HOUSTON – A targeted approach to pancreatic cancer could save lives and spare damage to surrounding tissue.
Houston is one of the only places where they’re using a novel technique called Radiofrequency Ablation, which may one day be a new tool for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.
Several years ago, Dean McMann was given really the bad news that he had pancreatic cancer.
“Pancreatic cancer has such a bad success rate, like under 13%,” McMann said. “Within days, you start chemo so you have to kind of process all of that very quickly.”
Luckily for him, he was one of the first candidates for a clinical trial with Dr. Nirav Thosani, an associate professor of gastroenterology with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston and Memorial Hermann.
The clinical trial uses radiofrequency ablation which is a needle that travels directly into a tumor and uses heat to destroy the cancer cells. This procedure can save surrounding tissue and arteries from too much damage and may train the immune system to do something remarkable.
“There is a potential that not only you’re killing the tumor cells, but you’re also activating the body’s immunity that can help to destroy the rest of the tumor cells,” Dr. Thosani explained. “When you kill certain tumor cells, those tumor cells then get exposed to the body’s immunity, and immunity figures out a way to kill the rest of the cancer cells.”
Dr. Thosani said this might be the breakthrough doctors need to get inside pancreatic cancer cells and save more lives like McMann’s.
“With this technology, you can deliver very precise thermal energy in a very precise location,” Thosani said. “So far, we’ve been very, very successful. This is still under clinical trial but we’ve treated many patients with very good results.”
McMann is doing great now and his chemotherapy port was removed.
Removing the port is a confident move by his doctors, showing his life can return to normal.
“I am a pancreatic cancer survivor without a port,” McMann said emotionally.
Since some of his pancreases was surgically removed, he has become a type of diabetic. However, he claims the diabetes is simple to manage and hardly a reminder of what he’s been through.
UT Health is still looking for more participants to join this trial.
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Dr. Thosani said patients will likely still need chemo but it can be given in less aggressive doses.
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