A new way to deliver cancer medicine directly to the liver may help patients with a rare and aggressive type of eye cancer that has spread.
The cancer, called metastatic uveal melanoma, starts in the eye and often spreads to the liver.
Until now, there haven’t been many good treatment options, and most patients face poor outcomes.
A large study led by Moffitt Cancer Center tested a new treatment called the melphalan hepatic delivery system, which delivers high doses of chemotherapy straight to the liver through a special procedure.
This method, known as percutaneous hepatic perfusion, uses a series of small tubes and balloons to isolate the liver.
The drug melphalan is then delivered to the liver, and before the medicine can spread to the rest of the body, it is filtered out.
This approach helps target the tumor directly while avoiding most of the usual side effects of chemotherapy.
The study, called the FOCUS trial, was recently published in the Annals of Surgical Oncology. It compared the new liver-targeted treatment to standard care in patients with uveal melanoma that had spread to the liver.
The results were promising. Patients who received the melphalan liver treatment had a much longer time before their cancer worsened—an average of 9.1 months compared to just 3.3 months for those receiving standard treatment.
They also lived longer overall: 18.5 months versus 14.5 months.
Even more encouraging, the cancer responded better to the new treatment. About 27.5% of patients saw their tumors shrink, compared to only 9.4% in the group receiving standard care.
The cancer was also better controlled overall, with 80% of patients showing stable disease or tumor shrinkage, compared to less than half in the other group.
Dr. Jonathan Zager, lead author of the study and a surgical oncologist at Moffitt, said this new treatment brings hope to patients with a cancer that has long been very hard to treat.
He explained that the procedure allows for better control of tumors in the liver without harming a patient’s quality of life.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved this treatment in August 2023, following the success of the trial. While some patients experienced side effects related to their blood counts, these were usually mild and managed with standard outpatient care.
Researchers are now planning more studies to see if combining this treatment with newer therapies could improve results even more. For now, this innovative method gives patients with metastatic uveal melanoma a new and more hopeful option.
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Source: KSR.
