Ultrasound-enhanced Uptake of Chemotherapy in Patients With Inoperable Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma
Status:
Recruiting
Trial end date:
2024-03-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer have extremely poor prognosis with five year
survival below 8% in Norway. Life-prolonging chemotherapy has very limited effect, but is the
only therapeutic option for these patients. This tumor is characterized by poor uptake and
chemoresistance. Toxic effects on healthy tissue restrict doses applied and maintenance of
treatment intensity. This severely limits clinical outcome. Increasing the local uptake of
chemotherapy has potential benefits for patients in connection to side effects, survival and
possible cure. Treatment with Focused Ultrasound (FUS) combined with microbubbles (MBs) is
proved promising to improve treatment response in animal and clinical trials. Ultrasound can
induce biological effects deep inside the body without surgical intervention. This opens for
local delivery of drugs at desired sites. FUS in combination with regular contrast MBs has
been reported to influence the delivery of drugs to tumors.
In this trial FUS and MB will be applied to locally advanced pancreatic cancers shortly after
the administration of conventional chemotherapy. Primary aim of the trial is to investigate
whether the effect of the cytostatic drug, measured in tumor volume, can be increased.