PET project to focus on combatting cancer
APIONEERING clinical trial to improve the treatment and survival rates of patients with head and neck cancer is under way in Wales.
The trial, which is scheduled to start later this year at a cost of £720,000, will combine modern radiotherapy with advanced medical imaging, known as PET.
The PET will be able to pinpoint the exact site of a tumour and enable radiotherapy treatment to be targeted more effectively.
Although head and neck tumours can be treated successfully with conventional chemoradiotherapy, the complex anatomy of the head and neck make large tumours difficult to accurately target with radiotherapy.
It means cancers in this area can often reappear.
Standard radiotherapy treatment for head and neck cancers can also leave lasting long-term side effects such as a dry mouth, difficulty in swallowing, loss of taste and voice alterations.
Now Welsh patients taking part in the trial at Velindre Cancer Centre, Cardiff and Singleton Hospital, Swansea will be treated with an innovative medical imaging technique which experts say has the potential to greatly improve the accuracy and targeting of radiotherapy.
Professor John Moore, president of Cancer Research Wales, said: “As a charity we have a rich history of funding radiotherapy research in Wales, particularly at Velindre Cancer Centre.
“And this exciting new project is a culmination of our investment, over many years, that has enabled local scientists and clinicians to realise their full potential.
“We are very pleased to partner with Velindre Cancer Centre, as it will allow patients in Wales to benefit first from this groundbreaking technology which, if successful, can be transferred to other cancer centres across the UK and used to treat other tumour types.”
PET technology has been around for some time, but awardwinning research previously funded by Cancer Research Wales has enabled scientists at Velindre to overcome some of the barriers to using the scans for the delivery of radiotherapy.
Once patients on the trial have received initial radiotherapy to eradicate the bulk of the cancer, they will then undergo additional highly specialised PET scans at the state-of-art PETIC facility at Cardiff University.
Those patients found to have remaining high levels of disease activity, as evidenced by increased glucose uptake, will receive further doses of PET-guided radiotherapy to those areas in the head and neck.
This technique, known as “dose painting”, aims to improve the targeting of radiotherapy to live tumours while sparing normal tissues or cancer previously destroyed by the radiation during the initial phase of the treatment.
Experts say this should result in better control of the disease, lower rates of relapse, mewan reduced side-effects, and ultimately improve patient survival and quality of life.
Dr Tom Crosby, clinical consultant at Velindre Cancer Centre and clinical lead for the Moondance Programme said: “This exciting programme builds on previous work done by this cutting edge research group in Velindre Cancer Centre.
“It is using state-of-the-art computational science to adapt radiotherapy treatments to precisely target patient’s cancers based on their initial response to treatment. This personalised approach offers the possibility of achieving the holy grail of precision oncology, hitting the tumours harder with higher doses of radiation, improving the chance of disease control and possibly cure, while sparing normal tissues which when damaged can lead to disabling longterm side-effects.
“This supports the ambition of Velindre Cancer Centre to be a centre of excellence for radiotherapy, comparable with the best centres in the world.”