microwave heat plus chemo shrinks breast cancer tumours

Oklahoma City – A University of Oklahoma researcher has found that microwave heat treatment combined with chemotherapy actually kills large breast cancer tumors and could reduce the need for mastectomies by nearly 90 percent.

“Right now, most patients with large tumors lose their breast,” said Dr. William Dooley, director of surgical oncology at OU Cancer Institute, on Friday.

But he said during a news conference that researchers have found that, for some reason not yet fully understood, cancer cells are sensitive to microwave-generated heat.

Researchers found that, when the microwave therapy was used within two hours of chemotherapy, tumors were more susceptible to chemotherapy and shrank rapidly. The percentage of patients needing mastectomies was reduced from 75 percent to 7 percent.

Results from early clinical trials will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Annals of Surgical Oncology.

Another phase of clinical trials this year will focus on even larger tumors.

Dooley leads researchers from OU, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, the Comprehensive Breast Center of Florida and St. Joseph’s Hospital in California.

The treatment, called focused microwave thermotherapy, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In the most recent study, researchers tested the therapy on tumors between 1 and 1.5 inches in size, which are considered large and typically require mastectomies.

While the therapy worked most dramatically on large tumors, it also was effective on smaller breast cancer tumors, Dooley said.

“The trial was very successful. We were able to completely reverse” the odds favoring a mastectomy, he said. “We redesigned the machine and will begin clinical trials this year to determine whether the therapy works on tumors that are larger.”

The therapy could be in widespread use in five to 10 years, Dooley said.

“Because of its ability to shrink tumors so quickly, it could be faster,” he said.

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