Royal Philips Electronics and Celsion said that their joint research program to evaluate Celsion's heat-activated liposomal drug ThermoDox in combination with MR-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) as a combination therapy to non-invasively treat difficult cancers has successfully completed the feasibility stage.

The program has now moved into pre-clinical development and will focus on the combined use of ThermoDoxand Philips’ MR-HIFU system for the treatment of pancreatic cancer and cancer metastases in bone.

Philips said its MR-HIFU system has the potential to precisely and non-invasively target lesions with acoustic energy, creating sufficient heat to activate ThermoDox and preferentially release high concentrations of the drug doxorubicin. The firms hope this Celsion-Philips combinational treatment approach may change the paradigm for addressing a broad range of cancers.

For bone metastases, ThermoDox combined with MR-HIFU will be investigated both for tumor control as well as for palliative pain treatment. For pancreatic cancer, ThermoDox combined with MR-HIFU will be investigated for tumor control.