Biomedical Engineering News

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), under the umbrella of NIH and in conjunction with the Health Resources and Services Administration, evaluated medical data from 175,700 transplant recipients and discovered evidence that tied organ transplantation to 32 different types of cancer.

Lead author Eric A. Engels, M.D. works in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics of the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch at NCI. Regarding the reasoning for such a disturbing trend, he had the following to say:

“While transplantation is a life-saving therapy for patients with end-stage organ disease, it also puts recipients at an increased risk for developing cancer, in part because of medications administered to suppress the immune system and prevent rejection of the organ. The cancer risk among transplant recipients resembles that of people with HIV infection, whose risk is elevated for infection-related cancers due to immunosuppression.”

Although it has been common knowledge that transplant recipients are at higher risk for developing cancer than the general populace, never before has such a large patient population or variety of organ types been scrutinized. Previous studies mostly focused on kidney transplants or screened for particular cancer types. The NCI study, on the other hand, surveyed 13 regional cancer registries over 21 years, and 175,700 patients who comprise 40% of the recipient population.

Such a representative sample allowed the study to make several observations about rarer cancer types, establish that a twofold overall increased risk of cancer exists among all U.S. transplant recipients, and link cancers to both infectious and non-infectious agents. Specifically, they found that the most common cancers among transplant recipients were non-Hodgkin lymphoma, lung cancer, liver cancer, and kidney cancer.

For more information, the results of the study can be found in the November 2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Lung cancer is a very life threatening cancer and one of the most difficult cancers to treat because it has a tendency to spread to other parts of the body in its early stage. Furthermore, those patients whose medical condition is complicated by presence of other diseases like acute cardiac disease besides being affected by lung cancer are unsuitable for invasive surgery required to treat lung cancer. Approximately 1.3 million people die every year due to lung cancer worldwide. In 90% patients affected with lung cancer, the cancer originates from the epithelial cells lining the lung airways known as bronchi and bronchioles.

Conventional radiation therapy treatment for lung cancers required 25 to 30 sessions of radio therapy where each session lasted for about 30 minutes.

The next generation Gated RapidArc technology introduced by Varian Medical Systems, Inc allows the doctor to detect the exact location of cancer in the lung with highest precision, while the patient is breathing. The Gated RapidArc technology uses 4-Dimensional Gated Stereotactic Body Radiosurgery to deliver full dose of radiation therapy in just 1 to 3 sessions of ten minutes each. This helps to reduce the effective treatment to just one week as compared to six weeks treatment time with conventional radiation therapy treatment.

The Gated RapidArc technology uses advanced motion management capability to ‘gate’ the radiation beam, turning it on or off in response to tumor motion during treatment. This helps to eliminate the cancerous lung tissue with high precision without causing any damage to surrounding healthy lung tissue.

The Gated RapidArc technology is superior to conventional radiation therapy and traditional invasive surgical treatments because it is completely non-invasive and leaves no scars from surgical incisions on body.

Source: Varian Medical Systems, Inc.

Professor Israel Gannot at Tel Aviv University, located in Israel, is developing a new method to find and destroy cancerous tumors. This new method uses heat to kill the cancerous cells which would result in less damage to surrounding cells and tissues and fewer side effects for the patient.

Having specific ‘biomarkers’ attached to tumors, a special mixture of nano-particles and antibodies are injected into the blood stream. It finds and binds to the tumor and then the mixture just washes out of the body and has minimal side effects. “Once the nano-particles bind to the tumor, we excite them with an external magnetic field, and they begin to heat very specifically and locally” Gannot explains. After deploying the magnetic field, the temperature rises on the targeted area, and the heat elevation results in killing the tumors.

This new treatment has been effective on epithelial cancers, about 85% of cancers, which could be developed in any area of the body.

One other benefit of this method is the speed of the treatment. It is said to be administered in an outpatient setting and would not exceed more than six hours. This new research will be published in Nanomedicine journal.

Thyroid cancer is a disease which affects 37,000 patients in the US each year according to the National Cancer Institute. It affects female patients more commonly. In fact the incidence in females can be as high as three to one. Patients affected by thyroid cancer are usually younger, in age group 30 to 55 years. Frequent symptoms reported by thyroid cancer patients include hoarseness in voice, neck pain, and enlarged lymph nodes.

Most common types of thyroid cancer can be treated with 97% success rate when appropriate surgical techniques are used. Typical surgical treatment includes removal of the lobe of the thyroid affected by cancer.

In traditional surgical treatment, the surgeon had to place an incision of at least three to five inches in front of the neck to remove the thyroid lobe affected with cancer. This left a very visible and ugly scar in front of the neck after surgery. Since thyroid cancer affected younger female patients more often, this three to five inches long scar was a big cause of concern due to cosmetic reasons.

Now, with the use of daVinci Robot Surgical System, the affected cancerous thyroid lobe can be removed from the neck without leaving any visible scar. By using daVinci Robot’s arms, surgeons can reach the thyroid area by entering into patients body through incision made in the armpit. The surgical removal of thyroid lobe can be completed with highest precision using daVinci Robot’s arms.

Source: University of California, Irvine Health Care Center