LOS ANGELES (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Each year, more than 1.2 million people in the United States will be told they have cancer. There are several different drugs, therapies, and options for every different type of cancer. Now, researchers say they've found one drug that may successfully treat everything from breast to prostate cancer.

Every three weeks, you'll find Garry Abrams here, getting poked, swabbed and prepared to face his cancer. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in August 1998. When surgery, chemo and several drugs didn't kill the cancer, Abrams found medical oncologist David Agus, M.D., who offered another option -- a new type of drug called 2C4 or Omnitarg.

"It turns off one of the switches within the cancer cell to stop it from growing, and so there's much less side effects because you're targeting the cancer, rather than targeting also the whole body," Dr. Agus, of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, tells Ivanhoe.

But, the exciting part of this clinical trial isn't so much that the drug shows signs of working, but what it could work for. "Lung cancer, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer and several others," Dr. Agus says.

Not only did early trials show it might help different types of cancer; it helps some of those that are toughest to treat. Dr. Agus says, "The hope is that you can take patients with advanced cancer and give them a therapy with very few side effects that stops the growth of the disease."

In a study of 22 patients with breast, prostate, lung, ovarian, colon and pancreatic cancer, 42 percent had their tumors either stabilize or shrink by more than 50 percent. For Abrams, the drug has slowed an ever-increasing PSA level. "I feel pretty healthy, pretty intellectually alert. I feel good," he says.

Drop-by-drop, Abrams keeps his cancer in check, while leaving the side effects of treatment behind. "I come in here, have this treatment, go home, go to work, spend time with my family," he says. "I think it's possible to live with cancer, and that's what I'm trying to do."

Since 2C4targets the pathway, rather than the tumor, it has little toxicity. The drug is now being tested in hundreds of patients worldwide. Researchers are currently recruiting patients with lung or prostate cancer.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Cedars-Sinai Physician and Service Referral Line
(800) CEDARS-1

Genentech, Inc.
http://www.gene.com/gene/pipeline/trials/