TIME EUROPE
January 15, 2000, Vol. 157 No. 2
The Hunt for Cures
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While experts agree that a vaccine is the only way to stop the AIDS epidemic, until an effective vaccine is developed, antiviral drugs will remain the cornerstone of the anti-HIV effort. Combination therapies, says Ho, will be where the action is for the foreseeable future, as no single drug is sufficient to keep HIV at bay. And the more variety in the drug cocktail, the more effective it is likely to be. When fighting HIV, it appears, less is definitely not more.
Cancer
Smart Bombs For Targeting Deadly Tumors
By SHANNON BROWNLEE
Rank McCormick was flying home from a meeting on cancer genetics when a wild idea popped into his head. What if you could make a virus that would infect — and kill — cancer cells but leave healthy cells intact? The next day, McCormick excitedly explained his notion to colleagues at Onyx Pharmaceuticals in Richmond, Calif., a biotech company he had founded earlier that year. Some of them were as enthusiastic as he was. Others told him he was crazy; such a treatment couldn't possibly work.
Nine years later, McCormick, now director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco, has proof of his sanity in the form of Onyx-015, a virus that works exactly as he envisioned. Last year the company reported results of a clinical trial in which Onyx-015 injections, in combination with chemotherapy, melted away tumors in 8 out of 30 patients with recurrent, late-stage head and neck cancer. In another study, involving 27 patients whose cancer had metastasized to the liver (a condition that usually kills in 6 months), 11 were still alive nearly two years after being treated with high doses of Onyx-015.
McCormick's story is one of hundreds of similar tales coming out of laboratories and cancer wards around the world, as treatments that were little more than half-baked ideas a decade ago now enter the final stages of testing. Of some 350 new compounds and molecules being tested on cancer patients, more than half are based on innovative, sometimes bizarre-sounding ways of homing in on tumors. Hundreds more are in earlier stages of development, putting clinicians and drug companies in the novel position of having more promising cancer treatments waiting to be evaluated than they can possibly handle.
The new therapies are emerging from two extraordinary decades of intense basic research, a fantastic voyage that scientists have taken into the heart of the cancer cell. "The life and death of cells is being worked out, and the dozens and dozens of molecules in the body that participate in those pathways are now becoming targets for therapy," says Alan Houghton, a medical oncologist and immunologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
That's welcome news to clinicians and patients alike. Traditional cancer treatments — chemotherapy and radiation — are therapeutic blunderbusses; they blast indiscriminately at all fast-growing cells, often destroying healthy tissue along with the tumors. By comparison, the new drugs are smart bombs; they cause minimal collateral damage and trigger relatively few side effects.
Many of the new therapies also happen to be incredibly potent. Last month, for example, pharmaceutical giant Novartis reported spectacular results in a clinical trial of Glivec, a drug that disables a uniquely aberrant protein produced inside cells of chronic myelogenous leukemia, which afflicts 4,400 new patients in the U.S. each year. In the drug's very first test, every patient went into remission. In the most recent results, 30% showed no sign of the chromosomal damage that marks the disease and appeared to have been cured. "This drug is amazing," says Richard Stone, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who has been testing Glivec (also known as an STI, for signal transduction inhibitor). "Even patients who are near death, at the end stage of this disease, are going into remission."
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COVER STORY
Special Report: The Future of Medicine
With the mapping of the human genome the process by which new drugs are developed is being turned upside down. These drugs will also change our lives
Brave New Pharmacy
Using high-speed robots and the secrets of the human genome, scientists are changing forever the way they discover new medicine
The Hunt for Cures
Genetic information could lead to treatments for everything from AIDS to obesity
EUROPE
Prague Winter
When Jiri Hodac was named director of state television, Czech journalists saw a return to government meddling in the media
See Vous in Court
France is the latest nation to join the litigation game
Going up in Smoke
Switzerland, land of luxury watches and bank secrecy, has a new growth industry: marijuana
UNITED STATES
The True Blue Bush Cabinet
Its ethnic and gender balance is correct, but can a divided nation deal with the superconservative bent?
BUSINESS
Transparency has its Price
Executives at many German companies are finding it hard to adjust to the more rigorous financial disclosure required by global investors
On Spreading the Word
When it comes to selling merchandise, word-of-mouth marketing may be a company's best weapon
Essay: Meat Matters
Critics of industrialized farming may be forgetting about world hunger, writes TIME's Rod Usher
THE ARTS
Rebel with a Cause
The real-lifestory of an anti-Mafia activist in Sicily makes for a handsome film with a political message
The Upmarketeer's Tale
Bernard Arnault built his house by selling at deluxe prices and in his book he's still giving nothing away
The Art of Noise
For Europe's freely improvised music, the only rule is no rule
DEPARTMENTS
Techwatch
World Watch
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