I would like to write today about two different approaches to treat liver cancer, which have been recently presented in the news, both coming from Southampton in UK.
I read about the first one last 12th of November in BBC News. It is about a "chemo-bath", consisting of isolating the organ so the chemotherapy drugs don't reach other parts of the body. In words of Dr Brian Stedman, a consultant interventional radiologist at Southampton General Hospital: "To cut off an organ from the body for 60 minutes, soak it in a high dose of drug and then filter the blood almost completely clean before returning is truly groundbreaking."
The procedure was baptised as Chemosaturation with Percutaneous Hepatic Perfusion (CS-PHP) and it was used for the first time in UK in two patients with a cancer that had spread to the liver. The method had already been used in Germany, Italy, Ireland, France and the US. Furthermore, a study carried out in the US showed that patients who received this treatment survived 5 times longer than patients who received the best alternative care.
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This approach could save lives of patients whose cancer has spread to the liver from a primary tumor, for example the melanoma of the eye. Once the cancer reaches the liver, there is no effective treatment and survival is usually no more than four months, with one in ten patients living for a year. However, with this new treatment the time these melanoma patients can live is extended without the disease progressing.
In this new treatment the chemo drug is infused directly into the liver via catheter into the artery. Blood in the veins leading out of the liver is then captured and filtered through a specially designed, double-balloon catheter to filter out the drug before the cleaned blood is returned to the body. The approach allows the drug to be delivered, at a higher dosage than usual, directly to the liver and target the cancer tumor there, but in a minimally invasive manner.
Secondly, researchers at the University of Southampton led by Professor Salim Khako hepatology and Aymen Al Shamkhani immunologist, reported on 12th October that they will investigate how to boost innate immunity in humans to treat liver cancer. The idea is to stimulate the participation of NK cells (Natural Killer cells) to eliminate hepatocellular carcinoma cells.
Professor Khako highlights that hepatocellular carcinoma accounts for 90% of all primary liver tumors and to date is a very difficult condition to treat, in addition to being one of the growing mortal diseases in the world.
In a first phase the professor proposed a clinical trial using these NK cells in the treatment. He announced that three types of patients will have the formation of this cell stimulated to find the most appropriate method. When the team manages to find the most efficient system to stimulate NK cells, trials will be carried out in order to determine the best treatment for liver cancer, the university reported.
The BBC article:
Hi, i agreed with you. Know more about the liver cancer symptoms is good for the patients and their family, too. Some times, when the patient has the advanced liver cancer, only the living donor liver transplantation can help them. Most cancer patients choose this surgery as the operation success rate is more and more high.
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