Hyperthermia prevents repair of tumor cells

BSD Medical Corporation (NASDAQ: BSDM) (Company or BSD) (www.BSDMedical.com), a leading provider of medical systems that utilize heat therapy to treat cancer, announced today that a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrated that hyperthermia can be a powerful tool to inhibit the ability of cancer cells to repair the DNA damage caused by radiation or chemotherapy. The researchers reported that the findings have the potential to significantly increase the clinical use of hyperthermia.

“The finding may have immediate applications in cancer therapeutics. It's simple, but it has big implications.”

The study (Krawczyk, PM, et al., "Mild hyperthermia inhibits homologous recombination, induces BRCA2 degradation, and sensitizes cancer cells to poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase-1 inhibition," PNAS, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1101053108, 2011) was reviewed in The Scientist (http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/58165/). Roland Kanaar, one of the researchers, summarized the study results for The Scientist, "The finding may have immediate applications in cancer therapeutics. It's simple, but it has big implications."

The findings suggest that the addition of hyperthermia could expand the use of a number of promising new cancer drugs. Efficient DNA repair mechanisms protect cancer cells from the effects of many anti-cancer therapies, thereby reducing the effectiveness of these therapies. The data showed that hyperthermia could reduce the tumor resistance sometimes observed with these anti-cancer therapies, thus increasing their effectiveness.