Bcl-2 gene.
A large-scale international clinical trial of G3139 is scheduled to start
soon, and patients will be enrolled as early as next month.
