Cornerstone professor Nigel Crompton creates test to help cancer patients
Radiation is a high-risk, but also a high-reward cancer therapy used to treat about half of all cancer patients.
To minimize some of the risks, a local biology professor has teamed up with a doctor at the Lacks Cancer Center in Grand Rapids to test an assay that predicts how much exposure to radiation a patient can tolerate. If the clinical trials at the center prove successful, radiation oncologists may have a new tool to guide them in determining a more precise therapy that ultimately can extend the lives of cancer patients.
It's a result that would truly please Nigel Crompton, 51, a professor of biology at Cornerstone University who has spent the last decade developing an assay that indicates a person's sensitivity to radiation therapy. Crompton sees his work as "about making discoveries...gaining understanding. It's rewarding to find ways to help people."
Radiation is considered effective against early stage cancers and types of cancer that can be isolated. The National Cancer Center reports about half of all people with cancer are treated with radiation therapy, which can delivered either by a machine externally or by an implant containing a radioactive substance inserted in the patient's body.
Being able to distinguish between patients who are particularly sensitive or tolerant to radiation treatment would give clinicians a significant advantage in setting up a treatment plan. But there has been no timely predictive procedure that provided this information.
Crompton's assay does. His test produces a result within 48 hours, giving clinical radiation oncologists the information they need to define the best possible therapy for each patient. In some cases a more aggressive treatment can be successfully employed, shortening the number of dosages needed and increasing chances for full recovery.
Clinical trials for the assay are being conducted in Grand Rapids under the direction of Dr. Gilbert Padula, a radiation oncologist at the Lacks Cancer Center, funded by a $10,000 grant from the St. Mary's Doran Foundation. The trials will validate the assay but it will take money, time, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to commercialize it.
But much of the groundwork for the assay has been completed in Europe it is, in fact, being established in clinical labs in Switzerland, France, South Africa, and the Czech Republic.