Talking about cancer is never a conversation families like to have, but if you or someone you love is diagnosed with cancer, it is important to know that treatment options exist. Bassett Cancer Institute offers excellent care right here in Central New York — including several new advanced therapies in the field of radiation that are offering fresh hope for some patients. What’s more, they are paving the way for future treatments.
How Radiation Treatment Works
When using radiation to treat cancer, oncologists need to thread a delicate needle. On one hand, more intense radiation will more thoroughly damage and kill cancer cells. On the other, intense radiation increases the risk to a patient’s healthy cells. Most of the time, we have to strike a balance between cancer damage and collateral damage based on the cancer type and stage. In an ideal world, however, we would be able to administer very intense radiation energy to only the cancer cells and nothing else. This is now becoming possible.
A New Class of Targeted Medications
Over the last few decades, medical engineers have developed a new class of cancer treatments called radiopharmaceuticals. Each of these prescription medications is designed to bind with specific types of cells — and no others. By attaching a source of radiation to drugs that bind a certain type of cancer cell, we can send a radiation cancer treatment through someone’s body and have it arrive (and stay) exactly where we need it to. We can do this without excess radiation passing through the body and doing too much damage to the healthy cells.
This concept might sound familiar if you or a loved one have been treated for thyroid cancer. Since thyroid cells actively absorb iodine but other cells don’t, radioactive iodine has been the go-to treatment for thyroid cancer since the 1940s. It is the original radiopharmaceutical on which these new treatments are modeled.
New Hope for Specific Patients
The targeting feature of radiopharmaceuticals is also a limiting factor. Each drug is developed to treat a specific form of cancer that affects a specific kind of cell.
Over the last two years, Bassett Healthcare Network has brought two of these treatments to Central New York: Pluvicto and Lutathera. Pluvicto is designed to treat advanced and resistant forms of prostate cancer and Lutathera is designed to treat a specific form of solid neuroendocrine tumors called GEP-NETs for which there are few treatment options. Pluvicto and Lutathera are improving care outcomes while minimizing side effects for patients and providing an advanced treatment to the patients locally in our area.
Another New Treatment
In addition to radiopharmaceuticals, another radiation treatment is called brachytherapy. “Brachy” means “close” or “near” and brachytherapy treatment involves putting active radiation sources in or near a tumor.
The Bassett Cancer Institute in Cooperstown is now serving as a clinical trial site for Alpha DaRT, a breakthrough investigational cancer treatment that targets solid tumors. Bassett is the first site to achieve New York State Department of Health regulatory approval and it is the only site statewide inside this trial outside New York City to date.
Alpha DaRT (Diffusing Alpha-emitters Radiation Therapy) is the first localized anticancer therapy which is designed to leverage the specific therapeutic properties of alpha particles to treat solid tumors.
Alpha DaRT has great potential to improve outcomes for people with certain forms of cancer. Bassett Healthcare Network is proud to help advance the use of this therapy as well as offer it to our patients and neighbors across the state and region. Learn more about the clinical trial for recurrent squamous-cell skin cancer by calling toll-free at 877-547-1750 or emailing clinicaltrials@bassett.org.
A Brighter Future
These cancer treatment developments should give encouragement to all of us, not just the specific patients poised to directly benefit from these therapies. With every treatment we develop, we learn more, making additional radiation medications easier to develop and produce in the future. Likewise, Alpha DaRT is something new and different that can advance the field.
Although many of us don’t like to think about cancer, we should all feel assured that resources are being directed toward treatment advancements every day, striving to bring hope to those who need it. I don’t wish a trip to my office on anyone. But for those who need one, I am glad to have some new options on the table.