Few pancreatic cancers are suitable for surgery, and despite the best efforts of chemotherapy it has not proved an ability to entirely destroy pancreatic cancer.

Even with the newer chemo treatments, the impact of the treatment on the patient is devastating. As Director of the charity, my view is that chemo is not an adequate way to treat such a cancer. I know. My former mother-in-law suffered terribly with chemo. She used to say that the effects of the chemo were worse than having the cancer.

In the first study in the world of PDT for pancreatic cancer, Professor Bown in London showed that tumour destruction was feasible with a possible increase in survival time. However, only 16 patients were treated before the funding ran out. Larger scale studies are required.

The partner for this international study is the Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, and the drug currently being used in this trial is Visudyne – approved for PDT use with Age Related Macular Degeneration.

The drug offers the advantages over some of the others because it is no longer active within the body for more than two days, meaning that as soon as the treatment is over, he or she can rapidly begin to resume a normal life.

Initially, the aim is to ‘manage and control’ the cancer, and that seems a realistic target.

In the first stage of the trial the intention is to cautiously monitor the results achieved with lower doses of drug and light. As the study evolves, the drug and light levels will gradually build to achieve the optimum tumour destruction.

We can’t make promises, but clearly the intention is to establish PDT as a safe and ‘tolerable’ alternative to chemo and, who knows, it could one day be able to destroy pancreatic cancers completely.

For more information and to enrol on the trial, please email: pam.odonoghue@uclh.nhs.uk