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Patch Makes Certain Skin Cancers Disappear

Posted by samzenpus on from the peel-and-no-sick dept.

kkleiner writes "What if treating skin cancer was just a matter of wearing a patch for a few hours? At this year's Society of Nuclear Medicine's Annual Meeting one group of researchers presented such a patch. The patch is infused with phosphorus-32, a radioactive isotope used to treat some types of cancer. In a study of 10 patients with basal cell carcinoma located on their faces, the patch was applied for three hours, then for another three hours four and seven days later. Six months after treatment, 8 of the patients were cancer free."

31 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Too Small A Sample by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is great news, and wonderful progress, but a sample of 10 patients isn't big enough. Hopefully this will get into full trials soon and then make it to market.

    1. Re:Too Small A Sample by rasmusbr · · Score: 5, Informative

      Basal cell is one of the least malignant forms of cancer there is and mostly occurs in old people, so it's not like it's going to save a ton of lives.

      In fact, I bet one of the reasons why this treatment would make sense is that there is typically no rush to cure the tumor and then you might as well try a non-intrusive treatment like a patch first and only go for surgery if the patch doesn't kill the cancer.

    2. Re:Too Small A Sample by wvmarle · · Score: 5, Interesting

      A sample of ten is normal in medical terms.

      I have participated in medical research as volunteer (mostly for trials on the uptake of drugs e.g. inhale vs. intravenous) and sample size was normally 6-12 patients. No more than that, I was told that such a sample size is large enough. Also costs are high of those experiments, which is an incentive to keep sizes small.

      For such a first experiment, a group of ten patients sounds very reasonable to me. Now they can follow those patients for a while to see if there are any after effects, and if all looks good continue with larger trials, potentially making it a standard treatment for this cancer.

    3. Re:Too Small A Sample by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, you do slough off a lot of cells with your genome in them with every stool, so you are in fact shitting genes every time.

    4. Re:Too Small A Sample by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Basal cell is one of the least malignant forms of cancer there is and mostly occurs in old people, so it's not like it's going to save a ton of lives.

      and yet it is what killed my grandfather, so I'm sure for the lives it does save (or extend) the patients will be appreciative.

  2. CancerOff! by Daetrin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apply directly to the [cancerous] forehead!

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    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
  3. Science! by Georules · · Score: 3, Funny

    All that science and what we do is put radiation creme on a bandaid. good 'nuff.

    1. Re:Science! by Mystakaphoros · · Score: 4, Funny

      Worked in Fallout.

  4. And as usual... by wonkavader · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...there was no control group.

    1. Re:And as usual... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      To be fair Basal cell carcinoma has pretty much a 0% chance of resolving untreated.

    2. Re:And as usual... by Dynedain · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm sure there's enough statistical studies out there that show skin cancer doesn't just disappear.

      So control group not necessary.

      --
      I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
    3. Re:And as usual... by bmo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because we already know what happens to untreated cancers and have the statistics already gathered. We can compare the efficacy of these radioactive bandages to the data collected for untreated skin cancers over the last 100 years. We can then compare the efficacy or lack thereof to the historic numbers.

      But we don't have to do that either. We can compare the efficacy of this treatment to other established treatments as controls. It will be either more or less effective. The key is to have something to compare.

      Having people go untreated for the sake of formality is unconscionable.

      --
      BMO

    4. Re:And as usual... by wonkavader · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, you need the non-treated bandaids as a control. Unless you can show that the same techniques were already used in almost identical conditions with untreated bandaids, in which case we can compare against that. It's not high-quality, but it's something. And unless the patients were told in this other study from which we're borrowing the control, that the bandaids have a radioactive pellet on them, it's not really testing all your conditions.

      You don't know, in this case, whether it's the bandaid, the radioactive agent, or the placibo effect.

      Having thousands or even millions of people later treated using a technique you haven't studied properly is what's really unconscionable, and this happens in medicine all the time.

    5. Re:And as usual... by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 2

      They don't use band-aids. The controls for these studies are whatever the best existing treatment is. The study succeeds if it outperforms the current gold standard.

    6. Re:And as usual... by Taevin · · Score: 2

      Except that we're talking about a life-threatening medical condition. This isn't like arthritis medication or ED pills. It's one thing to conduct a study where you give one group a known treatment that improves patients' chances of not dying a painful death by X% and another a new treatment that may or may not do anything. It's quite another to say that whoever gets put in the control group is just SOL. You have to balance ethics with scientific efficacy. Surely you wouldn't suggest an acceptable protocol for a heart attack treatment would be for anyone randomly placed in the control group to have a team of doctors stand there and watch while they died/suffered permanent heart damage? Even if you do find that acceptable, I doubt an ethics review board will agree.

    7. Re:And as usual... by LordLucless · · Score: 3, Informative

      Basal cell cancinoma is not life-threatening. The rest of your post is irrelevant.

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
  5. Radiation by sideslash · · Score: 2

    So... if you treat your (non-lethal) basal cell carcinoma with a radioactive patch, can you accidentally give yourself (highly lethal) melanoma?

    1. Re:Radiation by wvmarle · · Score: 2

      This phosphorus-32 is a beta-emitter, and being applied directly to the skin the dose is highest at the tumour, and then quickly decreases as the particles disperse, and are stopped by other matter.

      It is of course not something to leave on for long time, it will damage you. The principle of course, like with all radiation therapy, is that the damage done is less than the problem solved. Also I would expect that this can be applied to other skin cancers that are sensitive to radiation, making the treatment even more interesting.

  6. no... it is like medicine. by goombah99 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Radiation differentially kills rapidly dividing cells more than non-dividing cells. Hence it is a poison that affects cancer cells more than normal cells.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:no... it is like medicine. by viperidaenz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yet TFA makes it seem like you rub "radiation" on a patch and it can make cancer "disappear".

