Carbon Ion Radiotherapy for Hepatocellular Carcinoma (PROMETHEUS-01)

University Hospital Heidelberg

Status

Terminated

Conditions

Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Treatments

Radiation: Carbon Ion Radiotherapy

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT01167374

PROMETHEUS-01

Details and patient eligibility

About

Treatment options for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are often limited. In most cases, they are not amenable to local therapies including surgery or radiofrequency ablation. The multi-kinase inhibitor sorafenib has shown to increase overall survival in this patient group for about 3 months.

Radiation therapy is a treatment alternative, however, high local doses are required for long-term local control. However, due to the relatively low radiation tolerance of liver normal tissue, even using stereotactic techniques, delivery of sufficient doses for successful local tumor control has not be achieved to date.

Carbon ions offer physical and biological characteristics. Due to their inverted dose profile and the high local dose deposition within the Bragg peak precise dose application and sparing of normal tissue is possible. Moreover, in comparison to photons, carbon ions offer an increased relative biological effectiveness (RBE), which can be calculated between 2 and 3 depending on the HCC cell line as well as the endpoint analyzed.

Japanese Data on the evaluation of carbon ion radiation therapy showed promising results for patients with HCC.

In the current Phase I-PROMETHEUS-01-Study, carbon ion radiotherapy will be evaluated for patients with advanced HCC. The study will be performed as a dose-escalation study evaluating the optimal carbon ion dose with respect to toxicity and tumor control.

Primary endpoint is toxicity, secondary endpoint is progression-free survival and response.

Enrollment

21 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18+ years old

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

histologically confirmed HCC or diagnosis of HCC according to AASLD-guidelines
macroscopic tumor
liver-confined disease without extrahepatic disease as diagnosed by CT, MRT, ultrasound and bone scan
minimal distance of tumor edge to the intestines of 1cm
age ≥ 18 years of age
Karnofsky Performance Score ³60
For women with childbearing potential, (and men) adequate contraception.
Ability of subject to understand character and individual consequences of the clinical trial
Written informed consent (must be available before enrolment in the trial)

Exclusion criteria

refusal of the patients to take part in the study
previous radiotherapy of the hepatobiliary system
margin of < 1cm between tumor edge and intestines
Patients who have not yet recovered from acute toxicities of prior therapies
Known carcinoma < 2 years ago (excluding Carcinoma in situ of the cervix, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma of the skin) requiring immediate treatment interfering with study therapy
Pregnant or lactating women
Participation in another clinical study or observation period of competing trials, respectively