Both the American Lung Cancer Association and the Wall Street Journal recently recognized, applauded and rewarded the findings of Dr. Trever Bivona, MD, PhD. He has discovered some rare good news for lung cancer patients. In fact, his work has been cited as breakthrough and landmark!
Dr. Trever Bivona stated, “The goal of our research is to transform lung cancer from a lethal to curable disease through a precision, genomics-based approach to the diagnosis and treatment of each patient” said Trever Bivona, MD, PhD, “The Lung Association support has catalyzed our research program, allowing us to make progress toward our ambitious goal.”
The approach developed by Dr. Bivona calls is known as “personalized medicine.” This new approach is a revolutionary breakthrough in cancer treatment. His work explains how using gene-sequencing and personalized treatments can improve the survival of a lung cancer patient. His research is “changing the way lung cancer is being treated.”
Dr. Bivona is in the second year of his American Lung Association Lung Cancer Discovery Award. He has been selected as a lung cancer scholar, and he has been hailed as one of the Association’s most talented and respected scientists.
Here’s What He Is Working On Now:
A. The Problem:
Many lung cancer patients are being helped with drugs that target the genetic cause of their lung cancer, known as personalized medicine. Yet while patients may respond quickly, they often become resistant to the treatment. A recent press release from the American Lung Association stated, “Dr. Bivona’s research focuses on lung cancers that are associated with a particular mutation in a gene called EGFR. Patients with this type of lung cancer are treated with a drug called erlotinib (Tarceva), which blocks the mutant form of EGFR. While the treatment induces tumor regression, the cancers develop resistance to the drug. Dr. Bivona hopes to better understand how lung cancer becomes resistant to erlotinib.”
B. The Study:
Let’s break the research down so we can better understand the enormity of today’s scientific discoveries. This will be very important to you if you or someone you love is suffering from lung cancer. Using laboratory grown human lung cancers, and mice, Dr. Bivona discovered:
1. The most prominent gene involved with lung cancer was one called AXL. AXL allows EGFR mutant lung cancers to survive the erlotinib treatment.
2. Dr. Bivona, MD, PhD, is now discerning the methods by which AXL is turned on. How does AXL promote erlotinib resistance in lung cancers?
3. You should know: AXL is a type of enzyme called a kinase. Dr. Bivona recently stated, “It turns out this class of enzyme is a very good drug target. Kinases can be targeted with potent drugs, and there are a host of therapies that have emerged in the last few years that target kinases…”The discouraging news is that “none of them are highly specific against AXL,” Dr. Bivona says.
4. Once they know what they are looking for, drug companies can go to work on curing the problem. “Many drug companies have been working on developing new drugs targeting kinases, including AXL. That means we can move rapidly to test drugs that target AXL and potentially use them for clinical testing. This paves the way for very rapid clinical translation.” What that means is that the medicine can be manufactured and used for patients very soon.
The Florida Lung Doctors applaud the hard work of Dr. Bivona, his team, and the American Lung Association. We look forward to more developments in the new “personalized medicine” of precise, genomic based diagnosis and treatment. We highly anticipate having the medical arsenal to defeat the AXL gene, wipe out the EGFR mutant lung cancers, and successfully treat our patients with such medicines as erlotinib.
Once again, we of the Florida Lung, Asthma & Sleep Specialists, see these mild-mannered, white-coated researchers as super-heroes. They are leading the daily front-line fight to save the lives of our patients. We send them the symbolic roses of our gratitude and praise–and so do our patients.