RX : SHARK CARTILAGE PROBED AS CANCER TREATMENT.

Byline: Karen Garloch Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

A 1993 ``60 Minutes'' report on shark cartilage as a promising cancer treatment catapulted William Lane into controversial fame.

Patients swamped him with calls and letters. Medical doctors and scientists showered him with criticism.

Lane, author of ``Sharks Don't Get Cancer'' (Avery Publishing Group; $11.95) and ``Sharks Still Don't Get Cancer'' (Avery Publishing Group; $12.95), believes shark cartilage, the tough white connective tissue that makes up a shark's skeleton, can inhibit the growth of certain tumors.

In a recent phone interview from his office in northern New Jersey, Lane said people who criticize his theory ``don't know what I say, haven't read my books.

``They just take potshots. They say it doesn't make sense. If they read about it, they'll say it does make sense,'' he said.

Soon there will be scientific evidence one way or the other. In 1994 and 1995, the federal Food and Drug Administration approved two human trials on the effectiveness of shark cartilage as a cancer therapy. The studies, which could produce results in a year and a half, deal with advanced breast and prostate cancer and with Kaposi's sarcoma, a type of cancer suffered by people with AIDS.

All of the tests are based on a dose of one gram of shark cartilage for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight. A 130-pound woman, for example, would take 60 grams a day in three doses of 20 grams each. Shark cartilage is sold as a nutritional supplement and is available in pills or in a powder that can be mixed with juice. The product being tested is called Benefin.

Lane, a biochemist and former vice president for marine resources with W.R. Grace and Co., first thought about shark cartilage as a treatment for cancer in the late 1970s when he was a consultant on fisheries for the shah of Iran.

He observed that, unlike many other fish, sharks rarely get cancer.

A year later, a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that shark cartilage was able to inhibit blood vessel development, a process called angiogenesis.

Researchers already had theorized, in the 1970s, that tumors cannot grow without a network of blood vessels. Therefore, scientists believe that inhibiting angiogenesis, or blood vessel growth, is a potential anti-cancer therapy.

Lane has pioneered the use of shark cartilage, ``which has never been shown to have a side effect other than intestinal gas,'' in treating cancer.

``A tumor is fast-growing,'' he said. ``It needs a lot of food. If you inhibit the blood vessels, the tumor won't grow. In fact, it will die. You can inhibit angiogenesis with a lot of chemicals, but they're all toxic. Shark cartilage is not toxic.''

The ``60 Minutes'' piece focused on a 16-week study of 29 Cuban cancer patients who had been near death when they started taking shark cartilage. All had tried chemotherapy, radiation or surgery without success.

``I'm happy to say, half of those patients are completely well today, and we're at 4-1/2 years (later),'' Lane said. ``Every one of them was confined to bed. They were all terminal. They would have all been dead within six months.''

Some criticized the Cuban study for its lack of reliable data. Mary McCabe of the National Cancer Institute reviewed selected cases from the study and found the data ``incomplete and unimpressive.''

In conventional medicine, treatments are based on randomized, prospective trials, said Dr. Mark Gelder, a cancer specialist with Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, N.C.

Such studies include patients who are selected carefully, based on their diagnoses and symptoms. Some of them receive the treatment being tested while others receive no therapy or conventional therapy. None of them or their doctors know who is getting what.

``Unless you have a randomized prospective trial, to say that something works based on a few people's experience really isn't fair,'' Gelder said.

Lane wonders why more doctors aren't interested in considering alternative therapies, given the track record of conventional cancer therapy.

``Only 40 percent of patients who get cancer respond to therapy and will live for five years,'' Lane said. ``In other words, 60 percent of those that get cancer will die within five years. That's a helluva lousy batting average.''

But Gelder said it's unfair to generalize about the success of conventional therapies.

``It really depends on what malignancy you're talking about and what stage the cancer is at the time of diagnosis. Some malignancies are very, very treatable,'' Gelder said.

For example, the five-year survival rate for someone with advanced stage ovarian cancer is 10 percent to 20 percent, Gelder said. But the five-year survival rate for early stage cervical cancer is 85 percent, he said. Gelder said he's had patients who've tried shark cartilage, but he doesn't encourage it.

``What I tell my patients is that I have no information that it would be harmful to them. I also tell them I have no information that it would be helpful to them. I tell them, I can't stop you from using it. If it were me, I wouldn't use it.' ''