Dr. Gore Brings Experimental Therapeutics Program to Children’s
from The Children's Hospital (TCH) News, March 2005
Dr. Gore and patient
After years of seeing cancer patients who had been through chemo, radiation and sometimes several surgeries after relapsing, Oncologist Lia Gore, MD, realized that many of her patients were frustrated at the thought of few options.
That frustration inspired her to bring a program to The Children’s Hospital to give her patients new hope: the Experimental Therapeutics Program (ETP).
ETP expands cancer patients’ options for access to new treatments with brand-new drugs or new combinations of approved drugs. ETP is the first program if its kind at The Children's Hospital for cancer patients and one of just five programs west of the Mississippi .
“Families are universally thankful that there might be something else to try,” Dr. Gore said.
Families also realize that being a part of the ETP is not necessarily a good thing, because it means the cancer has come back.
“Every time the cancer returns, the chance of a cure is lower,” Dr. Gore said.
But families are willing to try whatever they can to help their own children or another child in the future.
Before ETP began at Children’s, if patients needed new drugs, they might have to travel to another institution, often having to live somewhere else temporarily while they received treatment. Now they have the opportunity to access new treatments right at Children’s. “Experimental Therapeutics is an important part of a comprehensive cancer center,” Dr. Gore said.
Dr. Gore began groundwork for the program in 2001, and the program officially opened in 2004.
After many years of working in Children’s Oncology Department, Debra Schissel, joined the ETP as a primary-care nurse. She said it’s an honor to help patients during a difficult time in their lives and enjoys working with the patients and their families. “I do not typically run across bitter parents but scared parents,” she said. “They have been through so much already. They are holding onto this last bit of hope that this would help their kid or someone else in the future.”
Dr. Gore said, “Deb is a fantastic partner in this effort, as are all of my colleagues in oncology. I couldn’t do any of this without these extraordinarily dedicated, fantastically talented people.”
Dr. Gore’s favorite success story is that of an 18-year-old man who was taken to a hospital after a car accident. While X-raying the man, doctors found a tumor in his chest. He was immediately sent to Children’s for treatment. He did well for a while, but when the tumor came back a third time, he became one of Dr. Gore’s patients. Even though he had been told he had just three months to live, he surpassed those three months while receiving an experimental drug. The tumor was later removed. The man is now married and lives a normal life.
“Those are the really good ones,” Dr. Gore said. “This drug really helped this guy.”
Dr. Gore also works in a clinic for adult cancer patients at the University of Colorado Cancer Center at Fitzsimons.
By working with adults, she is able to apply new drug developments to pediatrics.
“When people would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I told them I wanted to cure cancer,” Dr. Gore said.
The work she is doing now has put her on the road to doing just that.
