Word: tamoxifen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...time certainly seemed ripe for a breakthrough in cancer. Only last month scientists at the National Cancer Institute announced that they were halting a clinical trial of a drug called tamoxifen--and offering it to patients getting the placebo--because it had proved so effective at preventing breast cancer (although it also seemed to increase the risk of uterine cancer). Then preliminary reports indicated that another drug, raloxifene, might prevent breast cancer without triggering new malignancies. Two weeks later came the Times's report that two new drugs can shrink tumors of every variety without any side effects whatsoever...
...once did, trying to persuade researchers that his approach to cancer treatment has merit. Scientists are currently investigating 300 different substances for their potential to block angiogenesis. Twenty of those compounds have already entered clinical trials in humans. Indeed, researchers suspect that some of the latest cancer treatments, like tamoxifen, may themselves work in part by blocking the growth of newly formed blood vessels...
ANOTHER BOON FOR THE BREAST Just weeks after tamoxifen was shown to prevent breast cancer, early reports raise hope that another drug, raloxifene, may do the same--without increasing the risk of uterine cancer...
Critics also point out that cutting off the study in midstream prevented doctors from learning a lot more about tamoxifen's longer-term effects. Will women have to take the drug for the rest of their life? Does the protective effect decrease over time? Will new side effects show up with long-term use? Will tumors that appear while a woman is on tamoxifen be harder to treat (preliminary studies suggest they may be)? Can other drugs confer comparable protection without side effects? And most important, did taking tamoxifen lengthen or shorten these women's life...
These questions will be answered by future research. But what's more important, Fisher believes, is that science has finally demonstrated that breast cancer can be prevented. Most women, especially those at low risk, probably won't go on tamoxifen. But they may well end up taking the next generation of safer, tamoxifen-based drugs, which are already under development, or the generation after that. Until those drugs come along, Visco of the National Breast Cancer Coalition urges women to go slowly. "Wait," she says. "The best thing to do is wait...