Michelle Vaughan examines Wendy Cook, who has participated in a groundbreaking ovarian cancer trial using a locally developed drug DMXAA. Picture / Martin Sykes

Michelle Vaughan examines Wendy Cook, who has participated in a groundbreaking ovarian cancer trial using a locally developed drug DMXAA. Picture / Martin Sykes

For Dr Michelle Vaughan the Phase two DMXAA ovarian cancer trial was excellent news. She already knew about the new, locally developed drug DMXAA. As one of Auckland Hospital's 11 medical oncologists (cancer specialists), and only three who specialise in gynaecological oncology, 41-year-old Vaughan had worked before with its developer, Professor Bruce Baguley, who was based across the road at the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre in the Medical School.

She knew the role of the Cancer Society in the early funding of the drug. More importantly, after a conference in Istanbul, she was aware of its early promise.

So she was delighted when her patient, Wendy Cook, was accepted on the trial. As she explains, women who present with ovarian cancer are nearly always at stage three or four when they arrive. By that time their cancer has metastasised, spread to their lymph nodes which transport rogue cancer cells to other parts of their bodies. "We can offer them a lot - surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy - but not a great deal of time."

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On randomised trials like this, an electronic programme flips the dice and decides which half of the patients gets the new drug and those who don't.

The DMXAA trial involved patients with relapsed ovarian cancer. Auckland had only two slots - and in the fall of the electronic dice, Wendy was the lucky one. For her, the new drug was a lifeline. By the time she was accepted on to the trial in October last year, her cancer had come back for the second time. Her disease was stage four. The Auckland City Hospital clinical services planner is not under any illusions about cancer cures, but she told her oncologist, smiling but serious: "I accept your diagnosis, but I reject your prognosis".

She was willing to try the new treatment. "The thing is, you may get an extended period [of life]. I was also thinking about what it may do for some other women further down the track," she says. She also realised that even if the DMXAA did not work, she would get another dose of the expensive and highly effective chemotherapy drug, paclitaxel, which was only funded for one treatment - and she had already had hers.

She read the information provided by the scientists, thought about it overnight and made her decision. "What have you got to lose?"

With conventional chemotherapy, successive scans show tumours slowly shrinking away. With the addition of DMXAA Vaughan noted that Wendy Cook's tumours appeared to die from the inside out.