The Utah Jazz’s Derek Fisher finds himself in a whole new ballgame lately as he helps his 10-month-old daughter, Tatum, fight for her life.

Tatum was diagnosed last week with retinoblastoma, a cancerous tumor in her left eye. Fisher, who was excused from his team to begin dealing with his daughter’s illness, flew his family — his wife Candace, Tatum, and Tatum’s twin brother Drew, to New York on Monday to see a specialist.

Fisher and his wife must decide on a course of treatment for their daughter. Their options are removal of the eye or a combination of surgery and chemotherapy. Their most pressing goal is to save Tatum’s life. They also want to save her eye. And they think in her case, she should be able to keep her eye.

Tatum’s condition was first noticed by her mother who detected an odd reflection of light coming from her eye. The Fishers took her to a few doctors and then a pediatrician at the University of Utah who diagnosed the problem. Brother Drew has no signs of the condition.

Only 350 cases of retinoblastoma are diagnosed in the United States each year. The good news is that 95 to 98 percent of children grow to live a long life.

Fisher is back to playing ball. And when the basketball season ends, he and his wife say they will talk more about their daughter and her disease.

“My wife and I definitely plan to try and help as many people as we can,” Fisher said. “I don’t know how we’ll be able to at this point. If there’s a treatment out there, they should be able to get it. Some people can’t afford to get it. Some people don’t have the resources.”

The study marks the first time that Avastin has been tested against brain tumors, the researchers said. The drug, whose chemical name is bevacizumab, currently is used to treat lung and colorectal cancers. 

The researchers tested the effectiveness of Avastin in conjunction with a standard chemotherapy agent in patients with recurrent cancerous brain tumors called gliomas. They found that the two drugs together halted tumor growth up to twice as long as comparative therapies. Though gliomas remain incurable in nearly all cases, the combined drug therapy may buy precious time and preserve physical and mental function longer for patients facing this grim diagnosis, the researchers said.

“These results are exciting because of the possible implications for a patient population that currently has the poorest possible prognosis going into treatment, those with malignant brain tumors that have recurred after initial treatment,” said James Vredenburgh, M.D., a brain cancer specialist at Duke’s Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center and lead researcher on the study.

The findings will appear in the Feb. 20, 2007, issue of the journal Clinical Cancer Research. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Research Fund, the Bryan Cless Research Fund and Genentech, the maker of Avastin.

Duke currently is participating in a large, multi-institutional study of Avastin to corroborate the results of this initial study, Vredenburgh said.

Kate Carr, president and chief executive officer of Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure, a not-for-profit organization that supports research to hasten a cure for brain cancer, said, “The results of this initial study are very encouraging and we are now excited to learn the findings of the larger study, that, it is hoped, will lead to an approved therapy for patients with brain cancer.”

In the pilot study, the researchers found that dual therapy with Avastin and the chemotherapy drug irinotecan either shrank the tumors or restricted their growth in nearly all cases for up to three months longer than comparative therapies. Three months is a significant advance when dealing with these aggressive tumors, Vredenburgh said; common current treatment normally offers only six to 12 weeks of halted growth before the tumor grows and spreads, ultimately destroying cognitive and physical function and leading to death.

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