Clinical trials

In January last year, Monahans resident Tony Calzada had a growth in his colon that was diagnosed as stage 4 colon cancer. He had surgery to remove the mass and subsequently took eight months of chemotherapy. In November, Calzada finished his treatments and went into remission.

Then in July, Calzada started having pain again.

"I could feel stuff going on in my body. I knew something wasn’t right," he said.

Calzada’s cancer had spread and the CT scans showed spots on his stomach. Calzada had an option — either go back to the chemotherapy treatments, do nothing at all or take a chance and try a new treatment option still in its clinical trial phase.

Calzada chose to participate in the clinical trial.

"I had bad back pains, shoulder pains, and I was feeling stingers in my stomach," Calzada said about his discomfort before he began his new treatment option. "Now I feel a lot of difference. I don’t have pains anymore. I don’t hurt at all anymore."

Calzada took part in the Second Line Panitumumab-Irinotecan clinical trial at West Texas Cancer Center. The cancer center is part of the U.S. Oncology network, a national service with 500 sites that has helped develop 42 FDA-approved cancer therapies in the last two decades.

"Texas Oncology has a very long history of participating in clinical research," Dr. Pankaj Khandelwal, an oncologist at the cancer center in Odessa, said. "We’ve had very good success in terms of enrolling patients in clinical trials. That has given a lot of drug companies interest in having us involved in the clinical trials."

Like Calzada, patients have a choice as to whether or not they want to participate in a clinical trial, Khandelwal said. When patients come into the cancer center, they are evaluated on their diagnosis to see if they qualify to participate in any ongoing trials. If they are eligible, a doctor will sit down with them to discuss their options. The purpose of a clinical trial, Khandelwal said, is to improve upon existing medication.

"In the whole purpose and the reason why they (clinical trials) are conducted, there are two basic goals," he said. "One is to improve the efficacy or effectiveness of treatments over and beyond what is already available. The other goal is to minimize the toxicity of the treatments being given. The whole idea is to improve."

The process of each clinical trial differs from patient to patient, depending on what type of cancer they have. For Calzada, the treatment process is every other week. Calzada goes into the cancer center on Mondays, receiving treatments of the trial chemotherapy for about an hour. He then waits another hour, taking premedication to prevent side effects when he receives more chemotherapy drugs. The process lasts a whole day, at the end of which he goes home with a continuous infusion pump of chemotherapy to last him through Tuesday. On Wednesday, he goes into the cancer center to remove the pump and receive saline to avoid dehydration. Every eight or nine weeks, he gets a CT scan to see if there are any signs of improvement.

"The three days are tough; you don’t get a lot of sleep," Calzada said. "But every day gets better. I love this therapy that they’re doing. Hopefully it’s working."

Calzada’s treatment plan is wholly determined by the study’s instructions, from the amount of medication he gets to how often he gets it. The advantage of having clinical trials available at West Texas Cancer Center, Khandelwal said, is that patients don’t have to travel far for their treatments, which can be tiring.

"That’s the really exciting thing about having clinical trials available," Khandelwal said. "They don’t have to travel to a particular place for these cutting edge treatments. All of that is available to them at home, close to their community."

With the help of patients like Calzada who are willing to participate in clinical trials, the treatment options for different kinds of cancer are expanding.

"One of the things that clinical trials do is to increase the number of options that a patient has for a particular disease in addition to the standard options," Khandelwal said. "We as physicians can say, ‘Here are options that could be standard options in the future.’ So that’s really a neat thing."

Meanwhile, Calzada, who is optimistic about his experience with the trial medication, said his cancer is just another challenge.

"It’s all in the mindset. My mind was set from day one," he said. "It’s good to know that this is a challenge, and that I can beat it."

Oncology Facts

>> West Texas Cancer Center is part of the U.S. Oncology network, a nationwide service that has helped with the development of 42 FDA-approved cancer therapies in the past two decades.

>> U.S. Oncology has 500 sites treating more than 850,000 patients a year.

>> Tasigna is the most recent cancer therapy to receive FDA approval for patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia, a rare type of cancer.

>> More than 43,000 patients have participated in research trials held by U.S. Oncology.