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Topic Name: MIT radar technology fights breast cancer using microwave heat treatments

Category: Biomedical

Research persons: William C. Dooley, M.D., Hernan Vargas, M.D.

Location: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States

Details

Treating breast cancer with a type of heat therapy derived from MIT radar research can significantly increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy, according to results from the fourth clinical trial of the technique reported online in the journal Cancer Therapy.

In this study, large tumors treated with a combination of chemotherapy and a focused microwave heat treatment shrunk nearly 50 percent more than tumors treated with chemotherapy alone. The microwave treatment is based on technology originally developed at MIT in the late 1980s as a tool for missile detection.

“It appears that heating the tumors drastically increased the effectiveness of the chemotherapy,” said Dr. William C. Dooley, director of surgical oncology at the University of Oklahoma and the principal investigator of the study. “The tumors shrank faster and died faster using the additional microwave hyperthermia on top of the chemotherapy.”

According to the National Cancer Institute, some 178,000 women and 2,000 men were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. An estimated 40,000 women and 450 men will die of the disease this year.

In the latest clinical trial, fifteen patients received two microwave heat treatments, known as thermotherapy, along with four rounds of chemotherapy before surgery. The goal was to shrink tumors sufficiently to enable a breast-conserving lumpectomy procedure instead of the expected, and more invasive, mastectomy. Surgeons concluded that fourteen of the tumors shrunk enough for this to be possible.

In 1990, Dr. Alan J. Fenn, a senior staff member at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, adapted the thermotherapy treatment from a system that used focused microwaves to detect missiles and block out interfering enemy signals.

“It’s a very simple idea that can be applied to the treatment of many different cancers, including breast cancer,” Fenn said.

The microwaves, delivered by two applicators placed near the breast, kill the cancerous tissue while preserving normal breast tissue by targeting tumor cells that contain high amounts of both water and ions, Fenn explained. When the microwave energy passes through the tumor, the water molecules begin to vibrate and generate heat through friction. This process eventually elevates the cancer cells to a “high fever” of at least 108 degrees Fahrenheit in most cases, killing them.

“The treatment is well tolerated,” said Dr. Mary Beth Tomaselli, medical director at Comprehensive Breast Center in Coral Springs, Fla., and a surgeon who was also a co-investigator in the study. “The patients who have gone through it had minimal side effects and positive results.”

This is the fourth clinical trial of the therapy since 1999. In a Phase-I safety trial using microwave heat alone, researchers found that both small and large breast tumors could be decreased in size between 30 and 60 percent. In a Phase-II dose-escalation trial for small tumors, scientists increased the amount of heat until 100 percent of the tumor cells were killed, prior to the patients’ receiving a lumpectomy.

Next, researchers treated similar early-stage tumors and noticed that after the surgical removal, none of the patients had tumor cells remaining at the edge of the incision. This is important because additional breast surgery and/or radiation therapy are often recommended for patients that have cancer cells close to the edge of the lumpectomy surgical margin.

The treatment centers for the latest study, which focused on larger tumors, included Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., the University of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City, Comprehensive Breast Center in Coral Springs, Fla., St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange, Calif., and five additional sites. Celsion (Canada) Limited licenses the focused microwave thermotherapy technology from MIT, and has produced 10 clinical systems to date to perform the procedures.

The team has applied for approval for a large-scale clinical trial from Health Canada (the equivalent of the US FDA) and will be applying for the same approval from the FDA. Researchers will then test the treatment in a randomized study of 228 patients who have large breast-cancer tumors. Patients will receive either chemotherapy alone or chemotherapy plus microwave heat treatments at one of six participating medical centers in the United States and Canada.

“The patients who have the best results in cancer treatment, at least with breast cancer, are patients who have a sequence of different therapies, including chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and hormones,” said Dr. Hernan I. Vargas, associate professor of surgery at UCLA and lead author of the recent study. “Each one of the treatments adds a little bit. The thermotherapy might be one more tool that helps us fight this disease.”

Note for Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is the use of chemical substances to treat disease. In its modern-day use, it refers to cytotoxic drugs used to treat cancer or the combination of these drugs into a standardized treatment regimen.
In its non-oncological use, the term may also refer to antibiotics (antibacterial chemotherapy). In that sense, the first modern chemotherapeutic agent was Paul Ehrlich's arsphenamine, an arsenic compound discovered in 1909 and used to treat syphilis. This was later followed by sulfonamides discovered by Domagk and penicillin discovered by Alexander Fleming.
Other uses of cytostatic chemotherapy agents (including the ones mentioned below) are the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis and the suppression of transplant rejections (see immunosuppression and DMARDs).

About Researcher

William C. Dooley, M.D.
Professor
P.O. Box 26901 OU Physicians Building
Oklahoma City, OK 73190
Phone: (405)-271-7867 Fax: (405)-271-3495
E-Mail: William-Dooley@ouhsc.edu

William C. Dooley, M.D., Professor, received his medical training at Vanderbilt and his surgical and surgical oncology training at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland and Oxford University in England. He was on the Johns Hopkins faculty from 1987 to 2000 and served as the Director of the Johns Hopkins Breast Center since 1993. In January 2001 he joined the University of Oklahoma Department of Surgery as the G. Rainey Williams Professor Chair in Surgical Breast Oncology, OU Breast Institute. Dr. Dooley is board certified by the American Board of Surgery.

Hernan Vargas, M.D.
Surgical Oncology Division Chief and Breast Program Director, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
Associate Professor of Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Dr. Hernan Vargas is Associate Professor of Surgery at the UCLA School of Medicine, and Chief of Surgical Oncology and the Director of the Breast Program at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Dr. Vargas was born in Peru and graduated from the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima. He completed his general surgery residency and clinical surgical oncology fellowship at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, followed by a clinical and research fellowship at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. He is an avid teacher, having been awarded Faculty Teacher of the Year at Harbor-UCLA in 1993, 1996, and 2000.