CANCER TREATMENT DRAWS NOTICE; SANTA CLARITA CENTER RECEIVING NUMEROUS INQUIRIES.

Byline: Teresa Jimenez Daily News Staff Writer

The UCLA Cancer Center at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital has been flooded with calls from people seeking miracle cures ever since news of breakthrough drugs to battle the devastating disease.

Most of the calls come from doctors seeking help for their patients, said Dr. John Barstis, the center's medical director.

``They say, here's the story about my patient. What should I do?'' Barstis said, referring to the sensation stirred over such drugs as tamoxifen and raloxifene, which have been shown to prevent breast cancer. ``We're trying to help anyone we can.''

And while the news about cancer drugs is exciting, Barstis cautions people to keep realistic expectations.

``These are brand new things, and they're wonderful steps forward,'' Barstis said. ``But they aren't cures yet. They address small areas of cancer. But they are powerful new ways to treat people.''

Not that Santa Clarita Valley residents shouldn't seek help from the UCLA Cancer Center. The center continually places those who meet strict criteria with trial studies that provide participants with free treatment, Barstis said.

``We have studies for breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, bone cancer,'' Barstis said. ``We had studies on men who had prostate cancer removed and tested a drug to see if it would prevent them from getting it again. We had a study that involved people smoking still and tested to see if vitamin A would prevent lung cancer. The studies are so specific that there are only a few people who can participate.''

Though they are specific, they are crucial in helping researchers discover the potential of certain drugs, Barstis said.

One success has been gene therapy. The drug Herceptin, for example, has been effective in treating breast cancer in some women, Barstis said. Only a few women in Santa Clarita with the HER-2 gene qualified to participate in the study, he said. And the drug is only effective with 10 percent of those with breast cancer, he said.

``It will kill the cancer and it is nontoxic, unlike chemotherapy,'' Barstis said.

Similar gene therapy treatments for other types of cancer will follow, Barstis said. Some drugs actually enter the cancer cells and shut off their functions, he said.

``It used to be thought that antibodies would be guided missiles and blow up the cancer cells. But now, we see it as a protein that goes inside and shuts it off,'' Barstis said.

Another of the latest discoveries are angiogenesis inhibitors, which cut off a tumor's blood supply, causing it to die.

``Cancer cells grow faster than regular cells. They need to develop their own blood supply to survive,'' Barstis said. ``We've learned what exact proteins are that help cancer develop blood vessels.''

The method will be tested in a few weeks at UCLA and the centers in Santa Clarita and Lancaster to battle lung cancer, Barstis said.

In the study, anti-VEGF will be used to cut off the tumor's blood supply, and chemotherapy will kill it.

``The whole idea here is that even though we don't like chemo, the medicines are very effective,'' Barstis said. ``They can finish off cancer cells.''