I don’t know if this latest breakthrough in medical science
will soon allow your healthcare provider to subsidize your high end audio rig,
but can sound waves soon be a viable cure for cancer?
By: Ringo Bones
The newfangled medical procedure is called acoustic cluster
therapy and even though a number of white papers had been published of the
subject as far back as 2015, the first ever patient has been treated with
acoustic cluster therapy got press coverage back in December 17, 2019. The
procedure uses microscopic clusters of bubbles and liquid droplets formed via
ultrasound waves to enhance the delivery of chemotherapy drugs to tumors. The
procedure promises to improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy by better
targeting it to the cancer site and could potentially be explored with reduced
doses of chemotherapy drugs in order to reduce the severity of the side
effects.
The new treatment has been recently being trialed by The
Institute Of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation
Trust. The next step, the phase I and II clinical trial of acoustic cluster
therapy will aim to provide early data on the effectiveness of the therapy as
well as establish its safety. The treatment will then be used to treat patients
with tumors in the liver that had spread from the bowel or pancreas.
Professor Jeffrey Barber, professor in physics applied to
medicine at The Institute Of Cancer Research is delighted that the work “has
progressed to the point where the technology is now being assessed in patients
for the first time. It’s a very exciting door opening technology which
concentrates more of the drug in the tumor.” The clinical trial is largely
funded by Phoenix Solutions with additional funding from the Research Council
of Norway, as well as support from the NHR Biomedical Research Centre at The
Royal Marsden and the ICR.
