Oncologist/investigator dedicates extensive career to drug development
Mays Cancer Center Annual Report
While the Mays Cancer Center is dramatically increasing its early phase therapeutic development, John Sarantopoulos, M.D., has worked tirelessly researching next-generation cancer therapy since 2004 after completing a clinical fellowship in advanced oncology drug development at the center’s Institute for Drug Development.
Dr. Sarantopoulos is a medical oncologist who cares for adult patients with melanoma and genitourinary (GU) cancers, including renal, prostate and bladder cancers. He also works as a clinical investigator with special expertise in antineoplastic drug development, which means he is developing drugs to prevent, inhibit or halt the development of a cancerous tumor.
Dr. Sarantopoulos has been the principal investigator for more than 100 Phase I trials and has served as co-investigator for more than 200 additional early phase clinical trials. The National Cancer Institute awarded him its Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Award as a supplement to the center’s Cancer Center Support Grant in 2011. He was the first medical oncologist to receive the award at UT Health San Antonio.
In addition to serving as an associate professor of medicine, he is the AT&T President’s Distinguished University Chair. Dr. Sarantopoulos also is the lead clinical investigator for the Experimental and Developmental Therapeutics Program and oversees all early phase investigator-initiated clinical trials for cancer. He acts as the leader of the center’s Early-Phase Clinical Disease Site Team, which is responsible for the prioritization, conduct and completion of Phase I and II trials at the Mays Cancer Center.
Dr. Sarantopoulos, who recently was named a top medical oncology doctor in San Antonio magazine, said he sees patients who qualify for clinical trials because they have either already received FDA-approved drugs but the cancer continued to progress or they couldn’t tolerate the treatment.
“We work with patients who are interested in proceeding with new therapy options,” he said. “Historically, we have moved away from chemotherapy because of the side effects and the fact that it did not work against certain cancers.
“We are now looking at new, more specific drug targets that may cause a protein change in a tumor. We are trying to match up the tumor type with the new drug options. It is like a lock and a key. We must find the lock and the key that match up to fight different types of cancer.”
Experience has shown him that sometimes cancer cells are more complicated and further treatment is needed. The move toward using immunotherapy, which involves using the patient’s own immune system to help battle the cancerous cells, has become very prominent in recent years.
“This triggers patients’ immune systems to fight the cancer. There has been an explosion of medicine in this area benefiting different types of tumors,” he said.
Dr. Sarantopoulos said researchers have seen dramatic responses to the targeted drug therapy. The center’s program has studied first-in-human medications, including single agents and combinations of two or more drugs working together.
Researchers at the Mays Cancer Center are studying drug combinations using a person’s own antibody, which is a blood protein produced by the immune system to neutralize the tumor cells. “The antibody can take the drug straight to the cancer cell. We also are looking at new bio-specific antibodies that can have two targets.
“This falls within new combinations of immunotherapy. We are working to combine initial first-generation immunotherapy agents with co-inhibitors to augment the immune system even further,” he said.
In addition, the center’s researchers are working with new agents that have been modified in structure or the target has been changed. These new drugs are better at binding to the cancerous cells and have fewer side effects, Dr. Sarantopoulos said.
“In general, we have seen an increase in response to treatment: shrinking of the tumors, quicker response time, and fewer side effects,” he added. Dr. Sarantopoulos said he also is excited about a portfolio of a new oral formula that is used with a second component. Previously, this was administered through an IV. The oral medicine is given with a second component to target the resistance that was seen previously, he said.
Additional new elements of research are modifying the duration of treatment and looking at giving a smaller dose of the drug with a full dose of immunotherapy to augment the cancer fighting results while reducing the side effects, he explained.
“We have a number of new targets in the pipeline. And, we are also evaluating specific disease sites, such as breast, lung, colon and prostate cancer plus other tumor types,” Dr. Sarantopoulos said. “We are trying to change the paradigm of cancer from being a lethal disease to a more chronic, stable condition.”