      But that's exactly what they did. They put radioactive material on a patch and the cancer disappeared.

  7. Proof of concept by chooks · · Score: 5, Informative

    Basal cell carcinomas are locally invasive but do not metastasize. Excision with negative margins is curative. Where I can see this beneficial is with larger tumors that are more difficult to resect without severe disfigurement, or as neoadjuvant therapy to shrink tumor size prior to surgery (as is done with other tumors in other body locations).

    However, unnecessary radiation to the head and neck has historically proven to cause more harm than good (e.g. treatment of acne with x-rays which then was linked to papillary thyroid carcinoma). So...not sure how I excited I would be personally to do this without getting more data.

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    -- The Genesis project? What's that?
    1. Re:Proof of concept by istartedi · · Score: 2

      According to Wiki it beta decays into an electron which can be blocked with "5 mm of perspex". I'm not sure how human tissue compares with the blocking power of perspex. The other particle is an electron anti-neutrino (!) which passes harmlessly through almost everything. No gamma radiation is produced. No neutrons are produced.

      If I had to be irradiated with something, Phosphorus 32 doesn't sound that bad.

      --
      For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    2. Re:Proof of concept by XiaoMing · · Score: 3, Insightful

      According to Wiki it beta decays into an electron which can be blocked with "5 mm of perspex". I'm not sure how human tissue compares with the blocking power of perspex. The other particle is an electron anti-neutrino (!) which passes harmlessly through almost everything. No gamma radiation is produced. No neutrons are produced.

      If I had to be irradiated with something, Phosphorus 32 doesn't sound that bad.

      Ionizing radiation can both cause and cure cancer via DNA damage. If this patch can destroy cancerous DNA, it also has a nonzero chance of creating more cancerous cells in healthy cells. So no, you can't make-believe that it's curing cancer while the rest of your skin is immune to its effects.

      Additionally, most polymers can roughly be approximated as tissue-equivalent as far as penetration depth goes (only density matters to first order), which means that these electrons will penetrate up to 5mm (half a centimeter, mind you) of skin. That's well beyond the ~1mm of dead epidermal skin, and can reach the dermal stem cells.

      Moral is if you're ever drunk at a party and see 32P laying around, remember that Wikipedia doesn't empower you to be immune to cancer.

    3. Re:Proof of concept by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It also doesn't empower people from posting stupid things on Slashdot....

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus-32#Nuclear_medicine

      P-32 is *injected* into people! Placed on skin at a tumor site it is very target specific, with minimal collateral damage. Clearly, the course of action is it damages cells resulting in local inflammation and immune system cleaning up the remains, including the damaged tumor (not all tumor cells need to be damaged for the resulting body reaction to kill it).

      This belief that radiation magically causes specific changes resulting in malignant cancers is stupid beyond belief. Radiation is a *neutral* ionizing agent - chance it causes specific mutations is very small.

      If you want to worry about specific mutations causing cancer, worry about the crap you are breathing and eating that has nothing to do with radiation. Chemicals we have everywhere (including sprayed on food) are much more potent carcinogens than low level radiation or a tiny spot-beta emitter patch.

      If you want to talk about danger of P-32, that danger is to the people that administer it to patients. In comparison, they get much higher dose over the course of their jobs.

    4. Re:Proof of concept by Turksarama · · Score: 3, Insightful

      5mm may be fairly deep, but remember that the amount of radiation drops of exponentially AND radiation is much better at killing cancerous cells than it is at converting healthy cells into cancerous ones. Worst case scenario is you get a new cancer where the old one already was, which you are probably watching very closely so it'll be picked up early.

    5. Re:Proof of concept by TheSeatOfMyPants · · Score: 2

      Basal cell carcinomas are locally invasive but do not metastasize. Excision with negative margins is curative.

      It's not flat-out curative -- the current approach is Mohs surgery, and that has a 94-97% effectiveness depending on whether the cancer is new or a recurrence. Wikipedia explains the reasons in case you're curious.

      --
      Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
    6. Re:Proof of concept by XiaoMing · · Score: 2

      Malignancy due to radiation is not deterministic. To treat it as "worst case scenario" is very irresponsible. Also, electron dose drops off in a non-analytical fashion dependent on the spectrum of the incident beam.

    7. Re:Proof of concept by Turksarama · · Score: 2

      If you can think of a worse scenario than another cancer forming I'd like to know what it is. You also talk as if people who've looked into this more than either of us weren't already using beta radiation to treat cancers. The only difference between this and other radiation therapies is that the radiation is more precisely targeted. If you can make a convincing case that this is somehow more dangerous than current treatments I will gladly concede the point.

  8. Now... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 2

    If only they can fix it where the people who use it don't start stomping around Tokyo breathing fire and knocking buildings down, it will be ready for market.

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    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  9. Not /that/ old... by TheSeatOfMyPants · · Score: 2

    It wouldn't be saving lives simply because basal cell is barely malignant -- since it often strikes people in their 50s and 60s, their age wouldn't have much to do with it, as they're likely to live another 25+ years.

    (It's also hard to consider Mohs surgery invasive, as it's basically a skin equivalent to having a cavity treated, but that's more a matter of perspective... I think of "invasive" as referring to something that's done on the inside of the body and would be very painful without anesthetic.)

    --
    Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
  10. Re:this is illegal by Turksarama · · Score: 2

    From what little I can find on the UK law at least, it is only illegal if you do not have "sufficient" scientific proof to back up your claim which to me at least seems perfectly reasonable. This law was put in place to stop people from doing things like selling magnets and colloidal silver claiming that it can cure or decrease risk of cancer.