15 Oct 2011
Byline: POON CHIAN HUI
THOSE suffering from the hard-to-treat blood cancer multiple myeloma may now live twice as long as before.
Doctors at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) found that a new drug, when given early, helps to prolong their life by up to eight years.
Usually, most patients would die after four years, even after treatment.
The findings were reported following a study of 500 patients from three public hospitals. Also involved in the study were the National University Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School.
The drug, called bortezomib, was previously used for cancer patients who suffered a relapse. In 2006, doctors started to give the drug as a frontline treatment when the patients were first diagnosed.
The treatment, now the standard of care here, may well pave the way for the cancer to be treated less like a terminal disease, and more like a chronic one, said lead investigator Daryl Tan, a consultant haematologist at SGH.
Bortezomib, made by US-based Millenium Pharmaceuticals, causes cancer cells to die by preventing them from “throwing their trash out”, said Dr Tan.
“Every cell – including cancer cells – has a dustbin, where used substances such as proteins are discarded,” he said.
The drug acts as “a lid on the dustbin”, he said. This causes the junk materials to accumulate inside the cell, which will eventually die from it.
The study results were presented to the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago in June.
Bortezomib comes in the form of an injection. Four jabs have to be given over a period of 21 days. This cycle may be repeated several more times, until the cancer subsides.
Multiple myeloma is a rare cancer of the blood, with about 80 new cases here every year.There is no cure for it.
Before this new drug, multiple myeloma patients may undergo chemotherapy. Some may then go for a stem cell transplant. But less than 20 per cent of them will have a complete remission of their cancer.
However, signs of cancer disappeared in more than half of those who took the drug.
The downside is cost. One round of injections can set a patient back by about $5,000.
He may also suffer from side effects like diarrhoea, constipation and numbness in his fingers or toes.
Retiree Tan Eng Huat, 60, who was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2009, was put under this study. When he received the injections, he felt as if “the world turned upside down a little bit”.
He was put on six rounds of injections, which ran up to $30,000.
But he is now doing well, and has been taken off the drug.
Email: chpoon@sph.com.sg
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