Metastatic cancer treatment produces ‘astounding’ results

Researchers believe that a new method using nanotechnology could offer a treatment for metastatic cancer of the liver and lungs.

The scientists at the Houston Methodist Research Institute in Texas have developed a technique of injecting anti-cancer drugs to the lungs and liver through a ‘nanoparticle generator’, bypassing a tumour cell’s ability to develop resistance to drugs.

The treatment has produced ‘astounding’ results in mice with incurable breast cancer that has spread to the lungs, showing that 50% of the mice were cured of the disease after eight months, the human equivalent of 24 years.

Lead researcher, Mauro Ferrari, said that the results of the tests are unprecedented and human clinical trials could start as early as next year.

He said “To my best understanding, this is the first case we’ve ever seen of a therapy with a well understood mechanism that can provide long-term, disease-free survival of our pre-clinical animal populations.

“If this bears out in the clinical realm, even a short fraction in the pre-clinical experimentation that we did, it will be transformational. It will be the first ever demonstration of a cure of metastatic disease to the lungs.”

He added “Lung and liver metastases are the two main reasons why we lose cancer patients. The results we have proven with this paper is that we can provide a functional cure; we can essentially cure long-term (giving) disease-free survival for about 50 per cent of the animals that we provided this therapy to.

“Through understanding the mechanism we can begin to think about strategies that will work for the other 50 per cent as well.

“If this research bears out in humans and we see even a fraction of this survival time, we are still talking about dramatically extending life for many years. That’s essentially providing a cure in a patient population that is now being told there is none.

“I would never want to overpromise to the thousands of cancer patients looking for a cure, but the data is astounding. We’re talking about changing the landscape of curing metastatic disease, so it’s no longer a death sentence.”

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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