According to reports, the treatment method was developed by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) director researcher Kobayashi Hisakataka and others, and it was implemented by a US bio-risk company. The clinical trials have targeted several patients with head or neck cancers to confirm safety, and strive to obtain approval within a few years.
Kobayashi said: "The clinical trials in Japan started earlier than expected. It can be expected that the side effects will be small and the effectiveness will be high."
It is said that the method of treatment is to link antibodies that bind to many proteins on the surface of cancer cells and substances that react to near infrared rays and use them as medicines. The drug is injected into the patient, and after the cancer site is irradiated with light the next day, the drug connected to the cancer cell undergoes a chemical reaction, prompting the cancer cell to rupture.
Moreover, the human immune system responds to the ruptured cancer cell components, so it is expected to be effective against cancers that have metastasized far away from the irradiation site.
The report pointed out that near infrared rays are harmless to the human body and have high safety. For deep-seated cancers that are far away from the body surface, the injection needle can also be irradiated through an optical fiber with a diameter of 1 to 2 mm.
The subjects of clinical trials are patients who have recurred head or neck cancer and have not been effective through standard treatment. In previous clinical trials conducted in the United States, it was reported that 14 out of 15 patients receiving treatment had a smaller cancerous area, and one of them had cancer disappeared. It is reported that among them, the treatment effect of patients lasts for a long time.