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Two Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO) pancreatic cancer trials are showing promising results. Dr. Philip Blumenfeld, director of Hadassah’s Advanced Radiotherapy Unit at the Sharett Institute of Oncology, shared the combined findings at the 2026 Digestive Disease Week Conference in Chicago this May. As a follow up, the Cancer Network, publisher of the journal Oncology, featured Dr. Blumenfeld discussing the innovative treatment and results of these clinical trials.
"As a radiation oncologist and member of a multidisciplinary pancreatic cancer team, I see these results as potentially addressing a significant unmet need from several clinical perspectives,” Dr. Blumenfeld told the Cancer Network, speaking about using radium 224 Alpha DaRT sources delivered via endoscopic ultrasound to treat patients with pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer patients have an extremely low five-year survival rate (roughly 13 percent), according to the National Cancer Institute.
Alpha DaRT, short for diffusing alpha-emitters radiation therapy, is administered by doctors who use an endoscopic ultrasound-guided needle to implant tiny radium 224 Alpha DaRT seeds directly inside a tumor. In the trials, the radiation within the tumor either shrank tumors or stopped them from growing in all patients evaluated. Among 19 patients evaluated for tumor response, four experienced tumor shrinkage and the remaining 15 had no tumor growth at the treated site.
Patients in the two clinical trials experienced no serious treatment-related side effects. Alpha DaRT limits exposure to nearby organs and healthy tissue, which is especially important in pancreatic cancer because tumors are often wrapped around major blood vessels and located close to organs such as the stomach and bowel.
Read more at the Cancer Network here and here.
Read more about Dr. Blumenfeld’s personal journey to Israel and the Hadassah Medical Organization in i24news.
