Ontario is launching a $2.1 million pilot project to study a new technology called the “NanoKnife” for treating pancreatic cancer.
The decision announced Tuesday by Health Minister Eric Hoskins follows vocal complaints from a small-town mayor that he couldn’t get the treatment here and was denied funding to get it in the United States.
“We have a role to play in emerging technologies,” Hoskins told reporters, calling the three-year pilot at the University Health Network in downtown Toronto the “appropriate thing to do.”
Asked if the public prodding by Mayor Hector Macmillan of Trent Hills, east of Peterborough, played a role in the decision, Hoskins added, in reference to the technology, “there was promise but it had not been proven.”
Until now, the NanoKnife, or irreversible electroporation by its technical name, has only been used on a trial basis in Ontario for liver tumours. It uses electrical impulses to shrink inoperable tumours without damaging surrounding tissues.
The health ministry issued a bulletin saying the NanoKnife could be an option for patients for whom other treatments have not been effective.
Using it on a trial basis will help determine any impacts on “the survival and potential quality of life” for pancreatic cancer patients, the bulletin added.
Macmillan, who publicly confronted Hoskins about the lack of NanoKnife treatment for his stage IV pancreatic cancer last year, complained he was “sentenced to die” when the government refused to cover the cost of treatment in the U.S.
At the time, Toronto General Hospital said research showed the NanoKnife was not effective for stage IV cancers like Macmillan’s. The hospital was, at that point, trying to get funding to test the knife on stage III pancreatic cancers.
The mayor was diagnosed with stage IV in January 2016 but later claimed chemotherapy and an herbal elixir from Mexico reduced it to stage III.
Macmillan could not immediately be reached for comment.
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