Treatment with Sirtex Medical‘s (ASX:SRX) Y-90 resin microspheres and chemotherapy was associated with a statistically significant gain in potentially curative liver resectability, according to data published earlier this week.
The results come 1 week after the Australian company reported that its radioactive microspheres had no effect in improving survival in patients with colorectal cancer in its Foxfire analysis.
The latest study was conducted by a panel of surgeons, who performed independent, blinded analyses of baseline and follow-up scans chosen at random.
“We performed a blinded evaluation of the extensive radiological database of the recently-reported Sirflox study to compare potential liver resectability at baseline and follow-up,” principal author Dr. Benjamin Garlipp said in prepared remarks. “We found that while resectability increased from baseline to follow-up in both the chemotherapy only arm and the chemotherapy + SIRT arm of the Sirflox study, the increase was significantly more pronounced in patients receiving the combination treatment – 38.1% of these were resectable on the basis of their liver CT scan at follow-up, compared to 28.9% of the patients receiving chemotherapy only (p<0.0001).”
“This is an important finding because surgical resection is the mainstay of potentially curative treatments for these patients, and there is an increasing body of evidence suggesting that it can prolong their lives even though most of them eventually recur.”
“As a surgeon, it is always my aim to offer the option of a potentially curative liver resection to patients with mCRC. We know that in many patients with metastatic colorectal cancer the liver is the only organ with cancer deposits, and converting patients from a stage where resection of the disease is not possible into one where potential curative resection becomes an option again has an enormous impact for patients. This retrospective analysis suggests that SIRT with Y-90 resin microspheres could be a means to achieving resection for more of these patients,” Garlipp said.
Shares in the company have fallen more than 20% since it reported results from its Foxfire trial. SRX shares closed at $11.89 apiece today, up +0.7%.
