There is more exciting news for breast cancer patients! Several clinical studies conducted by Dr. William C. Dooley from the University of Oklahoma showed that focused microwave radiation therapy, a promising protocol for treating breast cancer, significantly destroys large breast tumors in breast cancer patients. This study was recently published online at the Journal of Surgical Oncology on December of last year.

   The technology employed in this study is sophisticated as it employs the same basic principles of the radar technology used in the Star Wars program that was designed to detect inter-ballistic missiles. In brief, phase I clinical studies showed that 80% of patients receiving a single low dose of focused microwave radiation had a partial reduction of tumor size as quantified by ultrasound studies and by immunohistochemical techniques. Phase II clinical studies was then performed to find out a specific microwave dose that promotes a 100% cell death of invasive carcinoma before patients underwent breast conservation therapy. Indeed, a two to three fold increase in the microwave radiation dose used in the  phase I study achieved about 99-100% cell death of tumor cells.

   The most impressive results of the study is that a combination of field adaptive focused microwave radiation therapy and standard chemotherapy reduced the size of large tumors in 88% of the patients compared to 58.8% of patients that received standard chemotherapy alone.  The main  "gist" of this study is that this is a  non-invasive technique may preclude the need for mastectomies and breast reconstruction surgeries in intermediate stage breast cancer patients.

    This technology is promising and may be purchased and adopted by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) hospitals, Allegheny General and West Penn Hospitals  to treat breast cancer in Pittsburgh. Breast cancer is a serious health-related concern in the Western Pennsylvania region with incidence and death rates of more than 127 women diagnosed with this disease and approximately 30 breast cancer-related deaths for every 100,000 habitants for the period of 2000 to 2004.  More worriesome is the fact that more and more women under 40 years are being afflicted with sporadic  breast cancer cases (no family history involved) for unknown reasons.

Focused Microwave Thermotherapy

   In brief, wide field adaptive focused microwave radiation, the technology employed by the U of Oklahoma study, is generated via a two channel 915-MHz adaptive phased-array focused microwave thermotherapy system that uses two transcutaneous probes that are placed near the location of a large tumor (more than 6 cm). The protocol includes giving the patient short sessions of two to three minutes of microwave radiation pulses in the breast area containing the tumor. The microwave radiation raises the temperature inside the breast tumor from 37 to 49 Celsius in compressed breast tissue followed by a cool-down period.

  It is believed that focused microwave radiation is extremely efficient in killing tumors due to the fact that most tumors retain a high amount of water and ions, making them more sensitive to heat than normal tissue. Indeed, an alternate version of this technology is being employed in UPMC and other hospitals to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).

Another alternative: the John Kanzius radiowave thermal therapy

   Another non-invasive technological breakthrough may be employed for the treatment of breast cancer uses radiowaves to heat up nanoparticles that are injected or strategically targeted to tumors. John Kanzius, a Washington County, PA native, is the author and inventor of the experimental radiation therapy that employs a combination of either gold or carbon nanoparticles and radio waves to heat and destroy cancer cells without damaging healthy tissue.

    This technology has been proven to destroy pancreatic cancer cells in vitro while sparing normal cells. More importantly, these experiments have been translated from the benchside to the bedside in clinical trials.  Many experts are cautiously optimistic about this technology for treating a whole wide range of cancer types and may cure cancer one day.  The Kanzius Radiofrequency technology is currently being optimized and tested in clinical studies for safety and efficiency.  However, a lot of additional work needs to be completed before radiowave therapy can be used in hospitals in the near future.

   John Kanzius was offered a multi-million dollar buyout of the patent rights for this technology in exchange for unlimited funding for future clinical trials. Surprisingly, John Kanzius denied the request by UPMC and decided to take complete control of the study.  Although, John Kanzius passed away last year in a long struggle against leukemia, his legacy and experimental studies are being carried out by other scientists of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Institute in Houston, TX and UPMC. 

    In principal, radiowave thermal therapy that uses nanoparticles may be more efficient than microwave therapy alone at destroying tumors for the following reasons: functionalized nanoparticles that are conjugated to tumor specific antibodies are injected in a patient intravenously near the site of the tumor, where they target and adhere to tumor(s). A series of radiowave doses are then administered to the patient causing the nanoparticles to quickly heat up and transfer the heat to the tumor with detrimental effects to cancer cells while sparing normal tissue. In other words, nanoparticles can target very small tumors and conduct radiowave induced heat with more resolution than standard focused microwave radiation

  How does this technology work?   Metallic nanoparticles consisting of a combination of zinc, cadmium, iron oxide and other metals are ideal for destroying tumors due to their ability to adsorb infrared radiation, and extremely small size. Given their extremely small size, gold or other metal nanoparticles cross the capillaries that feed metastatic tumors much more efficiently than the capillaries of normal tissue. Nanoparticles can also specifically target tumors by conjugating them to antibodies (functionalization) that are specific for surface receptor biomarkers of malignant tumors.  Moreover, some metal nanoparticles have both imaging and thermal conducting capabilities which allows for both the location and treatment of a tumor using MRI technology.

Brief Overview on Breast Cancer

   Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women in the United States, where it accounts for one in every three cancer diagnoses. The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2009, roughly 190,000 American women were be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and over 40,000 died of the disease. Breast cancer contributes to approximately 6.9% of all cancers cases in the world.

  Breast cancer originates from breast tissue, specifically originating in either the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules supplying the ducts with milk. Breast cancer that can be classified by disease stage at diagnosis (I-V), the cancer’s ability to metastasize and the genetic makeup of the tumor. Depending on the genetic and pathological profiles exhibited by a particular breast tumor in a patient, the prognoses and survival rates vary greatly. According to the American Cancer Society, the five-year survival rate for breast cancer diagnosed in Stage I is nearly 100%. However, in Stage III the survival rate can be as low as 54%, and in Stage IV the survival rate is only 20%.

   Treatments available for breast cancer include: radiation therapy, interval treatments of chemotherapeutic drugs (such as cyclophosphamide and doxorubicin) combined with hormone therapies including estrogen and progesterone receptor antagonists (ie. Tamoxifen), and humanized antibodies against the Her-2 receptor (Traztuzumab), a cancer biomarker associated with aggressive tumor progression.
 

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