Cancer: Enzyme v. Leukemia

Three months ago, nine-year-old Frank Hayes Jr. was pronounced free of leukemia following treatment with a new anti-cancer substance, L-asparaginase. Last week, in a Dallas hospital, he died. The immediate cause of death was pneumonia, brought on by a strain of bacteria that neither antibiotics nor sulfa drugs could kill. But the underlying cause was the leukemia, which prevented the boy's natural defense mechanisms from fighting off the infection.

His death shattered the hope of 90-year-old John Keener Wadley, oilman-turned-philanthropist, that Frank had been cured by the enzyme (TIME, April 14). Wadley, who lost an only grandson to leukemia in 1943, had poured more than $2,000,000 into the J.K. and Susie L. Wadley Research Institute in Dallas. But only a few weeks after Wadley's jubilant announcement of a cure and the Hayes boy's release from the hospital by Dr. Joseph M. Hill, leukemia cells reappeared. Frank was admitted to Bristol General Hospital, and Dr. Hill immediately resumed the daily injections of L-asparaginase. After 32 days the boy developed an allergic reaction to the enzyme, but Dr. Hill reports that he was successfully desensitized, and that the treatment reduced his white-cell count from 300,000 to 33,000, and the proportion of leukemia cells from 90% to 8%.

Though Frank died, L-asparaginase was shown to be a promising weapon against leukemia—but not a cure. The enzyme, which apparently starves cancer cells of nutrients that they cannot manufacture themselves, is extracted at great cost—about $15,000 for a month's treatment for an adult—from growths of common bacteria found in the human colon. Dr. Hill is still enthusiastic about the drug and will soon have an abundant supply of it for further trial. Milwaukee's Miller Brewing Co. is closing down part of a Fort Worth brewery and donating fermentation equipment for enzyme production to Wadley's research institute. With the brewery equipment Dr. Hill expects to increase production within the next few months by at least 100 times.