Word: altorki
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...week's ASCO meeting reassured me that I made the right decision when I rejoined the Celebrex study. Joining the trial in the first place seemed utterly logical--I had cancer of the esophagus, and I was going to go after every advantage I could. My surgeon, Dr. Nasser Altorki, chief of thoracic surgery at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, is both a top esophageal specialist and a researcher. He has been investigating--along with my oncologist, Dr. Roger Keresztes, also at Weill--whether COX-2 inhibitors have a role in making treatment more effective...
...immune response and more resistant to drugs. What would happen, scientists wondered, if you suppressed the COX-2 enzyme with an inhibitor such as Celebrex? "It makes sense that if you shut off the prostaglandin by turning off the COX-2, then the other things wouldn't happen," says Altorki. "The science is so strong, so persuasive...
...still unproven beyond the lab. Altorki and Keresztes had to halt my study when the Vioxx news broke. When they decided to resume, patients like me had to decide whether to continue and risk heart attack or stroke down the road. The doctors no longer require new subjects to enroll for a full two years, to track long-term survival--the heart danger seemed to kick in after about 18 months--but they are offering it as an option. Anyone who re-upped had to sign a revised waiver specifically advising them of the possible increased risk. On paper that...
...think of is being dead. The cure rate for all lung cancer patients is 14%; it's even lower for esophageal cancer. Hell, the treatment alone can kill you, given the toxicity of cancer drugs. "You tell me, what risk are these people willing to take?" asks Altorki. Only so much, it seems; about half of the surviving subjects in my study opted...
...Altorki's bigger fear is that the Vioxx scare will deter researchers from doing enough work on COX-2 to understand its true role in cancer. "If we do these studies and they show no evidence of efficacy, then I'm wrong. I'll get off that train and get on another," he says. "But it's important that we find...
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