Philips and Celsion Advance Development of Cancer Drug
- Posted on 19 October 2009
Royal Philips Electronics and Celsion Corporation have announced the results of their joint research program to evaluate ThermoDox – the latter company’s heat-activated liposomal drug, in combination with magnetic resonance guided high intensity focused ultrasound (MR-HIFU) as a combination therapy. The therapy which is used to non-invasively treat difficult cancers, has successfully completed the feasibility stage.
The program has now moved into pre-clinical development and will focus on the combined use of the drug and Philips’ MR-HIFU system for the treatment of pancreatic cancer and cancer metastases in bone.
The MR-HIFU system has the potential to precisely and non-invasively target lesions with acoustic energy, creating sufficient heat to activate ThermoDox and preferentially release high concentrations of the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin. This Celsion-Philips combinational treatment approach may change the paradigm for addressing a broad range of cancers.
An Investigational New Drug (IND) submission is planned for early 2010, following successful completion of the pre-clinical studies.
For bone metastases, ThermoDox combined with MR-HIFU will be investigated both for tumor control as well as for palliative pain treatment.
