Could light therapy beat cancer?
5/22/2007 United Kingdom Jerome Burne Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk) A cancer treatment that is less invasive and gruelling than conventional procedures - and cheaper - is the Holy Grail of oncology research. So imagine if that treatment already existed. The fact is, it does - but few people know about it and few hospitals offer it. Photodynamic therapy uses tumour-killing drugs that are activated by light. With skin cancer, first a cream is rubbed onto the affected area, then a light shone onto the cancer for 20 minutes. This creates a form of oxygen which destroys the tumour. The same technique can be used to treat cancers inside the body, if the area can be accessed with an endoscope (a flexible tube) containing a light The patient needs just one treatment - unlike the repeated doses required for radiotherapy or chemotherapy, and the side-effects (pain, swelling and nausea) are far milder. Photodynamic therapy is also cheaper - doctors offering the treatment claim it costs less than half the price of chemotherapy. But despite its promise as the next generation of cancer treatment, photodynamic therapy is not widely available. There are just seven hospitals in the UK offering it as a regular treatment, even though it is licensed by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence for cancers of the skin, head, neck and oesophagus. Now the veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost has agreed to help an appeal to increase awareness about the treatment, and to raise £50million to fund research. "I can't [...]