Photodynamic therapy for locally advanced pancreatic cancer: early clinical results

摘要

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma ranks as the fourth most common cause of cancer death in the USA. Patients usually present late with advanced disease, limiting attempted curative surgery to 10% of cases. Overall prognosis is poor with one-year survival rates of less than 10% with palliative chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. Given these dismal results, a minimally invasive treatment capable of local destruction of tumor tissue with low morbidity may have a place in the treatment of this disease. In this paper we review the preclinical photodynamic therapy (PDT) studies which have shown that it is possible to achieve a zone of necrosis in normal pancreas and implanted tumour tissue. Side effects of treatment and evidence of a potential survival advantage are discussed. We describe the only published clinical study of pancreatic interstitial PDT, which was carried out by our group (Bown et al Gut 2002), in 16 patients with unresectable locally advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma. All patients had evidence of tumor necrosis on follow-up imaging, with a median survival from diagnosis of 12.5 months. Finally, we outline a phase I dose-escalation study of verteporfin single fibre PDT followed by standard gemcitabine chemotherapy which our group is currently undertaking in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer. Randomized controlled studies are also planned.