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Dr. Olivier Rixe

CINCINNATI, Ohio — Case Western Reserve University and Ohio State University have been the only two institutions in Ohio offering cancer trials, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. That is, until now.

Last month, the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine launched one of a handful of early stage cancer drug development programs and Phase 1 clinical trial units nationwide. That means more cancer patients who have run out of conventional options may be able to get experimental treatments closer.

The program could be the catalyst to transform the university’s hematology-oncology program into a cancer treatment and research heavyweight, according to the Enquirer. And it could give the university a bigger piece of the nation’s spending on clinical trials, which is expected to top $32 billion in 2011, according to MarketResearch.com.

Dr. Olivier Rixe, a French oncologist, internal medicine physician and researcher, was the catalyst for the experimental program aimed at finding answers for patients whose cancers have not responded to existing therapies. Rixe left a position at the National Cancer Institute last year to take a job as a professor of clinical medicine and director of experimental drug trials at the University of Cincinnati.

“I came here because the basic science is really outstanding,” Rixe said in a January interview. “This is an opportunity to develop new strategies with new targeted agents, with immunotherapy, even with gene therapy.”

Rixe spent more than 15 years discovering new therapies, including cancer cell-killing drugs and compounds that block vessel growth in tumors, for similar patients. “Seeing patients respond to new treatments is very encouraging,” he said. “Discovering new drugs, new strategies, new combinations of treatments that's for me the most important thing in my life.”

Discovering the first drug or therapy in a new class “is the most provocative aspect of the program,” he said.

Rixe will work with research collaborators from UC's cancer and cell biology department, Metabolic Diseases Institute, Center for Imaging Research, as well as molecular genetics, biochemistry and microbiology laboratories.

Then there’s the university’s library of 250,000 small molecules used to discover drugs donated by the former pharmaceutical division of Cincinnati’s Procter & Gamble. The university’s neuroscience institute even has the UC Brain Tumor Center.

On the clinical side, his program is part of the Cincinnati Cancer Consortium, which includes the UC College of Medicine, UC Barrett Cancer Center at University Hospital, Cincinnati Children's Hospital and others.

The program has the financial backing to do early clinical trials on cancer treatments. “We also have strong support from the hospital, from the university, from the Barrett Center to develop this chemical program,” Rixe said.

The program also has a bottom line. As the university’s cancer research platform gets bigger, it could attract more multi-million-dollar grants from the National Institutions of Health and Ohio Research Scholars program, as well as sponsorships from drug manufacturers.

The trials themselves often lose money, Dr. Franklin O. Smith, director of hematology/oncology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told the Enquirer. But patients are hospitalized during the trials, creating hospital revenues for services from medical and non-medical professionals.

Meanwhile, the university is hiring more cancer and cell biology scientists to help discover drugs or therapies to treat cancer, the Enquirer said. The program will begin recruiting patients for its first clinical trials by the end of the month.