Cisplatin & Carboplatin

Cisplatin and carboplatin are two of the most widely prescribed anticancer agents. Dr. Barnett Rosenberg and colleagues at Michigan State University discovered these highly effective drugs when they found that a simple platinum-based compound prevented bacteria from replicating normally. Rosenberg wondered whether the compound would have a similar effect on cancer cells. His tests and subsequent experiments showed that the compound did arrest the growth of model tumors. Until this demonstration, inorganic compounds never had been employed successfully as anticancer agents.

Rosenberg said on several occasions that when cisplatin was introduced, some medical scientists were skeptical because they had been conditioned to consider compounds based on heavy metals to be too toxic to be used as drugs.

Research Corporation, RCT's predecessor, licensed cisplatin exclusively to the Bristol-Myers Squibb Company in 1977. In 1978, six years after clinical trials conducted by the NCI and the company exceeded the most optimistic predictions, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved cisplatin for treating patients with metastatic testicular or ovarian cancer in combination with other drugs. Cisplatin, which entered the U.S. market as Platinol®, also is an approved therapy for bladder cancer.

Bristol-Myers Squibb also licensed carboplatin, a second generation platinum drug with fewer side effects, in 1979. Carboplatin entered the U.S. market as Paraplatin® in 1989 for initial treatment of advanced ovarian cancer in established combination with other approved chemotherapeutic agents.

Cisplatin has been shown to have a cure rate of greater than 85 percent for testicular cancers and also is used to treat lung cancers, head and neck cancers and bone cancers.

After 36 years at Michigan State University, Dr. Rosenberg retired in 1997. Thanks to the cisplatin and carboplatin royalties distributed by RCT, MSU, established an endowed chair in neuroscience in Rosenberg's name. Rosenberg used his share of the royalty income to found and operate a private laboratory, the Barros Research Institute. He worked at Barros until 2008, when his health began to fail. Rosenberg died Aug, 8, 2009. He was 82.

Rosenberg has said that his discovery of cisplatin was a case of "serendipity." He was not seeking a cancer treatment but hypothesized from his initial results that the compound could be utilized to inhibit the growth of cancer cells.

Rosenberg's "driving need was to do things that helped people," David Juckett, chief scientist at Barros, told the East Lansing Journal in August 2009.

Juckett told that publication that Rosenberg felt gratified when people "actually looked him up and said, 'Thank you, you've saved my life.' That gave him a huge boost."

The advent of the platinum anticancer drugs brought new hope to patients suffering from a number of cancers where previously there was little in the way of cure or even palliation of their disease. RCT is pleased that it was in a position to protect the investment made by Dr. Rosenberg, his colleagues and supporting organizations, as well as the commercial entities that were instrumental in conducting the research and clinical trials that led to these compounds being brought to market.

Read a 2001 article in Genome Biology about his discovery.

Inventors

Dr. Barnett Rosenberg, Loretta L. Van Camp, Dr. Thomas Krigas at Michigan State University in East Lansing, and Dr. Michael J. Cleare, Johnson Matthey Research Center, England, and Dr. James D. Hoeschele, Michigan State University (latter two inventors for carboplatin only)