New Breakthrough Cancer Immunotherapy

Created by Paul Sanderson on 13/11/2007

Category: Health
Region: All
Target: All major pharmaceutical companies
URL: http://www.phaethonworld.com/PetitionForBriggs.html

August 17th, 2008: I haven't been able to bring myself to add this note before now, but Briggs passed away on July 1st. I've written a few personal things on the photo page I had set up at the "URL: /PetitionForBriggs" link just above. I hope you will still sign at the bottom of this page, but now in memory of Briggs as part of a CALL FOR CHANGE.

As of today, there are 4066 signatures on the petition. Please send all the people you can to sign in Briggs's name for the other goal I'd mentioned in the petition, for the sake of so many millions of other patients and their caregivers with no options in sight, to focus public attention on this and other developing immunotherapies as the already existing future of cancer treatment and get them on the fast track. (There is also a 'helper' that needs to be on the fast track, the blocking of regulatory T-cells. Blocking their dampening of the immune system's anti-tumour activity, fostered by cancer, can allow immunotherapies to be dramatically more effective.) Briggs had been making notes for a long time to write a book about all she'd, we'd, been through since she was diagnosed. She wanted so much to make a real sea change for people with it, changing the direction of cancer research and treatment so much sooner than otherwise while also giving a life-altering and life-saving awareness to millions with any illness and to provoke a debate on the conduct of much of the medical profession and hospitals. I've now begun writing the book in her memory, and ideally, with this petition going hand in hand with it, it will have that defining impact in her name.

I've changed the target of the petition to all pharmaceutical companies, with the goal of getting all immunotherapies on the fast track as immediately as possible--and in "open label" trials not placebo-controlled, given that a torrent of data already exists on standard chemotherapy for comparison. I hope I'll have good news to report to you from them, especially from the pharmaceutical company I'd previously mentioned by name here in control of TroVax, the immunotherapy I was pursuing for Briggs--but when I'd gone to that company, one of the largest in the world, to ask for compassionate access for her, my request was turned down on the basis that they have no information showing that it is beneficial in colorectal cancer, despite some promising immunological responses in kidney cancer, and because at the present time they cannot fully characterize the potential side effects in patients with colorectal cancer. I composed an email back, detailing several of the number of colorectal trials the company that developed the immunotherapy had done since 2001, all clearly listed on that company's website, and which had demonstrated significant benefit in colorectal cancer with no serious adverse events, in fact an excellent safety profile. Before sending the email, though, given that so many requests for compassionate access are refused and that I'd already got a "No," I thought I should have an added element in place. A friend of Briggs's, a television and Broadway star, had put me in touch with a prominent entertainment foundation in Los Angeles very active in cancer, a driving force behind national evening news anchor Katie Couric's newly announced initiative in the U.S., Stand Up To Cancer. I asked if Katie would make a personal appeal to the CEO of the pharmaceutical company for compassionate access for Briggs, coordinating it with my sending the email I had composed. They looked into the idea and let me know that they were going to Katie to "make this happen"...it was that close, but just five days later, Briggs died at 2 in the morning while I was at her bedside, dying not directly from the cancer but from the medical downslide in hospital I mentioned, an avoidable downslide, one I was trying to rein in in the face of all that was being done until the immunotherapy was in place, the final tragedy of Briggs's medical/hospital treatment.

[The petition comes after this note I had added on May 22nd, 2008: I mention on the page at the "URL:" link above that Susan Sarandon and Alan Rickman have very generously signed, and now Jimmy Smits too. Because of the active concern of a prominent executive at Google, a lot of the 3800 signatures so far on the petition have come from public affairs/editorial management at YouTube sympathetically featuring a 'Save Briggs' video with a link that I put up--at <a href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agx49oHVWwo' target='_blank'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agx49oHVWwo</a>. Ann Curry, news anchor of NBC's 'Today Show', also went out of her way to ensure that a 'Save Briggs/YouTube' sign would be directly on-camera beside her as she did an outdoor segment, giving it national U.S. television exposure. I've put up a few photos of Briggs at the PetitionForBriggs link above, especially one before a revision surgery with her grin that keeps surfacing through everything. Ironically, the website that page is on is for a feature film we made, a period romantic drama that was in large part inspired by Briggs's mother's reaction to Briggs's father dying of cancer, except that we changed it to the husband having to come to terms with his wife's untimely death, a loss I'm hopeful, and would be so greatly appreciative, to leave in his imagined hands.]

