The short version
- Hong Kong’s Li Ka Shing Foundation is funding 30 places in kidney-tumor trials of histotripsy, which breaks up tumors with focused ultrasound from outside the body.
- The trials will run at CUHK Medical Centre, Gleneagles Hospital Hong Kong and Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital, and no design or start date has been published.
- Histotripsy is approved for liver tumors, while its use in the kidney still rests on a 67-patient company trial whose results are not out.
Hong Kong will run clinical trials of histotripsy for kidney tumors, with the Li Ka Shing Foundation paying for 30 patient places, The Standard and Caixin reported on November 11. The trials will take place at CUHK Medical Centre, Gleneagles Hospital Hong Kong and Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital, and are billed as the first of their kind in Asia. Neither report gives a trial design, an endpoint, a start date or a registry number.
Histotripsy aims short pulses of focused ultrasound through the skin so that bubbles form and collapse inside the tumor and break it apart. It is approved for liver tumors in the US, Europe, Taiwan and, since this month, Singapore. According to the foundation, more than 400 people in Hong Kong have been treated with it over two years, and its pancreatic trials have reached 20 cases at Gleneagles since March 31 and six at CUHK Medical Centre since June 3. Its liver programme cuts the price from about HK$260,000 to HK$50,000 for 200 patients over three years.
For kidney tumors the evidence so far is one company trial, #HOPE4KIDNEY, which treated 67 patients in a single arm. The company filed it with the FDA in May, and its results have not been published, as our histotripsy feature set out on Sunday.
