For some other cancers, at least in the early stages, photodynamic therapy can eliminate the malignant growth entirely. This is true for lesions of the skin and esophagus, and also for some superficial lesions of the lung, said pulmonologist Michael Unger, who uses the technique at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
At University of the Sciences, Bin Chen has had some success using the approach on prostate cancer in rats and mice. He uses a laser to target the blood vessels that supply a tumor with nutrients, and recently won a four-year, $718,000 grant from the American Cancer Society to pursue the work.
The medicine being given to the bile-duct patients at Jefferson is not approved for that purpose by the Food and Drug Administration. But doctors are allowed to give it on an off-label basis. The hope is that the hospital will soon be testing it in a trial led by the University of Virginia, assuming it receives funding.
In the meantime, Correa says she has some good days, some bad. Often she is tired, but feels better than she did during chemo.
For the first few weeks, she stayed in the house until 5 p.m. each day, and she kept away from her sunlit back room. Twice, she wasn't careful and got a sunburn on her face.
Now life is starting to return to normal - as normal as it can be for someone with bile-duct cancer.
One of her sons asked her to promise that she was not going to die.
Her response, she recalls, was this:
"I can't promise you I'm not dying. I can promise you I'm doing everything I can to live."
Contact staff writer Tom Avril at 215-854-2430 or tavril@phillynews.com.