When I asked a premier colorectal surgeon at one of the world's major cancer centers here in New York for his opinion on an immunotherapy that had been in clinical trials for a number of years, TroVax, he said he hadn't heard of it. After looking into the information I emailed him on it, he called it "the most promising immunotherapy for colorectal cancer that I have seen," wondered how it had gotten under his radar, and he said I should "definitely" pursue it for my wife Briggs, who has inoperable stage IV rectal cancer, which has spread to her colon, vaginal wall, and lungs.

TroVax was developed at a company that's an offshoot of an internationally known university in the UK. I contacted a senior executive of the company and he told me that because of a deal they'd made with one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, all new clinical trials would be overseen by the larger company. I explained the direness of Briggs's situation and he said he could let me know that a new advanced trial for stage IV colorectal patients would be announced "within the next twelve months."

When we were first consulting with doctors, one oncologist told me off-handedly that Briggs had four months to live. I told Briggs after she hit the four-month mark so that we could cross it off together, but it's still an indication of the pressing time factor.

TroVax has had unusually successful results in clinical trials not only for colorectal cancer but also for renal and prostate cancer, and is to target "a range of other solid tumours" including breast and lung cancer. In two Phase II trials for colorectal stage IV cancer, "95% of patients showed disease stabilisation" and "17% of patients showed complete tumour responses." It's also been "safe and well tolerated," with "no serious adverse events." It's the safe, targeted direction cancer treatment can move in much more rapidly if we could elevate awareness of it worldwide, away from grievously debilitating, and in advanced cancer far-too-ineffective, "systemic" chemotherapy, dreaded to the point that so many cancer patients refuse it altogether, or once on it, have to stop, as Briggs had to because she could barely eat with the damage it had done to her oesophagus and because she couldn't function from the severe 'chemo fog'. There was yet more confirmation of immunotherapy being the answer to cancer in a piece on ABC World News about an immunotherapeutic vaccine for brain cancer being used at Duke University Medical Center and now going into trials at twenty other hospitals around the U.S. Patients have at this time lived, on average, 33 months compared with the usual 14 months on standard treatment. For most patients, the only side effect is irritation at the injection site, flu-like symptoms being the other possibility, and one patient who began the program as it started in 2004 has had no recurrence of his tumor after four years compared with the usual 8 months for recurrence.

Briggs has always been a very healthy, active vegetarian--even, before we moved back to New York from Los Angeles, riding her bicycle eight miles to Paramount Studios and back each day--so she should have been at very low risk. She's had to endure so much more than I could ever have imagined since she was diagnosed in April, 2007 including having to have a colostomy because of a recto-vaginal fistula, and then the colostomy failing, and needing a revision surgery; and after being prescribed a "blood-building" drug for her cancer-caused anemia when the drug is specifically only to be used for chemotherapy-caused anemia, she had to spend thirty-one days from September into October in hospital because of its excruciating side effects. I wrote to the CEO of the pharmaceutical company, asking if he would put me in touch with the executive who would be in charge of the TroVax trials. I wanted to make sure we didn't pursue any treatment in the meantime that might make Briggs ineligible for possibly getting on it, but I didn't hear back...but which, given the 'daily influx' of emails, this petition should help.

My hope is that you'll join me in the petition, and send as many people as you can to it, to ensure that Briggs gets on the as-yet-unannounced stage IV colorectal trial--or, better, time being such a factor, so that this petition might alternatively lead into "compassionate access" outside of the trial, in that TroVax is presently in active use in various other clinical trials in both the U.S. and the UK. Beyond that, with your help there's the chance we could make her a "poster child" (woman) for it, drawing enough attention to it on behalf of millions of cancer patients and their despairing families who have no option in sight, so that the development process will be markedly accelerated, saving or significantly extending hundreds of thousands of lives in the short term alone by it getting on the fast track, and for TroVax to become available for the entire range of solid tumours, including breast, lung, renal, and prostate, as soon as humanly possible. At the moment, it's only planned for introduction to the U.S. market possibly in 2009 (with no year I know of for the rest of the world). And I was told by a pre-eminent oncologist-researcher that those projections are usually always never met.