Photodynamic therapy technology destroys colon cancer tumors in mice
When activated by laser light, Theralase Technologies' (Toronto, ON, Canada) anti-cancer photodynamic compound (PDC) technology completely destroyed subcutaneous (under the skin) colon cancer tumors in a mouse model. Four weeks post-treatment, the mice continue to be cancer-free, while those mice that weren't treated with the compound didn't survive for two weeks.
In the study, which began in early February, mice were injected under the skin with 350,000 colon cancer cells—when tumors formed, they were allowed to grow until they reached 5 mm in size. Then, on February 21, half the mice were used as a control group where no therapy was administered, while the remaining animals became the treatment group and were administered an intratumor injection of the PDC. At that point the PDC was allowed to distribute within the cancerous tumor for 4 hours, then activated with the company's laser light protocol for 32 minutes.
Twenty-four hours post-treatment, the tumors were no longer visible on the treated mice while tumors in the control mice grew to the maximum allowable size of 12 mm, as determined by the study protocol, and did not survive for longer than 2 weeks. The mice treated with the PDC technology continue to be cancer-free four weeks post-treatment.
Roger Dumoulin-White, Theralase president and CEO, foresees that the PDC technology will enter human clinical trials as early as 2013.
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