New Clinical Trial of Focused Ultrasound–Enhanced Chemotherapy for Pancreatic Cancer

Published:

Key Points

  • The University of Oxford has begun a Phase I clinical trial investigating heat-activated chemotherapy triggered by focused ultrasound in patients with pancreatic cancer.
  • The “PanDox” study uses Celsion Corporation’s ThermoDox® – a proprietary heat-activated liposomal encapsulation of the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin.
  • Researchers will compare ThermoDox plus focused ultrasound to enhance delivery of the drug in unresectable pancreatic tumors versus systemic delivery of free doxorubicin.

PanDoxDiagramThe University of Oxford has announced the start of a Phase I clinical trial investigating heat-activated chemotherapy triggered by focused ultrasound in patients with pancreatic cancer.

The 18-patient “PanDox” trial will use Celsion Corporation’s ThermoDox® – a proprietary heat-activated liposomal encapsulation of the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin. Researchers will evaluate whether focused ultrasound can enhance the concentration of the ThermoDox in unresectable pancreatic tumors over systemic delivery of free doxorubicin.

In all, 12 patients will receive ThermoDox® intravenously, which will be locally activated by focused ultrasound–mediated hyperthermia. The trial is using the Model JC200 Focused Ultrasound System (Chongqing Haifu Medical Technology Company, Ltd, Chongqing, China), which is clinically approved (CE-marked) for tumor therapy in Europe and China. The remaining six patients will receive systemic doxorubicin without focused ultrasound.

The trial is sponsored by the University of Oxford and supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. Professor Mark Middleton, MD, Head of the Department of Oncology at the University of Oxford is the chief clinical investigator, and Professor Constantin Coussios, FREng, PhD, Director of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, is the lead scientific investigator.

The trial is similar to the TARDOX study, which demonstrated that ThermoDox® plus focused ultrasound increased doxorubicin tumor concentrations by up to 10-fold and enhanced nuclear drug uptake in patients with liver tumors. The results of the TARDOX study were published in 2018 in Lancet Oncology and Radiology.

Read the Press Release >

For Patients

If you are interested in learning more about this clinical trial, please contact the PanDox trial team at the University of Oxford at +44 (0)1865 227198 or octo-pandox@oncology.ox.ac.uk.

Learn more on ClinicalTrials.gov >