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TUESDAY NOV 2007 (Foodconsumer.org) -- A type of heat therapy derived from MIT radar research could be used to treat breast cancer to enhance the effectiveness of chemotherapy, according to results from the fourth clinical trial of the technique reported online Nov. 25 in the journal Cancer Therapy.

Large tumors treated with a combination of chemotherapy and a focused microwave heat treatment shrunk nearly 50 percent more than tumors treated with chemotherapy alone, the trial results showed.

The heat therapy is a type of the microwave treatment based on a radar technology the MIT researchers originally developed in the late 1980s as a tool for missile detection.

Heat therapy has been used in some countries such as China to treat certain cancers, but it is the first time in the United States that a heat therapy was derived from a radar technology.

“It appears that heating the tumors drastically increased the effectiveness of the chemotherapy,” said Dr. William C. Dooley, director of surgical oncology at the University of Oklahoma and the principal investigator of the study.

“The tumors shrank faster and died faster using the additional microwave hyperthermia on top of the chemotherapy.”

Breast cancer is expected to be diagnosed in 198,000 women and men in the United States in 2007 and kill an estimated 40,000 women and 450 men this year.

In the clinical trial, fifteen patients received two microwave heat treatments, known as thermotherapy, along with four rounds of chemotherapy before surgery to shrink tumors sufficiently enough that the diseased breasts may be subject only to less invasive lumpectomy, rather than the more invasive mastectomy.

As a result, fourteen tumors shrunk sufficiently enough to be removed by lumpectomy.

“It’s a very simple idea that can be applied to the treatment of many different cancers, including breast cancer,” said Dr. Alan J. Fenn, a senior staff member at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory who adopted the thermotherapy treatment in 1990 from a system that used focused microwaves to detect missiles and block out interfering enemy signals.

The trick of the heat therapy is that breast cancer contains high amounts of water and ions, meaning that the microwaves delivered by two applicators placed near the breast raise the temperature to at least 108 degrees Fahrenheit in most cases in the cancerous tissue, and the heat kills the cancer cells.

“The treatment is well tolerated,” said Dr. Mary Beth Tomaselli, medical director at Comprehensive Breast Center in Coral Springs, Fla., and a surgeon who was also a co-investigator in the study. “The patients who have gone through it had minimal side effects and positive results.”

In early trials, using microwave heat alone could shrink both small and large breast tumors by 30 to 60 percent.   For small tumors, researchers increased the amount of heat until 100 percent of the tumor cells were killed, prior to the patients' receiving a lumpectomy.

The researchers found that none of the patients with early stage breast cancer who were treated with microwave treatment prior to surgical removal of the tumor had tumor cells remaining at the edge of the incision, meaning that they did not have to subject to a secondary surgery or radiation therapy.

The latest trial was dealing with larger tumors. So far 10 clinical systems have been performing the procedures in the United States and Canada including Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., the University of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City, Comprehensive Breast Center in Coral Springs, Fla., St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange, Calif.

More trials will be conducted on 228 patients who have large breast-cancer tumors.

“The patients who have the best results in cancer treatment, at least with breast cancer, are patients who have a sequence of different therapies, including chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and hormones,” said Dr. Hernan I. Vargas, associate professor of surgery at UCLA and lead author of the recent study. “Each one of the treatments adds a little bit. The thermotherapy might be one more tool that helps us fight this disease.”

In another study published in the Dec. 5 2007 issue of Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Sining Chen from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues found mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are not just risk factors for breast cancer in women. They raise the risk in men as well.

Breast cancer in men accounts for about 1 % of total breast cancer cases.

Early studies have shown men carrying mutations in the BRCA2 gene are at greater risk of developing breast cancer than men in the general population. Dr. Chen’s study showed that mutations in the BRCA1 gene also increase risk of the disease in men.

Dr. Chen and colleagues came to this conclusion after they studied data on 1,939 families that included 97 male breast cancer patients.

The effect of these mutations is greatest for men in their 30s and 40s and as men age, the effect will be reduced, according to the researchers.

By age 70, the odds of developing breast cancer are 1.2 percent for men with the BRCA1 mutation and 6.8 percent for men with the BRCA2 mutation.