Cancer patient did not take no for an answer

Jerry Mayfield figures he has had two lucky breaks.

The first was after he was diagnosed with leukemia, and found a new drug called Gleevec, making headlines because of its astonishing effects in some cancer patients.

The second was after Gleevec failed him, and Mayfield enrolled in an experimental trial for the next-generation Gleevec, designed to help people precisely like himself. And he wants people to know about it.

His Internet diary is read by thousands of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, which affects about 4,400 Americans a year, 10,000 around the world. "I said I was going to do the same thing that other people did for me," he said in a telephone interview.

The new drug, known only by its experimental name BMS-354825, is designed to overcome the flaws in Gleevec.

Gleevec, made by Swiss drug company Novartis AG targets an enzyme that leukemia cells use to proliferate. It attaches to the cancerous cells and stops them from growing and spreading.

But in a few patients, the cells mutate just enough to slip out of Gleevec's grip. And doctors fear that even those who the drug "cures" may harbor a few lurking cancer cells that could come back and cause a second round of disease.

So researchers who worked on Gleevec teamed with Bristol-Myers Squibb to develop a new pill they hope will work a bit better than Gleevec by being a little less picky about how it grabs onto a cancer cell to deactivate it.

Mayfield is one of a handful of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia taking the new pill to see if it is safe. The 51-year-old former Louisiana state trooper is enrolled at M. D. Anderson cancer center in Houston.

'PROBABLY BE DEAD NOW'

"I would probably be dead now were it not for the Internet," Mayfield said in a telephone interview.

"When I was first diagnosed in 1999 I went to my local doctor, then went over to Shreveport to see a transplant doctor. They said a (bone marrow) transplant was my only option."

But Mayfield had no close relative who could donate.

"I remember asking the doctor over at Shreveport was there anything experimental out there and he looked me in the eye and said no."

Mayfield did not take no for an answer.

"I went straight home and went on the Internet and immediately found a Web Site where they were discussing Gleevec. Had I not had the Internet and just took his word for it, I would probably be dead by now."

Mayfield got into a clinical trial for Gleevec and it helped, until his cancer cells developed a mutation that allowed them to evade Gleevec's grasp.

Doctors conducting the trial are legally bound to keep its findings secret until they are published later this year at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology. And anyway, they say, it is not clear what the results are.