Pentagon gives UC Davis doctors $4.7 million to study new way to treat bladder cancer
UC Davis researcher Dr. Kit Lam wanted to find a better way to help patients fend off bladder cancer. A $4.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense will provide his team with the funding to do so, according to a news release issued this week by the university.
Lam is the chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at the University of California, Davis, as well as a research leader at the university’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of just 70 such facilities that the National Cancer Institute has designated to deliver cutting-edge treatments.
The American Cancer Society estimates that 80,470 individuals will be diagnosed with bladder cancer this year. One in every 27 men risk contracting the illness over the course of their lifetimes, compared with one in every 89 women, according to the cancer society, and 90 percent of the people who get it are over 55.
Lam is studying how to help boost the immune systems of people whose bladder cancer has spread to either nearby organs and tissues or to more distant parts of the body, UC Davis said in its news release. The former type of bladder cancer is called locally advanced, while the latter is described as metastatic.
Right now, chemotherapy is the first line of treatment for people with locally advanced bladder cancer, followed by removal of the bladder. Once that’s done, doctors have to divert the flow of urine either through a tube or a catheter to an external pouch. Often. that leads to poor quality of life and low survival rates.
Only about half of patients with metastatic cancer responded to chemotherapy, though, according to UC Davis. The second line of defense is using vaccines or other types of immunotherapy treatments to stimulate the immune system, university researchers said, but that works only about 20 percent of the time.
Lam and his team told the Defense Department in their request for funding that they have a novel technology that will greatly improve the chances that an immuno-enhancing drug called imiquimod will work, and it involves using capsules so small that they are invisible to the naked eye, earning them the nickname of “nanocarriers.”
They would be delivered intravenously to the tumor sites, where they would be activated with infrared light, Lam said, and the next day, researchers also will give patients an antibody that will block some proteins known for inhibiting the immune response.
In the Defense Department proposal, Lam and his team explained why they were seeking funding from the Pentagon. Of all smoking-related cancers, bladder cancer has the highest rate of prevalence among veterans, even higher than lung cancer. In 1987, Lam reported, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that three-quarters of veterans had a history of smoking.
Lam’s research is currently being conducted on mice to look at safety and efficacy, UC Davis said, but his team hopes this project will lead to a human clinical trial in bladder cancer patients. Lam said the therapy also could have other uses.
“The proposed novel nano-photo-immunotherapy, if successful in bladder cancer, can be readily translated to many other cancer types including brain cancer and pancreatic cancer,” said Lam, who is also a professor in the division of hematology and oncology.
Lam is working with Dr. Chong-xian Pan, a professor in the division of hematology and oncology, on this research. Pan is also a staff medical oncologist in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Northern California Health Care System.