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NEWS IN BRIEF
PEOPLE
Charles L. Sawyers,
MD, chair of the
Human Oncology
and Pathogenesis
Program at New
York’s Memorial
Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center, was inaugurated as president of the American Association for
Cancer Research (AACR) in April at the
organization’s 104th annual meeting in
Washington, DC. He will serve a 1-year
term, succeeding Frank McCormick, PhD.
A Howard Hughes Medical Institute
investigator, Sawyers is a member of the
National Cancer Advisory Board, the
Institute of Medicine, and the National
Academy of Sciences. He has received
numerous accolades for his research,
including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical
Medical Research Award.
Harold Moses, MD,
received the AACR
Award for Lifetime
Achievement in
Cancer Research,
honoring the lasting
impact of his research
and demonstrated commitment to progress against cancer, at the organization’s
annual meeting.
The Hortense B. Ingram Professor of
Molecular Oncology and director emeritus of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer
Center in Nashville, TN, Moses and his
team discovered that transforming
growth factor-β is an inhibitor of normal
cell growth.
Also at the AACR
meeting, Robert C.
Young, MD, president
of RCY Medicine in
Philadelphia, PA,
received the AACR
Margaret Foti Award
for Leadership and Extraordinary
Achievements in Cancer Research.
Young and his team generated the first
ovarian cancer cell lines, standardized
the staging and grading of ovarian
tumors, established prognostic factors
for patients with ovarian cancer, and
developed a national strategy for cooperative group clinical trials testing novel
treatment strategies.
366 | CANCER DISCOVERYAPRIL 2013
FDA Approves Kadcyla
for Breast Cancer
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the antibody–drug
conjugate (ADC) ado-trastuzumab
emtansine (Kadcyla; Genentech) for
the treatment of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer on February 22.
Called T-DM1 during clinical trials,
the new therapy is intended for
patients who have previously been
treated with the anti-HER2 therapy
trastuzumab (Herceptin; Roche/
Genentech) and a taxane.
“It’s far better than the previous standard therapy in this setting
because it leads to improved survival
in these patients with less toxicity,”
says Eric Winer, MD, director of the
breast oncology center at Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute in Boston, MA, who
has treated about 40 patients with the
drug as part of clinical trials.
The drug was approved based on
findings from the EMILIA study, which
randomly assigned 991 patients to
receive ado-trastuzumab emtansine or
lapatinib (Tykerb; GlaxoSmithKline)
and capecitabine (Xeloda; Roche/
Genentech). Patients treated with
ado-trastuzumab emtansine had a
median progression-free survival duration of 9.6 months compared with 6.4
months in those treated with lapatinib
and capecitabine. In addition, median
overall survival was nearly 6 months
longer in the ado-trastuzumab emtansine group compared with the lapatinibplus-capecitabine group.
The first ADC approved to treat
solid tumors, ado-trastuzumab emtansine selectively binds to HER2-overexpressing tumor cells. Its components
include the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab, the cytotoxic agent DM1,
and a linker that holds them together.
Once inside the cell, the molecule
breaks apart, interfering with the cell’s
ability to grow and divide. About 20%
of breast cancer patients have HER2positive tumors.
Ado-trastuzumab emtansine “takes
advantage of the tumor’s dependence on HER2 as well as successfully
targeting the delivery of chemotherapy
to HER2-positive cells,” explains
Kimberly Blackwell, MD, the EMILIA
trial’s principal investigator and a
professor of medicine at Duke Cancer
Institute in Durham, NC. “This is an
exciting new way to treat cancer.”
In addition to its method of action,
Winer says ado-trastuzumab emtansine
is notable because it causes relatively
few side effects. “It’s one of the besttolerated anticancer drugs I’ve ever
given,” he comments.
The most commonly reported side
effects of ado-trastuzumab emtansine
in clinical studies were nausea, fatigue,
muscle and joint pain, thrombocytopenia, increased levels of liver enzymes,
headache, and constipation.
Ado-trastuzumab emtansine,
which is also under study as a first-line
therapy for breast cancer, became
available for clinical use in March.
Marketing applications have been
submitted to other regulatory agencies
around the world, including the European Medicines Agency. ■
Roswell Park Plans
National Services
Today, institutions that want to
provide cancer genomics typically
must figure out for themselves how to
collect and store samples, select gene
targets, and use genetic analyses in
treatment. So far, that has generally
meant that only the biggest centers
provide routine genetic analyses for
their cancer patients, and often only in
limited ways.
Roswell Park Cancer Institute in
Buffalo, NY, hopes to change that. The
institute has partnered with its Buffalo neighbor, Computer Task Group,
or CTG, which provides electronic
medical records technology, to help
community hospitals and physician
practices around the country collect,
manage, integrate, and analyze patient
genetic information.
“These are challenges that every
hospital in every area is addressing in
the era of personalized medicine,” says
Candace Johnson, PhD, Roswell Park’s
deputy director.
The institute’s Center for Personalized Medicine (CPM) is just getting
started, she says, but plans eventually
to provide new biomarkers, therapies,
and diagnostic tools.
www.aacrjournals.org
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Cancer Discovery 2013;3:366.
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