Hardly a SELECT few

Prostate-cancer prevention study seeks 32,400 men to evaluate effectiveness of selenium and Vitamin E

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center will play a key role in the largest-ever prostate-cancer prevention study, a 12-year initiative that will involve 32,400 men in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

The Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial — or SELECT — will seek to determine whether vitamin E and the trace element selenium can protect against prostate cancer, the most common form of malignancy in men after skin cancer.

The $180 million, National Cancer Institute-funded study, of which the Hutch will receive about $36 million, launched its recruitment phase this summer.

The Hutch houses the group that will direct data analysis for the massive international effort. Dr. John Crowley, a researcher in the Public Health Sciences Division and a primary investigator for the study, will lead the statistical coordinating effort.

A network of 400 research sites is recruiting participants. Seattle-area study participants will be recruited through the Northwest Prostate Institute, Puget Sound Cancer Centers, Swedish Cancer Institute, the Veterans Administration Puget Sound Health Care System and Virginia Mason Medical Center. Participants also will be enrolled at clinical sites in Edmonds, Spokane and Tacoma, Wash.

Selenium is a trace element in grains, meat and fish. Vitamin E is found in vegetable oil, dark green, leafy vegetables and whole-grain cereal. Both are antioxidants that neutralize the effects of toxins known as "free radicals" that otherwise might damage the genetic material of cells and possibly lead to cancer. Crowley said that while scientists don't know how either antioxidant might prevent prostate cancer specifically, some studies have shown that they inhibit or reduce tumor growth.

"SELECT is the first study designed to look directly at the effects of vitamin E and selenium, both separately and together, in preventing prostate cancer," said medical oncologist Dr. Gary E. Goodman, principal investigator of the SELECT Study Center at Swedish Cancer Institute and an affiliate investigator with the Hutchinson Center. "Previous research involving vitamin E and selenium suggested that these nutrients might prevent prostate cancer, but we don't know for sure. When SELECT is finished, we will know whether these supplements can prevent prostate cancer."

Mini-transplants for those over 50

Storb/McSweeney study shows outpatient treatment with low radiation, drugs works for older patients

People older than 50 years with leukemia or other potentially fatal blood disorders may now be treated successfully with the so-called mini-transplant, according to a study by Hutchinson Center researchers.

Using a procedure known as a non-myeloablative stem-cell transplant-or mini-transplant-doctors found that a combination of low-level radiation and potent immunosuppressive drugs allows more than half of patients with successful transplants to achieve complete remissions more than a year after treatment. The procedure, developed at the Hutchinson Center, uses adult stem cells from the blood of living donors.

The results of the study, led by Dr. Rainer Storb, head of the Hutch's Transplantation Biology program, and Dr. Peter McSweeney, a former Hutchinson Center investigator who is now associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, were published earlier this year.

Conventional transplants, which are generally not perfomed on people over 50 or others who are medically unfit, use massive doses of total-body irradiation and potent chemotherapy to eliminate leukemic cells. The intense treatment destroys the blood and immune system and is fatal unless the patient is rescued by infusion of donor bone marrow or stem cells isolated from peripheral blood.

In contrast, the mini-transplant's success relies on the ability of donor immune cells to target and destroy the cancer in the patient, Storb said.

"The revolutionary part of this concept is that the cancer is eliminated through the donor T cells rather than with high-dose chemotherapy and radiation," he said.

The technique promises to extend the benefits of transplantation to a much broader population of patients than ever before.

Patients treated with the mini-transplant procedure have not suffered any of the severe side effects that can plague patients treated with harsher preparative regimens. In addition, few patients require hospitalization.

The study involved 45 patients of with a median age of 56 years who were ineligible for a conventional bone- marrow or stem-cell transplant. The patients had been diagnosed with acute and chronic leukemias, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's and Hodgkin's lymphomas, myelodysplastic and myeloproliferative syndromes and other diseases often treated with bone-marrow transplantation.

Eight patients with chronic leukemia entered complete molecular remissions, which is a state of no detectable cancer cells, and this suggests strongly that donor immune cells might eradicate these diseases. The patients were followed through their treatment and recovery period, and survival among the patients was approximately 66 percent.

Obesity decreases breast-cancer survival rate

Women under age 45 have a good reason to lose weight: Obesity can significantly decrease their ability to survive breast cancer.

