Thermotherapy Shows Promise for Treating Breast Cancer

Robert A. Gardner, a breast surgeon at Columbia Hospital's Center for Breast Care in West Palm Beach, FL (USA). The center is one of three centers currently participating in clinical II trials. Trial results were presented at the 24th International Congress on Clinical Hyperthermia in Rome, Italy.

The new technique is based on space-borne radar technology developed at the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA). The technology has been licensed to Celsion Corp. (Columbia, MD, USA), which has developed the clinical system and is funding the clinical studies. Due to both higher water and ion contents, breast cancer cells absorb about two to four times more microwave energy than healthy breast tissue, destroying the cancer. The goal of the phase II trial is to demonstrate the potential benefits of destroying the cancer prior to breast conservation therapy. Women with locally advanced breast cancer in the second phase II study will receive both preoperative microwave thermotherapy and preoperative chemotherapy treatments in an attempt to shrink the tumor and decrease the need for mastectomy.

"The adaptively focused microwave radiation used in the technique avoids heating the skin, and selectively heats and kills cancer cells spread within a large region of the breast,” said Dr. Alan J. Finn, inventor of the technology.




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