CANCER DIGEST – Sept. 15, 2019 – Thirteen of the first 15 prostate cancer patients treated in a pilot clinical trial with nanoparticle-based therapy showed no detectable signs of cancer a year after treatment, researchers say.
Led by Ardeshir Rastinehad, associate professor of urology and radiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York the trial involved 16 men ages 58-79 with low- to intermediate-risk prostate cancer that had not spread beyond the prostate. The initial results were reported in the Sept. 10, 2019 journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The treatment called, gold-nanoshell-localized photo thermal ablation, uses biocompatible gold nanoparticles designed to absorb light at wavelengths that pass through tissue without harming them. When the photo thermal light reaches the gold nanoparticles, however, the light is converted to heat. The treatment was originally designed by Naomi Halas, a nanoscientist at Rice University and by Jennifer West, a bio-engineer at Duke University.
In the treatment designed for prostate cancer, these gold nanoparticles are infused into the patient’s blood stream, and then due to changes tumors make to blood vessels they need to grow, the nanoparticles begin to collect in the tumor’s blood vessels. Doctors then use MRI and ultrasound aimed at the tumor to excite the nanoparticles, which begin to heat to temperatures deadly to the surrounding tumor tissue.
The two-day treatment may one day be an outpatient procedure with the infusion done on day one, and the image-guided ablation or ultrasound treatment the next day. Patients in this trial were administered the nanoparticles in the hospital and observed overnight. Following the treatment on day-two all of them went home, returning for follow-up tests at three, six and 12 months.
Of the first 15 men who completed the treatment, only two showed detectable signs of cancer in follow-up biopsies and MRIs.
The trial is ongoing and 44 patients have been treated at Mount Sinai and two other clinical sites in Michigan and Texas.
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