A Hutchinson Center study, led by Dr. Janet Daling, found that young women with breast cancer who are overweight are more than two times as likely to die of the disease than their thinner counterparts.

What's more, breast tumors from heavier women tend to be larger and to have characteristics indicative of aggressive cell growth.

The findings may be useful to physicians evaluating breast cancer prognosis and suggest that more aggressive treatment may be warranted for overweight patients.

"It might mean these women should be treated with chemotherapy after surgery even if their cancers haven't apparently spread to the lymph nodes."said Daling. gressive treatment may be warranted for overweight patients. "It might mean these women should be treated with chemotherapy after surgery even if their cancers haven't apparently spread to the lymph nodes."said Daling.

Avon gift launches breast-cancer fund

The Avon Products Foundation has given the largest private gift ever received by the Hutchinson Center. The donation will support breast-cancer research and care.

The $2.5 million gift establishes the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade Opportunity Fund. The fund carries two purposes:

To support innovative pilot projects in all aspects of breast-cancer detection, diagnosis and treatment, as well as initiatives to develop new treatments for breast cancer based on immune response.

To establish — along with University of Washington Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center — an integrated program of direct clinical care and research to improve access to high-quality breast care for medically underserved women throughout the Seattle area.

Dr. Peggy Porter, of the Hutchinson Center and a faculty member in the Department of Pathology at UW, will serve as principal investigator for the gift.

Co-investigators will be Dr. Julie Gralow, associate professor at UWMC and assistant member of the Hutchinson Center, and Dr. Joann Elmore, associate professor in the departments of medicine and epidemiology in the UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine and head of general internal medicine at Harborview.

Life Possibilities funds five breast-cancer studies

Five new breast-cancer research projects at the Hutchinson Center will get a running start, thanks to support from the Life Possibilities Fund, an organization founded by three women as a tribute to a friend who succumbed to breast cancer.

"Roxi Dixon, Judy Timson and I selected the Hutch for our Life Possibilities Fund because we believe in the talent of the researchers and staff," said co-founder Lisa Morgan, whose around-the-world bicycle trip last year raised more than $300,000 for breast cancer research. "We are thrilled to see our dollars put to use on five new diverse pilot studies, and we're confident the Hutch will lead the way in finding a cure for breast cancer."

Cancer Information Service turns 25

For the past 25 years, the Cancer Information Service has provided the latest, most accurate information about cancer to patients, their families, and the public. Now CIS is marking its milestone anniversary with the theme, Celebrating Our Spirit of Caring and Commitment.

"The Cancer Information Service ... sets the gold standard for all health agencies, " said Dr. Alan Rabson, deputy director of the National Cancer Institute. "They are committed to providing information in a way that patients, caregivers, and the public can easily understand."

The CIS serves people through 14 regional offices located throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands. The Pacific region office is located at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

"With the strong support we receive from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, our regional partners, and our own history of technological innovation and research, we look forward to advancing the NCI's vision for the CIS," said Nancy Zbaren, director of the Pacific office.

For CIS information call 1-(800) 4-CANCER.

Endowment will help "maintain institutional leadership"

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is embarking on a campaign to increase its endowment fund to help secure the long-term future of our research. The following remarks come from Dr. Paul Neiman, a researcher in the Basic Sciences Division and a donor to the fund. For more information on the fund, call (206) 667-2673.

"The Hutchinson Center has provided to me a wonderful opportunity for a deeply satisfying career. I believe both in what we are doing and in the special quality of our method of doing it…Because of my feelings about the Hutch, I care very much about its long-term future, which explains the reason I've directed my contribution toward the development of a functional endowment.

"There are many fine research universities and institutes with programs and goals similar to our own, but only a limited number that are looked to as models of innovation and productivity, against which performance is measured. Only a relative handful have sustained this position for the long term. The core of this leadership is the consistent fostering of truly groundbreaking work, both at the level of individual faculty research and of programmatic decision-making. In practical terms, this means both attracting and sustaining exceptional scientific and administrative talent in an intensely competitive environment.

"An endowment provides a core financial tool to maintain institutional leadership, and its absence makes us vulnerable to circumstances and pressures which work to degrade our ability to sustain this leadership role. That we have come so far in a short time without it in no way, in my opinion, guarantees we can continue to do so for the long term. I am enormously grateful that the Hutchinson Center board of directors has decided to make raising endowment funding a major priority."

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