Outcome of photodynamic therapy using NPe6 for bronchogenic carcinomas in central airways >1.0 cm in diameter

Most centrally located early lung cancers (CLELC) <1.0 cm in diameter do not invade beyond the bronchial cartilage, and photodynamic therapy (PDT) with Photofrin is currently recommended as a treatment option for such lesions. NPe6 is a second-generation photosensitizer, and because it has a longer absorption band (664 nm) than Photofrin (630 nm), we hypothesized that NPe6-PDT would exert a strong antitumor effect against cancer lesions >1.0 cm in diameter, which are assumed to involve extracartilaginous invasion and to be unsuitable for treatment with Photofrin-PDT.

Between June 2004 and December 2008, 75 patients (91 lesions) with CLELC underwent NPe6-PDT after the extent of their tumors had been assessed by fluorescence bronchoscopy for photodynamic diagnosis and tumor depth had been assessed by optical coherence tomography.

Seventy cancer lesions < or =1.0 cm in diameter and 21 lesions >1.0 cm in diameter were identified, and the complete response rate was 94.0% (66 of 70) and 90.4% (19 of 21), respectively. After the mass of large tumors and deeply invasive tumors had been reduced by electrocautery, NPe6-PDT was capable of destroying the residual cancer lesions.

NPe6-PDT has a strong antitumor effect against CLELCs >1.0 cm in diameter that have invaded beyond the bronchial cartilage, thereby enabling the destruction of residual cancer lesions after mass reduction of large nodular- or polypoid-type lung cancers by electrocautery. The PDT guidelines for lung cancers should therefore be revised because use of NPe6-PDT will enable expansion of the clinical indications for PDT.