The following news, issued yesterday, is interesting; but it is not very clear:
SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
<BSD Medical Corporation (BSDM) (Company or BSD) (www.BSDMedical.com), a leading provider of medical systems that utilize heat therapy to treat cancer, announced the publication of results from a clinical study on advanced pancreatic cancer using the BSD-2000 Hyperthermia System (BSD-2000). The study, "Gemcitabine and cisplatin combined with regional hyperthermia as second-line treatment in patients with gemcitabine-refractory advanced pancreatic cancer", (Int J Hyperthermia. 2013;29[1]:8-16) reported the results of a retrospective analysis of 23 patients with advanced or metastatic pancreatic cancer who had relapsed after first-line chemotherapy treatment. The researchers, Tschoep-Lechner, et al., reported that hyperthermia, delivered using the BSD-2000, combined with gemcitabine and cisplatin resulted in low toxicity and high feasibility, even in these study patients who had a very negative prognosis and no standard treatment options. The researchers also reported that, despite the intrinsic limitation of a small retrospective analysis, the results suggested clinical efficacy of hyperthermia combined with gemcitabine and cisplatin whereas gemcitabine and cisplatin without hyperthermia does not seem to provide a significant benefit in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer.>
Significant to substantial improvement in cancer-treatment outcome has been reported with several drugs for adjuvant (aiding) use of microwave heating. These have typically shown significant to substantial increased efficacy over using the drugs alone. The above only shows mild improvement from raising the tumor's temperature.
This however, needs some caution: <whereas gemcitabine and cisplatin without hyperthermia does not seem to provide a significant benefit in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer.>
I interpret the phrase “does not seem” to mean that the drug-alone results were not significant, however there might have been some small but not significant positive results indicated. Since, for a number of tumors it is proven that mild heating a) increases drug perfusion into the cancerous mass and b) interferes with the tumor’s self-protection mechanisms, it is reasonable to expect this improvement would happen for pancreatic tumors, as well. If the drugs alone are only marginally effective (not clearly significant), then the addition of heat to raise the tumor’s temperature could well raise the efficacy to be only significant (not substantial, but still important).
For heat+drugs to be substantially effective, better drugs are needed. And, heat alone (to ablation temperature levels) could be more important than combined therapies. |
