Earlier this year, we had the opportunity to speak with Jarmo, a patient who was treated with boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) more than a decade ago by clinicians at Helsinki University Hospital (HUS), one of the main centers of research for BNCT.
Jarmo’s experience with cancer began in 1994, when a cancerous mole on his leg was removed. His doctors had caught the cancer early and thought it was unlikely to spread.
Years later, however, in 2009, the cancer returned in a lymph node in Jarmo’s left groin. His doctors were able to remove the cancerous lymph node, but another tumor appeared on top of the wound that resisted several forms of treatment, including surgery and conventional radiation.
At the time, a clinical trial at Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) that had investigated BNCT to treat head and neck cancer had recently concluded, with results published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics.
Since Jarmo’s cancer had proven to be resistant to other treatments, his physicians, including Dr. Leena Kankaanranta, an investigator on the clinical trial conducted at HUS, considered whether BNCT might be used to treat the tumor.
“We knew that BPA was originally developed for melanoma treatment, so we thought that this would be a good case to try BNCT, even if the location of the cancer was different than in previous clinical trials,” said Hanna Koivunoro, Ph.D., who served as medical physicist for the Phase 1/2 BNCT clinical trial at HUS during her clinical residency. Koivunoru is now Chief Medical Physicist at Neutron Therapeutics, a strategic partner of Aviko Radiopharmaceuticals.
As a patient with skin cancer, Jarmo was not a typical BNCT recipient. Over the course of its clinical history, BNCT has rarely been used to treat skin cancers. Most clinical trials — like the one conducted at HUS — have investigated how BNCT can be used to treat head and neck cancers. Other studies have examined how the modality can be used to treat brain cancers.
But after consultation with his physicians, Jarmo decided to move forward with BNCT. He received an intravenous administration of a drug called boronophenylalanine, or BPA, which is often used as part of BNCT. The neutron source was generated by a nuclear research reactor called Finland Reactor 1 (FiR 1), located in Espoo, Finland.
No Aviko Radiopharmaceuticals or Neutron Therapeutics products were used in Jarmo’s treatment. These companies’ products have not received marketing authorization from the FDA and they are not commercially available.
As he notes in our interview, Jarmo’s tumor responded to the therapy in a matter of weeks. Following his first treatment, Jarmo received another treatment of BNCT for a tumor in a lymph node in his right groin. As of today, neither cancer has returned. “Now I have been ‘clean’ for five years,” he said. “I’m living a normal life.”
Jarmo’s experience with BNCT illustrates this treatment’s potential for use in different types of cancers. Through their partnership, Aviko Radiopharmaceuticals, Neutron Therapeutics and Leo Cancer Care are working to bring the next generation of BNCT to patients in need in the U.S.
