Role of whole-body hyperthermia in the treatment of neoplastic disease: its current status and future prospects

Abstract

Modern cancer therapy has included surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and most recently, immunotherapy and hyperthermia. As neoplastic diseases are heterogeneous in regard to each cell subpopulation's response to a given therapy, a multimodality treatment approach should enhance the changes of all subpopulations of cells being killed. The potential of hyperthermia as a treatment modality for cancer was first predicted following observations that several types of cancer cells were more sensitive to temperatures in excess of 41 degrees than were their normal cell counterparts. Beyond these studies, there now is preclinical evidence as well as the clinical suggestion that hyperthermia potentiates radiation and/or drugs for the treatment of cancer. As most cancers refractory to conventional therapy are systemic diseases, the proposal that whole-body hyperthermia in combination with other therapies be used to treat metastatic disease is an inherently attractive approach. The basis and the practicality of this proposal is presented here with suggestions for its application to current preclinical and clinical research.