My cancer might save your life

Aug 24 2008 by Pauline Holt, Sunday Sun

HUNDREDS of terminally-ill people around the UK are offering hope for the future by taking part in a medical revolution. PAULINE HOLT spoke to a North cancer sufferer who is participating.

FATHER-of-five Nick Carter has a cancer that will one day kill him but he is determined that while he’s still here his experience of the disease will help sufferers of the future.

He is one of 800 terminally-ill men and women across the country who have signed up to be human guinea pigs in a nationwide search for new treatments.

Nick, a 60-year-old criminal lawyer from the village of Arncliffe near Skipton, North Yorkshire, was first diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer four years ago.

“As soon as I was diagnosed, I wanted to use my experience of cancer to help other people,” he says, in a matter-of-fact manner.

“In my view, everyone in my situation — with terminal cancer — almost has a duty to do this.”

The father-of-five first underwent six months of chemotherapy to shrink the tumour before surgery in April 2005.

He said: “At the beginning, the treatment was aimed at trying to cure the disease. All my hair fell out but everyone said I looked really trendy.”

When the cancer spread to his liver and then to his lungs, he had to undergo more operations, in June 2005 and again in January 2006.

But just 10 months later, he was told the devastating news that the tumours had returned to his liver and lungs and his disease could not be cured.

Over the following year, Nick had more chemotherapy but by October last year, it was clear the drugs weren’t stopping the growth of the cancer.

He asked about other options and was referred to Cancer Research UK’s Experimental Cancer Centre (ECC) in Leeds.

He said: “I was given two choices, palliative care or joining a clinical trial of an experimental drug code-named TP300.

“By then I’d run out of options for further NHS treatment. I had reached the point where you can either sit down and wait for whatever is going to happen to actually happen or you can do something which might help you.”

Nick took part in the trial for three months.

And like all other participants, he was warned that the potential lifesavers could also kill him earlier than his cancer would, because of their toxicity.

Unfortunately, the drug did not stop his cancer’s progress, but doctors told him it also wasn’t doing him any harm.

He said: “My being on the trial helped the researchers to achieve their goal, which was to work out the dose-limiting toxicity. So I feel that I’ve played a part in helping others.”

Nick has now persuaded his primary care trust to prescribe him the drug Cetuximab and is having chemotherapy in hospital every week.

Cetuximab is a licensed treatment for patients with advanced bowel cancer but has not yet been approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Nick, who is married to Jane Hornsey, a GP, said: “I’m prepared to try any treatment available which might keep the cancer at bay and help me stay alive for as long as possible.”

He has never asked the doctors how long he has to live.

He said: “I’ve never wanted to know. And I’ve never asked what the chances are with any of the treatments I’ve had.

“All I’ve ever asked is: ‘Is this what you recommend?’ Usually there hasn’t been another option anyway.”

The Leeds Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre is one of 19 around the UK — another is in Newcastle — all of which are headed by Newcastle University professor Herbie Newell.

Professor Newell, director of translational research at Cancer Research UK, said: “These are exciting times in cancer research. Our understanding of how cancer works is evolving rapidly and this is helping us to design new treatments to target the disease.

“The number of people surviving is increasing. Thanks to research, advances are being made in the detection and treatment of cancer and more lives are being saved.

“The aim of the Experimental Centre Medicine Centres is to ensure basic science discoveries are developed into treatments for cancer patients as quickly as possible.

“They play a vital role in helping us to translate medical advances from the laboratory bench to the patient’s bedside.

“In Newcastle, the ECM centre ensures we have the infrastructure and support mechanisms in place to allow us to run more clinical trials, enabling cancer patients from the North East to benefit from new medicines as quickly as possible.”

Around 100 patients take part in experimental cancer trials in the North East each year. Their courageous efforts have already helped scientists to produce new drugs which work on previously hard-to-treat cancers, helping more people live longer and have more time with their loved ones.

Professors Hilary Calvert and Ruth Plummer head up the Newcastle centre.

Professor Plummer said: “Patients who take part in the early phase trials are those for whom conventional NHS treatment such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy has failed. They have nothing left to try so they have volunteered to take part in these trials of unlicensed, experimental cancer drugs.

“It would be wrong to see experimental cancer medicines as the cure for everyone. They are not. But they are exciting new treatments which are targeting the lesions that cause cancer.

“Patients who take part in the early clinical trials know that there is a very slim chance that the drug will help them personally.

“Yet they are willing to help because they know that, although the drug might not benefit them, it could help others in the future.

“It is incredibly humbling to us as researchers to work with them.”

For more information on clinical trials visit Cancer Research UK’s patient information website www.cancerhelp.org.uk or call Cancer Research UK’s cancer information nurses on freephone 0808-800 4040.