New hope for advanced stage nasopharynx cancer patients:
¡@¡@Conventional radiotherapy can achieve a local control rate of around 60 % in NPC patients with locally advanced disease. For the last 5 years the radiation oncology team in the Prince of Wales Hospital has developed the use of IMRT in an attempt to improve local control in patients with advanced disease. Dr Kwan Wing Hong, Honorary Clinical Associate Professor of the Department of Clinical Oncology, commented that "we reached a plateau after 2 decades of refining the conventional radiotherapy techniques, and a new standard has now been set using IMRT". ¡@¡@Dr Michael Kam, Honorary Clinical Assistant Professor of the Department of Clinical Oncology, who has spear-headed the development of the technology of IMRT, has reported on the excellent results of the largest Asian series of advanced NPC patients treated with IMRT in the December issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics, achieving a 3 year local control rate of 88% in patients with locally advanced disease. "This technique is labour-intensive for the doctors and physicists involved, but the hard work is worthwhile since previously incurable cases can now be satisfactorily treated", said Dr Kam. ¡@¡@With the ground-breaking clinical studies conducted at The Chinese University of Hong Kong developing combined chemotherapy-radiotherapy treatment, survival rates of NPC patients with locoregionally advanced disease have significantly improved. However, with about 30% of patients failing with distant metastases, novel approaches are still very much needed. ¡@¡@Professor Anthony Chan, Director of the Hong Kong Cancer Institute and Chairman of the Department of Clinical Oncology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Professor Qian Tao, Head of the Cancer Epigenetics and Tumour Virology Laboratory in the Sir YK Pao Centre for Cancer, have successfully demonstrated for the first time in a group of NPC patients who have failed standard therapies, that demethylation of the EBV genome can be achieved using Azacytidine, a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology with a leading editorial describing the work as "a model for future trials in solid tumors". ¡@¡@"At the Hong Kong Cancer Institute and the Department of Clinical Oncology of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, we are committed to bringing novel therapeutic strategies and new hope to cancer patients in Hong Kong," said Professor Chan. |