UPLAND — Thoracic surgeon Dr. Joseph Whitlark sat in his office and held a long, thin shiny silver needle approximately the thickness of a string of thread on his lap.
This device called the Aliya Pulsed Electrical Field technology is only offered at a few locations across the United States, including Crozer-Chester Medical Center, and it may change the face of cancer treatment.
“We’re on the cutting edge right now,” Whitlark said. “My prediction is this will be very commonplace. It appears to be promising and in one person, it was really great.”
The director of robotic surgery for Crozer Health explained how Aliya works.
He drew a diagram of a cancer cell on his whiteboard, explaining that the cancer DNA is in the cell’s nucleus.
“With cancer, cancer hides their mutation from our immune system,” he said. “Our immune system doesn’t recognize cancer so it allows it to grow.”
With the pulsed electrical field technology, a brief high-amplitude, non-thermal pulse of energy ruptures the nucleus of the cancer cell and releases the cancer DNA, allowing human antibodies to be created to rid the body of cancer.
It can be administered at the same time as a biopsy.
Whitlark explained.
“I take a long flexible needle. I put it through my bronchoscope and we do a biopsy and (the pathologists) come back and tell us that’s a cancer,” he said. “I take that biopsy needle and I put it back in and then I just put (the Aliya) in the other end of the biopsy needle and the electricity is generated down at a certain wavelength until we get this effect.
When we put that catheter in, we allow DNA and other proteins to leak out. Our immune system sees it and has a … response, so we make tons of antibodies,” he said.
In addition, since it’s nonthermal, it does not cause tissue damage, according to Whitlark.
“It leaves nerves and blood vessels, it leaves all of that intact,” he said. “It’s very safe.”
Whitlark said he knew the inventors of the Aliya because they had worked with the bronchoscope company he knew well.
“I started hearing about this well over a year ago because I knew all these guys,” he said. “When they got their FDA approval in June, they said, ‘We would like you to have one.’ Crozer administration was really great because they came and said, ‘We’ll help you do this.’ “
He said there are only eight in the entire United States, although not all of them are functional. He said Crozer Health did its first case on Oct. 14.
A success story
Whitlark shared the story of his 71-year-old male patient.
“The case was a gentleman who had a terrible sarcoma,” the surgeon said. “We diagnosed it and he had it in his thigh. It was in his heart. He had tons of nodules in his chest. They were metastatic.”
Whitlark said the treatment for sarcoma is limited.
“You can operate on them. They do get some chemotherapy, but they’re not effective,” he said. “We get this guy, the thing is growing in the wall of his heart so we can’t operate on him. He had numerous, numerous nodules in both lungs. You can’t take them out. And, he had it in his thigh.”
“We treated him and six weeks after we treated him with no other therapy, half of his nodules were gone and the mass on his heart is 60 percent smaller,” Whitlark said.
In fact, the 71-year-old has returned to his municipal job that’s physically intensive and involves getting in and out of sewers.
“He feels fine,” Whitlark said. “He’s back to work … You have to understand we just put the needle in this guy’s groin and his lung lesions got better and the heart lesions got better.”
A world of potential
The surgeon said he’s receiving calls from all over the country about this case.
“That is a remarkable case and that’s also a case that people are very interested in,” he said, describing it as the ‘abscopal effect.’
“What that is, is when treating cancer locally in one part of the body results in a response all over the body. Our case illustrated that great.”
He said he’s treated different cancers with the Aliya.
“We have treated lung cancers,” he said. “Tomorrow, I’m going to treat an esophageal cancer and another lung cancer. Yesterday, we treated another sarcoma. I have a different kind of chest cancer later this week.”
Because of its newness, researchers and developers are still trying to determine what conditions in humans result in the most successful cases.
Whitlark said right now, there are four main ways to treat cancer: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy.
“Those are the four pillars,” Whitlark said. “I think this could be the fifth. We don’t know that and it’s very early … but we are very, very excited and optimistic that we can help patients that we previously could not … We can offer patients hope that had no hope before.”
