It has been announced by the National Institutes of Health in the USA that they are funding a clinical trial on metastatic breast cancer, using the drug Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in conjunction with HIFU. Already, indications are that the use of HIFU greatly improves the drug efficacy. The trial studies whether the HIFU should precede the drug’s use or follow it.
There have also been indications that Focused Ultrasound (or FUS) has the ability to pre-sensitise tumours and cancer cells all over the body.
Dr. Jessica Foley of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation is emphatic. “Ablative therapies – radiation, radiofrequency, cryoablation, laser, and focused ultrasound – have demonstrated the ability to stimulate an immune response in preclinical and clinical studies. Focused ultrasound applied to a tumor can cause the release of tumor antigens that can awaken the immune system so it can begin to fight the tumor. Promising preclinical studies in models of breast cancer, melanoma, pancreatic cancer, and glioma (among others) have demonstrated that focused ultrasound can initiate a powerful anti-tumor immune response either alone or in combination with immunotherapeutics such as checkpoint inhibitors.”
Chris Woollams, former Oxford University Biochemist and founder of CANCERactive added, “
Pembrolizumab is an immunotherapy; a humanised monoclonal immunoglobulin antibody. It was recently approved as a first-line drug in the USA. Unfortunately, immunotherapies have only produced response in 15 – 20 per cent of patients at most, to date. The use of focused Ultrasound could help that. Focused ultrasound is an Integrative Cancer Therapy we have championed at CANCERactive. It can even temporarily open up the blood brain barrier, so it also has a huge potential in brain tumours”.
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