Complementary Treatments

GBM clinical trial: Electric fields [see also Sara's notes on this]

Barbara's friend Seth Shulman sent the following information to B's sister Mimi:

I uncovered this clinical trial of a new Israeli technology in a meeting that I had today with Julian Itzcovitz in Paris. This technology is used in conjunction with standard radiation treatment and chemotherapy, and it appears to significantly extend life expectancies in the people with glioma and glioblastoma who have received it to date. As you will see below, MSK is one of the trial sites, and Dr. Gutin is running that trial. It seems that this additional therapy can only help, and unlike other radiation or chemo treatments doesn't appear to have serious potential of side effects.

For a description of this approach see www.novocuretrial.com/science.html. Here is another URL that is less direct. Dr. I. continues:

I also verified for the clinical trial sites that are running today in the U.S., particularly in the N.Y. area and found out a phase III clinical trial at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The study Director there is Dr. Philip H. Gutin, MD that you can directly contact to verify if your friend can be included in the study. Also, the link to the clinical trial information is the following, where you can find publications on the first clinical results: clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00916409

On learning of this, I wrote to Dr. Gutin and asked if Barbara could be included in the clinical trials. He suggested that I contact Dr. Omuro, whom I wrote to next. The response was a phone call from a Dr. Boland on behalf of Dr. Omuro. It would be improper for me to quote him from memory but the content of our conversation was that MSKCC does not have that protocol. This surprised me since there are on the web (clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/home) some details of the procedure in which one sees

26 Study Locations
Sponsors and Collaborators NovoCure Ltd. Investigators

• Study Director: Roger Stupp, MD University of Lausanne Hospital - Multidisciplinary Oncology Center
• Study Director: Philip H. Gutin, MD Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
• Study Director: Eric T. Wong, MD Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
• Study Director: Herbert H. Engelhard, MD, PhD University of Illinois
• Study Director: Manfred Westphal, Prof. MD Universitaetsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf
• Study Director: Robert J. Weil, MD The Cleveland Clinic

So I wrote to Dr. Gutin to ask why I was getting a runaround. I knew I was being intemperate but I was upset because I felt rejection in this case ought to be accompanied by an explanation, no matter how obscure or technical.

After some days I have had no response.