Grant: Proof of Principle Program - Phase I

Recurrent breast cancer on chest wall is a difficult to treat disease with no standard of care. This disease occurs in 5-45% of women after mastectomy, and is often bleeding, painful, unsightly, and tedious to attend. It also creates tremendous mental distress of having visible disease, affecting the patients' quality of life. Surgical removal is seldom possible, and radiation and chemotherapy alone are usually not effective with failure rates between 30% and 55%. Enhancing local control of the chest wall tumors increases patient's survival if no distant spreads, and improves patients' quality of life. Dr. Li is developing a drug delivery technology using heat at the fever range (39-42°C) to guide and focus the dose of an anticancer drug in tumors, thereby enhancing the treatment and reducing the side effects of chemotherapy. This technology is particularly useful for locally advanced diseases, and is expected to enhance the treatment of refractory breast cancer at the chest wall.