Thermal Therapy in the Treatment of Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma

As presented by Dr. Robert Cameron at the 11^th International Conference of the International Mesothelioma Interest Group (iMig)  

Boston, MA – September 11-14, 2012

Thermal therapy has been used in cancer therapy for decades and hyperthermic chemotherapy perfusion, specifically, has been used in the treatment of mesothelioma but without data as to the optimal conditions.

In a study performed at UCLA, doctors sought to define in vitro the most effective strategy for the use of thermal therapy in pleural mesothelioma. They exposed three human mesothelioma cell lines to varying hyper and hyperthermic conditions using either a standard metabolic MTS absorbance assay or a standard clonogenic (which is a microbiology technique for studying the effectiveness of specific agents on the survival and proliferation of cells). Each cell line was then expanded and exposed to varying combination of hyperthermia, hypothermia and/or chemotherapy – using chemotherapy agents cisplatin, gemicitabine, and/or pemetrexed.

Their findings show that thermal therapy appears to be most effective when using hypothermia rather than hyperthermia, and chemotherapy appears to be most effective when using two drug combinations over one individually. Click here to view this abstract.