The study into the alpha radiation treatment follows the success of trials on 26 skin cancer patients where 70 per cent of them did not experience a return of the cancer after a year. There is also evidence to suggest it could have an immune-boosting effect on the body as a whole. It means successful treatment on one tumour could lead to destruction of cancer elsewhere in the body – though scientists are unclear about why this happens.
The technology, which could be used on all solid tumours, is on trial at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge on up to 30 patients with vulva cancer.
Trials are also about to start in Montreal and New York for pancreatic and skin cancer, Russia for breast cancer and Israel for prostate cancer.
It is hoped that trials will begin on 20 other cancers, which include cervical, renal and colon.
In tests, alpha radiation has been shown to be far more lethal to cancer cells than traditional forms of radiation, which breaks one or both strands of DNA.
If only one strand is damaged, the cancer cells can repair and reappear in the body.
Alpha radiation causes more two-strand breaks. It also does not appear to cause damage to healthy tissue.
When it spreads beyond the tumour, it is quickly washed away in the blood.
And while some patients have tumours resistant to traditional radiotherapy, there has been no signs of treatment resistance with alpha radiotherapy.
Professor Yona Keisari from Tel Aviv University, who is one of its two inventors, said: “Here we have a radiation treatment which is much more powerful than existing radiotherapy treatments.
“Eighty-five per cent of patients with cancer die from metastatic spread of the disease to other parts of the body.
“If we can damage cancer cells permanently we can hopefully stop the spread and save more lives.”
The technology was developed at Tel Aviv University together with Israeli company Alpha Tau
Dr Li Tee Tan, cancer specialist at Cambridge University Hospitals, heading the trial at Addenbrookes, said: “I am very excited because this is a totally new way of delivering radiation which seems to be safer as well as more effective.
“Standard radiotherapy can be harmful to healthy tissue and there is almost always damage to surrounding tissue. This limits how much and how often we can use it.
“The vulva is a sensitive area where surgery or radiation can cause damage. If we can limit the extent of surgery and radiotherapy it will be a significant advance.”
Until now alpha radiation had only been used as an injection to treat prostate cancer, which had spread to bones.
It had not been used to treat the primary cancer as the rays only work at a very short range, which means they lose energy when passed through solid forms.
Alpha Tau have developed a way of making the rays travel further by inserting them directly into a tumour with a needle.
Scientists have also found that the alpha radiation has an immune response effect.
This was shown in a British female patient living in Italy who was treated at a hospital in Bologna with alpha radiation during a trial the company was conducting there in 2017.
The woman, in her sixties, was treated for skin cancer, called squamous cell carcinoma, on each leg.
She also had cancer on several parts of her body which had returned after previous surgery to remove them.
Only one leg was treated but the tumours on both legs vanished after treatment
In Israel Meir, 80, was treated for skin cancer on his ear in 2017. Needles of the radiation were injected in the tumour.
Dr Aron Popovtzer, leading the Tel Aviv trial, said: “The ear is a difficult place to treat with normal radiotherapy without causing damage so Alpha radiation was the perfect choice.”
Tracy Hinch, 52, a mother-of-two from Peterborough, has been treated for advanced vulva cancer at Addenbrooke’s.
The office manager, who has not been treated with this new Alpha radiotherapy treatment, had to undergo 25 sessions of radiotherapy and 10 sessions of chemotherapy because her cancer had spread.
“I was on 13 pills a day to combat the different side effects,” she said. “The new alpha radiation treatment is marvellous and if my cancer returns this is what I would like to use.”
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