US man first to receive Sirtex cancer treatment

Anti-cancer treatment SIR-Spheres, designed by Sydney-based company Sirtex, has been used on a patient for the first time since it received US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in March this year.

Brian Anderson, 30, of Peoria in New York, underwent Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIRT) to treat his inoperable metastatic liver cancer at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Centre in Arizona on Wednesday, May 22.

The treatment involved placing a catheter in the femoral artery of the upper thigh and threading it through the hepatic artery (the liver's major blood vessel) to the location of the tumour.

Millions of microscopic radioactive SIR-Spheres were then delivered to the tumour through the catheter and trapped in its capillary bed, where they burned away the tumour from the inside.

The SIR-spheres remain inside the body, but after 14 days only 2.5 per cent of their radioactive activity remains.

The operation took place just a few days after Sirtex CEO Dr Colin Sutton attended a major US cancer conference to present results of recent Phase II/III clinical trials that showed 91 per cent of liver cancer patients successfully responded to SIR-Spheres treatment.

Sirtex CFO Peter Manley said the operation was the final "proof in the pudding" that the procedure worked.

The milestone event would now give the company a better idea of when to factor in sales revenue for the product, he said.

"It's fair to say that we set ourselves some goals this year - FDA approval, sales revenue," Manley said. "Another will be to get European approval [for the treatment]."

The Arizona treatment was conducted by the hospital's chief of interventional radiology, Charles Nutting, with assistance from Sirtex's medical director Dr Bruce Gray, who has already performed more than 300 of the procedures in trials.

"Cases like Mr Anderson's are, unfortunately, too common," Nutting said. "The current therapy for a secondary liver cancer is chemotherapy and a surgical resection if the tumour is confined to a small area.

"However, only 20 per cent of patients fall into that category, due to the size of the tumour, the location or other factors.

"Prior to SIRT, the options for patients like Mr Anderson involved chemotherapy and/or chemo-embolisation, neither of which works particularly well."

SIRT is performed as an outpatient procedure, so patients will be able to go home that day. Additionally, there are fewer risks and side effects to the procedure for the patient compared to the chemotherapies, and little radiation risk to family members or other persons, Nutting said.

SIRT received FDA approval in March for the treatment of malignant metastatic liver tumours secondary to large bowel cancer that cannot be treated surgically.

More than 900 patients in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand have been treated with SIRT.

Good Samaritan is a leader in using intravascular radiation for the treatment of liver cancers. The hospital has been using a similar procedure called Thera-Sphere for treatment of primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) to slow the tumour growth and allow a patient more time before a donated organ can be found.