- Title: Ray of light for prostate cancer treatment
- Date: 15th June 2016
- Summary: COMPUTER SCREEN SHOWING HOW PHOTODYNAMIC THERAPY DAMAGES BLOOD VESSELS WHICH CAN RESULT IN THE DEATH OF A TUMOUR
- Embargoed: 30th June 2016 13:22
- Keywords: photodynamic prostate prostate cancer Steba Biotech Weizmann
- Location: TEL AVIV AND REHOVOT, ISRAEL
- City: TEL AVIV AND REHOVOT, ISRAEL
- Country: Israel
- Reuters ID: LVA0024MCZ3H7
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:A photodynamic therapy that uses light to kill prostate cancer tumours in their early stages with a 90 minute treatment, causing minimal side effects, has been developed in Israel.
The treatment was invented by two Israeli professors from the Weizmann Institute for Science and clinically developed by Luxembourg-based biotech start-up Steba Biotech. It is currently being used in Israel in a pilot study of 50 patients, after being approved for use in Mexico in January.
It takes only 90 minutes to complete one treatment that involves no radiation or chemotherapy. MRI scans on patients who underwent the procedure show that in most cases prostate cancer tumours completely disappeared within two weeks of the treatment.
Professor Jack Baniel, a senior Israeli urologist from Tel Aviv University who also heads the urogoly departments at Rabin Medical Center and the Ramat Aviv Medical Center allowed Reuters Television into the operating room where he performed the treatment on an Israeli patient.
"It's photo-dynamic therapy, it's basically a procedure where we can target the cancer and we can demolish it actually, very very exactly," he explained after completing the treatment.
During the procedure's first stage doctors use an ultrasound device to insert conductors into the patient's body before carefully placing them near the blood vessels feeding the tumour. Illuminating optic fibres are then placed inside the conductors.
A drug developed by Steba Biotech called Tookad is then injected into the patient's blood circulation for about 10 minutes. When inside the body Tookad makes any light toxic to living tissue, so that when performing doctors light up the optic fibres within the patient's body, those cells touched by the light immediately die.
Baniel says the treatment is a so-called focal therapy, a non-invasive technique for destroying small tumours inside the prostate while leaving the remaining gland intact and most normal tissue untouched.
"It's something new that we've been searching for ages, especially in prostate cancer where we know that many patients have focal disease, and we didn't have focal therapy," said Baniel.
Its developers say patients will suffer none of the side effects of prostate cancer treatments such as invasive surgery or radiation.
"Most of these patients are men the age of 60-70, not all of them healthy, and if you give them 10-20 years with good health and without side effects, which is the main thing, then we've done a great thing and we've done a revolution," said Baniel, who has treated thousands of prostate cancer patients during his career.
51-year-old Yaron Sfadia, from Tel Aviv, was diagnosed with prostate cancer two years ago. Initially he was too afraid to go into surgery in order to remove the tumour, worried by the possible side effects of prostate treatment, including difficulties in sexual function.
When offered pain-free photodynamic therapy, Sfadia immediately agreed.
"One day after the treatment I was back at home and three days later I was back at the office with regular life like before, and today after I got the new MRI I found out that my life is back again and everything is like before, no side effects, sexual life like before and I feel great," he said.
Professor Avigdor Schertz, of the Department of Plants and Environmental Science at Weizmann, invented the therapy together with Professor Yoram Salomon of the Institute's Department for Biological Regulation.
Steba Biotech was granted access to the license for Tookad from the Yeda Research and Development Company, a technology transfer offshoot of the Weizmann Institute.
Schertz told Reuters that he had found an active process of killing prostate cancer cells to the extent that the whole tumour collapsed within hours. He is looking to implement the same principles on other kinds of cancers.
"This local treatment will allow us to find a solution to those cancers that are found at an early stage and currently are met with quite aggressive treatment methodologies," he said.
Tookad was first developed in Schertz's laboratory from bacteriochlorophyll, - photosynthetic pigments that occur in various aquatic bacteria that draw their energy supply from sunlight.
A successful Phase III clinical trial of 80 patients in Latin America showed a high rate of localised cures and minimal side effects.
A further clinical study of patients with more advanced prostate cancer is taking place in New York City, involving collaboration with the University of Oxford and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
UK cancer expert Professor Lawrence S. Young, of Warwick University, said the research was exciting.
"This is an interesting and novel way of delivering photodynamic therapy (PDT) and builds on over 100 years of research in this area," he told Reuters by email. "The innovative approach used in this new application is based on so-called 'focal therapy' - using locally implanted optic fibres rather than delivering the light source externally (e.g. via an modified endoscope). Many previous studies of PDT have focused on endoscopically accessible tumours such as cervical cancer, oesophageal cancer and head and neck cancer. This novel approach has the potential to target a variety of different tumours that are more difficult to access. The approach also uses a new type of photoactivatable drug. One really exciting aspect of PDT is its ability not only to kill cancer cells but to also stimulate an anti-tumour immune response." - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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