Fwco: “Case in point, I had a friend who had colon cancer and received the SOC of colon resection and followup chemo. He was at the 5 year survival point when the cancer returned. His M.D. at Kaiser was ready to give up when Kaiser's SOC was for more chemo which was not working. Almost coincidentally Genentech got approval for Avastin. I asked him if he was getting Avastin. He was not. He later related to me that his oncologist did not know of Avastin's appoval, and my friend had a hell of a time getting Kaiser to approve Avastin for him. Unfortunately, the Avastin did not work very well, either, although it did extend his life expectancy a few months.”
I don’t know how long ago your friend died, but he might well be alive today if Avastin (or whatever) had been available in a heat-meltable, micro-encapsulated form. As I’m sure you know, but for those who do not:
Using precision heating (BSD Medical’s equipment is outstanding for the task) to raise the temperature of the tumor enough to melt the micro-capsules (circulating in the bloodstream), the drug is deposited only at the tumor. Thus, 1) far higher drug dose levels can be achieved at the tumor and 2) the heated tumor will be much more permeable to the drug (so the drug actually gets out of the blood vessels and into the tumor cells).
A higher level of heating might well kill the tumor directly – ablating it, that is. That said, I have not personally seen a report of the BSD-2000 series being used for tumor ablation, which requires much higher temperatures than for the usual “hyperthermia”. Anyone? Have you seen reports of ablation with a 2000 series machine? I want to discuss this a bit, but I’ll do it in another post. |
