The Cancer Center of San Roque University Hospitals begins a clinical trial with nanoparticles in patients with advanced head and neck cancer.
Currently, patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer receive combined treatment of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. In some cases of elderly patients or patients with other concurrent diseases, it is not possible to safely administer chemotherapy. In these cases, the treatment does not reach the intensity that would be desirable to control the disease. Therefore, it is necessary to find an alternative to the enhancing effect of radiotherapy that we achieve with chemotherapy.
Nanotechnology uses nanoparticles, which are elements measured in nanometers (a nanometer is a million times smaller than a millimeter). In medicine, nanoparticles can be used to deliver antibodies, drugs, imaging agents, and other substances to specific parts of the body. The nanoparticle used in this clinical trial, NBTXR3, is the first of its kind: 50 nm nanoparticles composed of crystalline hafnium oxide (HfO2). These nanoparticles are injected into the tumor and internalized by the tumor cells.
Nanoparticles within cancer, visible by electron microscope: the composition of these Hafnium nanoparticles allows them to remain inert and be activated only by radiotherapy, converting this conventional radiation into radiation with high-energy electrons and photons, with a much greater capacity for tumor destruction, without leaving the cell itself, compared to the same dose of radiation alone, without adding toxicity to the surrounding tissues.
Preliminary trials conducted on this disease and on other more complex ones such as sarcomas show results that double the response rate, without the nanoparticles, which are inactive in the absence of radiation, being associated with any significant side effects. Activation of nanoparticles within the cancer increases damage to tumor cells.
Centers from Europe, Asia, the USA and Canada participate in this Phase III clinical trial, with the Canary Islands joining this important and innovative initiative.
