A cancer fighter with a new formula

By Brendan Buhler

Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009 | 2 a.m.

If leukemia patients find their treatment less dangerous, they’ll have Dr. Ken Foon to thank.

Foon’s method, as detailed in a paper in the most recent issue of the world’s leading cancer publication, improves an existing combination-drug treatment known by the abbreviation FCR. The first two letters represent toxic chemotherapy agents and the third represents a cancer-fighting antibody.

FCR is very effective in fighting the most common type of leukemia, lymphocytic leukemia, but it often has the unfortunate side effect of killing many of a patient’s white blood cells, leaving him vulnerable to serious infections. Because of this, patients are often unable to complete a course of FCR.

Foon’s version of FCR is less of the F and the C and more of the R. The result is an equally effective cancer treatment that is much less likely to damage a patient’s immune system. The modified treatment reduces odds of toxic side effects from one-in-two to one-in-10.

Best of all, because a modified treatment does not require government approval, doctors can immediately start using Foon’s treatment, which is outlined in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

When meeting Foon, who became the head of the Nevada Cancer Institutes’s leukemia section four months ago, you might be tempted to make small talk and ask him where he went to medical school.

“School?” Foon says. “What makes you think I went to school for this?”

Over his shoulder, sitting in the corner of his office, is a small statue of Groucho Marx.

From his desk chair Foon faces a collection of photos of his yearly family-and-friends camping and canoeing trip to Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada.

And the rest of the office is decorated with bits of Foon’s art collection. It’s a serious collection, including pieces by Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol.

Another one of his favorites is by acclaimed modern artist Karel Appel, a large oil.

“It’s really ugly. It’s totally hideous. But in its hideousness, there’s a beauty,” Foon says.

It hangs in his living room.

“It scares away burglars, animals.”

Foon was attracted to cancer research because it stands apart from most of medicine, most of which he says is treating problems brought on by eating, drinking, smoking and other behaviors. “It’s all self-inflicted,” Foon says. “But cancer patients have cancer.”

It was also an opportunity for Foon to combine his interest in research with his desire to treat patients, which he does three days a week at the Nevada Cancer Institute.

“I just fell in love with this cancer institute and what it’s doing,” Foon says. “And it’s happening in a city that really needs something like this.”

Before coming to Nevada, Foon worked at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute for six years.

Looking out his window onto a balmy winter day, Foon adds:

“Six very long years.”

(For the record, Foon went to medical school at Wayne State University — or, as his grandmother called it, Vein State. And he’s studied blood ever since.)