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iagnosed with advanced adenocarcinoma lung cancer with the ROS1 gene mutation, Pamela Klein participated in a clinical trial at the FCS Phase 1 Drug Development Unit (DDU) and it changed her life. Klein has achieved a complete response to treatment for more than two years. “I knew that I had this really rare gene mutation. If I didn’t want to just receive chemo, killing cells all throughout my body, I needed to consider other forms of treatment. Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute had the clinical trial that I needed. It was a trial specifically for my mutation,” Klein said. Pamela and others like her are what fuel the FCS quest to prolong and save lives through research. Thanks to its strategic partnership with Sarah Cannon, one of the leading clinical trial organizations in the world, the program at FCS has come to rival that of many academic hospitals. It helped put FCS on the cutting edge of identifying newer targeted immunotherapies that are changing the future of cancer treatment, and it has helped the nation’s largest privately-held oncology/hematology practice set the benchmark for community care. In the past three years, the majority of new cancer drugs approved for use in the USA were studied in clinical trials with Florida Cancer Specialists participation. As a community practice, FCS is able to bring these potentially life-saving advances to its patients in a setting close to home. The breadth of this work has helped raise the practice’s profile. Last year, nearly 20 FCS clinical studies were presented at the annual meeting
of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), an event held this past June in Chicago, IL, attended by more than 30,000 oncology professionals from around the world. More than half of the FCS co-authored presentations at the meeting were from research done by the Phase 1 Drug Development Unit (DDU) in Sarasota, Florida, led by Director of Drug Development, Dr. Manish Patel and Associate Director, Dr. Judy Wang. “It is particularly gratifying that the DDU has contributed so much to the body of knowledge about new cancer treatments,” Dr. Patel said. “Our strong relationship with Sarah Cannon has been pivotal.” The DDU is one of only five Phase 1 research sites in the Sarah Cannon network. One of the most important benefits of the Sarah Cannon partnership to patients is that early phase trials are now much larger than ever before, and more questions are being answered earlier in the process. The impact of the research being done at FCS on higher survival rates and a better quality of life for patients cannot be overestimated. “The field is moving much more quickly,” Dr. Patel said of the presentations at ASCO from the Phase 1 DDU, noting that advanced technologies also play a role. “It’s gratifying to see patient clinical responses this early in the life of these drugs.”
Extending Survival in Patients with Stage 3 Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer
In addition to the breakthrough research being done by the Phase 1 DDU in Sarasota, 139 FCS physicians are currently running 150 Phase II and III Trials at 36 locations around the state, taking promising treatments that are not yet proven
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