Israeli company Alpha Tau Medical has announced an agreement with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center investigators to study the potential of Alpha Diffusing Alpha-emitters Radiation Therapy (DaRT) along with DNA-repair inhibitors and immune checkpoint inhibitors to treat breast cancer tumours.
Alpha Tau developed the alpha-radiation cancer therapy Alpha DaRT.
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As part of the research agreement, the investigators will focus on the alpha radiation mechanism and its relative efficiency in destroying cancer cells in comparison to traditional radiation modalities.
This will enable the assessment of any potential synergy in providing immune stimulation for improved breast cancer cells destruction.
Additionally, the existence of synergy will be examined between Alpha DaRT, immune checkpoint inhibitors and biological treatments that prevent DNA repair in a pre-clinical setting.
Alpha Tau CTO Ronen Segal said: “This is an extremely exciting collaboration for Alpha Tau. We are delighted to work with such an extraordinary team to examine a very promising hypothesis: that Alpha DaRT may be uniquely well-suited to treat what has been a particularly deadly and intractable form of cancer.”
Tel Aviv University professors Itzhak Kelson and Yona Keisari initially developed the Alpha DaRT technology.
Through intratumoral radium-224 impregnated sources delivery, Alpha DaRT will enable highly potent and conformal alpha-irradiation of solid tumours.
MD Anderson Radiation Physics associate professor Gabriel Sawakuchi and Radiation Oncology associate professor Simona Shaitelman will lead the study along with Alpha Tau’s translational research and physics teams.
Last October, the US Food and Drug Administration granted breakthrough device designation to Alpha DaRT to treat patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme.
