Light therapy 'treats early prostate cancer'

20^th December 2016 – A new treatment that can help some patients with prostate cancer avoid the need for surgery has proved successful in clinical trials, according to UK-led research in The Lancet Oncology journal.

The technique, trialled in men who have low-risk prostate cancer, involves injecting them with a light-sensitive drug. The drug, called padeliporfin, is derived from seabed bacteria that have developed remarkable abilities to create energy from the tiny amounts of light that penetrates to the ocean depths.

Laser targeting

The drug is injected into the patient's bloodstream and activated with a laser to destroy the tumour in the prostate.

Trials have taken place at 47 treatment sites across 10 European countries involving 413 men.

Lead investigator Professor Mark Emberton, a consultant urologist at University College London Hospital (UCLH), says in a statement: "This is truly a huge leap forward for prostate cancer treatment, which has previously lagged decades behind other solid cancers such as breast cancer."

Erection and incontinence problems

Many men with prostate cancer who opt for surgery or radiotherapy develop lifelong problems getting an erection, and 1 in 5 become incontinent. That's why men with low-risk prostate cancer are encouraged to adopt a wait-and-see approach where symptoms are monitored and surgery is only recommended if the disease becomes severe. However with the new technique, called 'vascular-targeted photodynamic therapy' (VTP), it is possible to effectively kill cancer cells while preserving healthy tissue. This means that VTP only caused short-term urinary and erectile problems which resolved within 3 months, and no significant side-effects remained after 2 years.

An effective treatment

The latest research found that 49% of patients treated with the new technique went into complete remission compared with only 13.5% of those in a control group who did not receive the treatment.

Furthermore, only 6% of patients treated with VTP needed surgery or radiotherapy compared with 30% of those in the control group.

The chances of cancer progressing to a more dangerous stage were 3-times lower for men receiving VTP, while the treatment doubled the average time in which the disease progressed from 14 to 28 months, the researchers report.

The men in the trial were monitored for an average of 2 years.

'Excellent news'

"These results are excellent news for men with early localised prostate cancer, offering a treatment that can kill cancer without removing or destroying the prostate," comments Professor Emberton.

He adds: “In 1975 almost everyone with breast cancer was given a radical mastectomy, but since then treatments have steady improved and we now rarely need to remove the whole breast. In prostate cancer we are still commonly removing or irradiating the whole prostate, so the success of this new tissue-preserving treatment is welcome news indeed."