UB played major role in study on drug that reduces breast cancer in high-risk women

Today's major announcement at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting that the drug exemestane significantly reduces the risk of breast cancer in high-risk, postmenopausal women is the result of an international, randomized double-blind phase III clinical trial in which University at Buffalo researchers and hundreds of Western New York women played a critical role.

The findings will be published online June 4 at 11:30 a.m. EST in the New England Journal of Medicine.

More than 500 Western New York women participated in the study, according to Jean Wactawski-Wende, PhD, principal investigator of the Buffalo ExCel clinical center, co-author of the manuscript and professor and associate chair of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine in the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions.

In all, 4,560 women participated at sites located throughout the U.S., Canada, France and Spain.

"Our center here in Western New York had the largest enrollment of any site involved in the exemestane study, including those based in major cities much larger than Buffalo," says Wactawski-Wende, also a professor in the Department of Gynecology-Obstetrics in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and UB vice provost for strategic initiatives.

That didn't surprise her. As a researcher on numerous clinical research studies, some of which were part of the landmark Women's Health Initiative, a national study launched in 1993 by the National Institutes of Health to address women's health, Wactawski-Wende has found Western New York women particularly eager to participate.

"We have been so successful here in Western New York in enrolling women in clinical trials," she says. "Western New York women are particularly willing to do their part to advance knowledge and advance science. They do it for their daughters and their granddaughters. They're so altruistic. They want to know more about how to improve women's health and prevent diseases like cancer. My observation is that they join these studies not to help themselves but to help someone else. These women are really stepping up to the plate to advance scientific knowledge."

Study participants will be learning about the results when they are released on June 5. Over the next few months, participants will be coming to the clinical centers to close out their participation.

Media interested in speaking with participants should submit requests to [email protected]; requests will be addressed beginning on June 6.

The MAP.3 (Mammary Prevention Trial-.3), as it is called, was led by Canada's NCIC Clinical Trials Group. Participants knew the study as "ExCel," referring to the use of exemestane as the active medication being tested.

The study showed that in postmenopausal women at increased risk of breast cancer, but who have not previously been diagnosed with breast cancer, the aromatase inhibitor called Aromasin, made by Pfizer, reduces this risk by 65 percent compared with placebo.