Clinical Trials Helped One Woman's Fight Against Cancer

And new tool for finding the right match may help others get novel treatments

By Barbara Bronson Gray

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, April 18 (HealthDay News) -- Monica Barlow, a 35-year-old from Maryland, was training for a half-marathon when she noticed she couldn't shake a bad cough and ongoing fatigue. After a couple of rounds of antibiotics from an urgent care clinic didn't work, she sought another opinion.

A CT scan brought wrenching news: There was a tumor in her left lung.

"I never smoked, I eat well, exercise and had never had any medical problems prior to this," Barlow said. "To say it was a shock doesn't even begin to describe it."

Four years later, Barlow has been through a series of ups and downs. After learning the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and liver, she started chemotherapy, which only shrunk the tumors temporarily. She then joined two consecutive clinical trials, each offering to help control her cancer with novel drugs.

Barlow, who is director of public relations for the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, credits her participation in those clinical trials with prolonging her life.

Clinical trials test potentially promising treatments for a wide range of challenging diseases. But it can be difficult to find a good match for your particular situation and tough to know where to start looking. Even when you join a suitable trial, the outcomes are far from a sure thing.

Such has been the case for Barlow.

After she found out the lung cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and liver, she started an 18-week course of intravenous chemotherapy -- carboplatin, pemetrexed (Alimta) and bevacizumab (Avastin). Then there was some good news: The treatment had stabilized or shrunk all of the tumors.

A year later, her doctor found that the liver tumors were back. Because he discovered Barlow carried the ALK gene mutation, he suggested she join a clinical trial for a medication called crizotinib (Xalkori).

Initially, she didn't know if she was taking the real drug or a placebo. "That was a concern," she said. "It wasn't great to hear; it was stressful." Later in the trial, all patients were able to get the actual drug and placebos were no longer given to anyone, she said.

Barlow took Xalkori for two years, but last year the cancer returned yet again, requiring three ablations (localized methods to destroy a tumor without removing it) and two chemoembolizations (which deliver chemotherapy directly to the liver tumor while minimizing exposure to healthy tissues). Those procedures were not effective, and the next step was surgery to remove almost half of her liver.

Then, when tumor growth appeared in the new liver tissue that had grown back after the surgery, her doctors suggested she try a second clinical trial for a drug called LDK 378, which is being developed by Novartis.

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