By: Michael Izzo
From: dailyrecord.com
A Chester doctor has founded a nonprofit dedicated to preventing inherited cancers, instead of simply treating them after a diagnosis, which he hopes may be the first step in eliminating the disease all together.
Dr. Thomas Bock’s road to creating HeritX began in November 2011, when his wife, Irina, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I suspected immediately that our lives were going to change,” Bock said. “She underwent surgery and chemotherapy, everything you know and read about.”
His wife was also revealed to be positive for a BRCA mutation, which meant her family carried a gene that resulted in a high likelihood of breast, prostate, pancreas, ovarian, and skin cancer.
“What that means is it changed not just our life but the lives of our whole family,” Bock said. “In a way that was more devastating than the diagnosis of cancer.”
Bock said he spent a good deal of his professional career dealing with cancer – he was medical oncologist, former Global Head of Medical Affairs at Novartis Oncology and Celgene, and most recently a member of the executive management team at Alexion – and he reached out to his colleagues for answers.
“I wanted to know what I can tell my children,” Bock said. “To find out what we are developing that they won’t have to worry about it, something preventative. But there was nothing, not even a research initiative to give my family the hope it was looking for.”
Bock said geneticists are able to predict and treat cancers caused by two BRCA gene mutations, but do not know how to prevent it.
“Essentially there was nothing. Everyone wants to spare patients the trauma of cancer, but the vast majority of cancer research and resources still focus on treatment instead of prevention,” Bock said. “It’s a difficult task but I know it can be done, because the first step is knowing there’s a gene mutation that causes it.”
Bock’s wife is cancer free now, but he’s dedicated his life to finding answers. Last year, he founded HeritX, a research and development nonprofit, along with BRCA-positive cancer survivor Joi Morris, to achieve that very goal.
“This opens the door for cancer prevention,” Bock said. “Now that you do know who gets cancer you get a chance to study and medically intervene.”
A turning point for Bock came when he read about actress Angelina Jolie’s mastectomy and oophorectomy procedures several years ago, a decision she, like many others who are BRCA-positive, made to reduce her risk. He considered the choice that so frequently has to be made – between a radical surgery or hoping “the cancer gene” remains dormant – and thought there had to be a better way to approach the problem.
“I want to stop these preventative surgeries, because this should not be the future standard of care,” Bock said. “I’ve met with hundreds of families who horrified to have to go through this, suffering physical and emotional serious health consequences.”
Bock said he agrees that preventative surgeries are the currently the best approach in certain instances, but hopes that will change over time.
Guidelines recommend testing for the BRCA-positive mutation as early as 25 year old, with the possible consideration of procedures based on the results.
“Right now that consideration is best that’s available. But it depends on risks and your family planning, so you should sit down with a genetic counselor,” Bock said. “But even if you remove the breasts and ovaries, there are still risks of pancreatic cancer and melanoma.”
Bock said the goal of HeritX is developing prevention methods that will stop these mutated genes from ever causing cancer, which could come in the form of a pill or vaccine that can eliminate harmful cells.
“We’ve located the gene and now we are looking for the next step,” Bock said. “We can do this in two major ways.”
The first way, Bock suggests, is by studying people with the BRCA mutation. Because we know those people are the ones likely to get these cancers, they can be monitored in early years before the cancer is present.
“That way we to build an immune response to eliminate the pre-cancer cells before they develop into cancer cells,” Bock said. “And that is feasible right now.”
The other way is to look into replacing one or both of the defective BRCA genes.
“If you’re looking at 50 percent function, how do you get it back to 100 percent?” Bock said. “Do you replace it? Maybe you find another gene that can do the same job and increase that one’s function.”
HeritX was incorporated in March 2015, and in November a conference united some of the world’s leading researchers and cancer experts – including co-discoverers of BRCA1 and BRCA2 and the co-founder of the Human Genome Project – who developed a 10-year research and development road map to an FDA-approved medical prevention plan for inherited BRCA cancers.
“Everyone dreams about cancer prevention and while there is a lot of talk about it people never really do a lot of research on it,” Bock said. “Because we cannot test for cancer like can test for cholesterol. We don’t know who to study, so we don’t know where to start. But with BRCA, now we do.”
The conference identified six specific research projects to invest in, for which HeritX is now raising funds. Bock said research has already started and is accelerating, in collaboration with researchers and institutions, to develop therapies to stop cancer before it starts
“With the tools and technologies now at our disposal,” Bock said, “We have an unprecedented opportunity to apply these advances to open the door for cancer prevention.”
Barbara Jacoby is an award winning blogger that has contributed her writings to multiple online publications that have touched readers worldwide.