One of the breakthrough treatments for PDT is going to be for breast cancer, and our teams in the UK and the States are getting ready start patient treatments as early as September – funds permitting.
There is real excitement among our teams. They entered their breast cancer PDT research project for a Medical Futures Innovations award this year – and won! Now the public is going to have a chance to see the project first hand this summer at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition in London from June 29th – July 4th.
Visitors will see how our PDT friends are using amazing new techniques using light to detect cancer cells without needing biopsies.
The technique is based on the fact that each different cell type is of a particular construction and colour. If you analyse the wavelength (the colour spectrum) – and cross-reference this with the results from biopsies – you can build up a database of ‘light’ readings and positive or negative biopsy results.
Our people have perfected this, and using a patented light ‘pen’, the results can be processed in a fraction of a second. In oesophageal cancer, colleagues can scan and map the spread of cancer and pre-cancer in the whole of the oesophagus in minutes.
PDT colleagues in London at University College Hospital are now also using this technique to detect cancer cells in the lungs and the head and neck area. They are also doing this with skin cancers.
Having done the ‘matched pairs’ research in breast cancer, our team can now pinpoint the location of any cancer without needing a biopsy. This technique revolutionises our cancer treatment opportunities with PDT. Instead of waiting days for the result of a biopsy, the PDT treatment can take place immediately.
We could make all sorts of puns of PDT ‘making light work of treating cancer’ – but this is a serious subject.
What this does perhaps demonstrate to you is that PDT – and its associated cancer diagnostic systems – really are poised to dramatically change the way that cancer is diagnosed and treated throughout the body.
