Cancer battle warms up

A group of New York investors will award $1 million a year to the person with the "best idea" in cancer research -- and the idea will be shared worldwide.

The "Gotham Prize" will encourage novel thinking and counter the competitive interests that can hinder progress, its creators said yesterday.

"She has exhausted all current intravenous chemotherapy approaches," said Ronald Chamberlain, head of surgery at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston.

With few options remaining, Pakosz, 54, is ready to try an aggressive, but controversial, combination treatment: surgery and heated chemotherapy.

The technique, known as cytoreduction and intraperitoneal hyperthermia, involves surgically removing as much cancerous tissue as possible, then infusing the patient's belly with a heated chemotherapy drug.

Studies have shown that heat increases the effectiveness of certain chemotherapy drugs in patients with late-stage cancers of the abdominal cavity, including colorectal and ovarian/uterine.

Some doctors say the treatment has doubled or even tripled life expectancy for patients who likely would have died in six months to a year.

"We have patients alive and well four to five years later, when the median survival was six or seven months," said David Bartlett, professor of surgery and chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, who has treated hundreds of patients with the combination approach.

Other doctors, however, believe more studies are needed to make the case that the treatment is superior to standard chemotherapy or aggressive surgery.

"My objection is not based on the fact it couldn't be of value, but that they haven't done the trials to show it is of value," said Maurie Markman, vice president for clinical research at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.