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Updated Thursday, February 21, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By JUSTIN POPE, AP



	Duke University junior Josh Sommer, 20, talks with Duke oncologist Neil Spector about their chordoma research in Durham, N.C. last Thursday. Sommer was diagnosed in January 2006 with chordoma, a rare bone cancer which has no cure and few effective treatments. (AP) Enlarge Photo

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U.S. college student battles his own cancer

Last spring in Maryland, they sat in a room with dozens of scientists they had brought together to talk about chordoma, the first ever such meeting. A “BioBank” is in the works, to help gather tumor material and ship the most promising cell lines to researchers who need them.

At Duke alone, Josh has helped recruit at least a half-dozen labs — in fields like radiology, oncology, and genetics — into the chordoma effort. More are ready to start if they can get the cell lines they need.

“For the foundation to go out and say, ‘At 3 o’clock Wednesday afternoon someone’s having a biopsy and we need to capture that information,’ it’s tremendous,” says Neil Spector, another cancer researcher whom Josh enlisted to work on chordoma. “I’ve been approached by a lot of people who have diseases who are desperate and say, ‘Can you help find a cure for this disease or that disease?’ but really don’t have an idea of what it takes.” Josh and Simone, he says, have done their homework.

The challenge is to prod the research bureaucracy to catch up with the evolving conceptions of cancer itself. Experts like Spector increasingly see the differences between cancers in molecular terms, not based on where they occur in the body. That boosts the argument that research on rare cancers like chordoma could be more broadly useful.

“If you were to ask me two years ago I would have said maybe a decade, seven years if we’re lucky,” Kelley says, when asked about the prospects for effective treatments. “That timeline I think has been shortened a lot. We’re going to understand the genetic changes that occur in chordoma in the next year.”

The next step is to see if any known compounds — even drugs already in use — might show progress against those genetic defects. It’s a shot in the dark, but a start. With luck, something already on the pharmacy shelf will match up. If not, drugs will have to be developed from scratch, and that will take longer.

“The opportunities at Duke are just astounding and we are making rapid progress,” he says. “But a lot of times I feel like it’s not fast enough.”

Every day is a race, and it is exhausting. He and Simone have raised US$300,000 (euro203,500) in a few months — en route, they hope, to US$3 million (euro2.04 million) over the next few years.

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