Previously only available abroad, Hadassah is now providing a unique treatment for neuroendocrine cancer. It involves injecting patients with radioactive material that attaches to the malignant cell, and then absorbs and destroys the cell with minimal damage to other tissue. The new treatment is the outgrowth of three years of collaboration between Hadassah and Soreq Nuclear Research. The radioactive material from the United States is assembled at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, and arrives in Hadassah once a week at a set time, with an exact radiation level.
According to Dr. Asher Salmon, Senior Oncologist at Hadassah’s Sharett Institute of Oncology, the treatment successfully prolongs life expectancy for 80 percent of the patients and retards the progress of the disease among half them. “This treatment, considered one of the best and most innovative available, differs from chemotherapy, providing prolonged relief for the patients with only a few side effects,” Dr. Salmon, said. Following just one day in the hospital, patients are released and resume full functioning within several days. The treatment is fully financed by the Ministry of Health and administered at the Sharett Institute.
With the death of Steve Jobs, visionary founder of Apple who suffered from this disease, neuroendocrine cancer captured the headlines. Neuroendocrine tumors vary in aggression and behavior. Characterized by an increased ability to absorb the hormone somatostatin, most develop in the gastrointestinal tract or pancreas, but they can also appear in every organ of the body. The new treatment attaches a similar molecule to the hormone, which is then attached to a radioactive atom. The atom, in turn, binds to receptors on the outer membrane, is absorbed into the malignant cell and emits ionizing radiation that destroys the cancerous cell, while barely harming healthy tissue.
This month, Hadassah will treat seven patients with the new method – and about 50 during the remainder of the year. The treatment is a combined effort of Hadassah’s departments of endocrinology, oncology, nuclear medicine and radiology. Dr. Salmon, Prof. David Gross, acting director of the The Endocrinology and Metabolism Service and deputy director of the Department of Medical Biophysics and Nuclear Medicine, and Dr. Martin Klein of that department, participate in this complex medical treatment.