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Shortly after completing my previous newsletter on hyperthermia, I learned more good news about the effects of heat on cancer. Rolf Issels, MD, PhD, professor of medical oncology at the Klinikum Grosshadern Medical Center at the University of Munich, presented the results of regional hyperthermia (RHT) at a press conference in Berlin (September 23, 2009). This was part of Europe's largest cancer congress. The final results were surprisingly robust.
Issels reported on 341 patients with high-risk sarcomas who received a standard chemotherapy regimen consisting of three drugs: etoposide, ifosfamide and adriamycin. Half of the patients were then randomized to receive hyperthermia before and after their chemotherapy. The median follow-up time was 34 months.
Adding RHT to chemotherapy reduced the risk for recurrence or death by an astonishing 42 percent. Patients who were assigned to the combination treatment survived an estimated 120 months before progressing compared to 75 months for those who were assigned to chemotherapy alone.
There were other signs of the benefit of adding heat to conventional treatment. After two years, 76 percent of patients assigned to the combination therapy were alive without local progression compared with 61 percent of those assigned to chemotherapy alone. Tumor shrinkage occurred in just 12.7 percent of patients assigned to chemotherapy alone vs. 28.8 percent assigned to combination therapy. In addition, tumor growth occurred in 6.8 percent of those assigned to combination therapy vs. 20 percent of those assigned to chemotherapy alone. Here is a chart that makes the comparison quite clear:
|
Alive w/o local progression |
Tumor shrinkage |
Tumor growth |
Chemo |
61% |
12.7% |
20.0% |
Chemo +RHT |
76% |
28.8% |
6.8% |
Prof. Issels described this as "the first - and the only completed - randomized study on neo-adjuvant chemotherapy in high-risk soft tissue sarcoma showing that the addition of regional hyperthermia significantly improves the overall response rate, time to progression, local progression free survival, and disease free survival."
The kind of strategy followed in this paper has been Dr. Issels's life work for over 20 years. There were about 150 leading groups studying the combination therapy, mostly in Europe. According to Prof. Issels, "the clear results of this trial show that the field has now matured to the point where we must step up efforts to explore its potential to offer an entirely new way of treating locally advanced disease in several major cancers."
--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.
References:
For a very interesting 7 minute video of Prof. Issels' press conference, see:
http://tinyurl.com/ydukcd7
An abstract of the 2009 presentation can be found at:
http://tinyurl.com/y86b52v
An earlier analysis of the same study was presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's 2007 annual meeting:
http://tinyurl.com/y8mb36d
To check out my latest Current Topic report, 'German New Medicine®'-Hope or Hoax, click here.
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