New Breakthrough Cancer Immunotherapy

Created by Paul Sanderson on 13/11/2007

Category: Health
Region: All
Target: Sanofi-aventis
URL: http://www.phaethonworld.com/PetitionForBriggs.html

**THE "SIGN" BOX IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE. Thank you for helping build momentum for this by adding your name to this petition for my wife Briggs. At the same time as helping her get access to this safe new immunotherapy in time, together we have the chance to focus public attention on it and other developing immunotherapies as the already existing future of cancer treatment and get this on the fast track for so many millions of other patients with no options in sight. (City or Town only is fine if you're outside Britain; no need to select a Region.)**

[The petition comes after this note I'm adding on May 22nd: 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agx49oHVWwo. 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 Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center here in New York for his opinion on a new immunotherapy in clinical trials, 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 Oxford Biomedica, a company that's an offshoot of Oxford University. I contacted a senior executive of the company and he told me that because of a deal they'd made with Europe's largest pharmaceutical company, Sanofi-aventis, all new clinical trials would be overseen by Sanofi. 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 uniquely 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," which has been unheard of before. 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 debilitating, and in advanced cancer too-often ineffective, "systemic" chemotherapy, dreaded to the point that so many cancer patients refuse it altogether. There was yet more confirmation of immunotherapy being the answer to cancer in a piece on ABC World News a few weeks ago about an immunotherapy for brain cancer being used extremely successfully at Duke University Medical Center and now going into trials at twenty other hospitals around the U.S. Duke has patients still going strong with no side effects after four, five and six years on it, while patients on chemotherapy/radiation live no longer than 15 months.

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; but then, after being diagnosed, her family history of cancer suddenly seemed so obvious. She's had to endure so much more than I could ever have imagined since she was diagnosed in April, 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, she had to spend thirty-one days from September into October in hospital because of the excruciating reaction she had to it. She is also now back in hospital, in May, because of a bladder fistula from the cancer spreading and because of her constant pain. I wrote to the CEO of Sanofi-aventis, 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 could also perhaps be due to the 'daily influx' of emails and mine not standing out enough, which this petition would 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 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.