Researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) have highlighted the potential benefits of treating bladder cancer with personalised radiotherapy.
More than 130,000 patients are treated on the NHS every year with radiotherapy, which works by targeting tumours with X-ray radiation. However, the current use of the treatment usually involves a ‘one size fits all’ approach, in which the dosage is the same in each session.
Published in the journal European Urology, the phase 2 RAIDER study was designed to find out whether muscle-invasive bladder cancer can be treated with adaptive radiotherapy, a method that involves changing the volume of radiotherapy depending on the area of the body being targeted.
The researchers split 345 patients into one of three groups. Patients in the first group received the same treatment plan in each session, while those in the other two were given one of a number of treatment plans, determined on a case-by-case basis in each session.
The researchers found that there were fewer serious long-term side effects six to 18 months after treatment than those reported in previous studies across all three groups, with no evidence that those who received higher dose treatment had any worse side effects compared with those who received standard radiotherapy treatment.
Approximately 10,500 new cases of bladder cancer are diagnosed in the UK every year. Healthcare workers face a number of challenges treating the disease and the changing shape and position of the bladder can create complications when delivering targeted radiotherapy.
The work was funded by Cancer Research UK, Cancer Australia and the Cancer Society of New Zealand, and also supported by the National Institute of Health and Care Research Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
Robert Huddart, professor of urological cancer and honorary consultant clinical oncologist at the Royal Marsden and group leader at the ICR said: “Delivering radiotherapy to the bladder is a challenging process. We are pleased this work into a potential new way of treating bladder cancers has allowed us to deliver effective treatment safely and allowed us to use a high dose which promises to cure more patients, with relatively few long-term side effects.
“We look forward to studying this method further to explore its effectiveness versus current treatment options.”