Heckel Medizintechnik GmbH

27/02/2023

In January 2023 our esteemed exclusive partner in Taiwan - https://lnkd.in/eJbjuUZN - received the Taiwan FDA registration for the wIRA superficial hyperthermia device hydrosun®TWH1500. This success could only be achieved with great effort and a lot of patience – congratulations!
A big step to make the method of thermography-controlled wIRA superficial hyperthermia available for patients in Taiwan!

15/02/2023

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/estro_rt_estro23-activity-7031176028907528192-2oeB?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

⏳ Only a few days to benefit from the early registration fee. Find out about innovations, access educational opportunities, meet your peers, enhance…

23/11/2022

Recently, Vaupel and Piazena published an interesting article which is relevant for locoregional hyperthermia: "Strong correlation between specific heat capacity and water content in human tissues suggests preferred heat deposition in malignant tumors upon electromagnetic irradiation" - OPEN ACCESS :

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02656736.2022.2067596

Tumor perfusion is considered to be the principal factor determining the build-up of therapeutically effective thermal fields. This assumes that malignancies have lower perfusions than their homolo...

04/10/2022

It was a great 34th Annual Meeting of the ESHO "European Society for Hyperthermic Oncology", 14-17 Sep in Gothenburg!

Radiooncologist Dr Andreas Thomsen from University Medical Center Freiburg presented 18 patients with 22 regions of irresectable squamous cell, basal cell, Merkel cell carcinoma, and malignant melanoma, most of them located at the face and sculp, treated with combined superficial wIRA-hyperthermia and radiotherapy in Freiburg, Magdeburg (University Medical Center), and Bern (Lindenhofspital). The hypofractionated treatment schedule was 20-24 Gy total dose with single doses of 4 Gy, 1x/week (n=17) or following standard fraction schedules up to 44-56 Gy (n=5). Complete remission (CR) occurred in 12 out of 22 treated regions. No toxicities > grade II have been observed.

Look at the online abstract booklet , L34:

https://www.esho2022.eu/fileadmin/congress/media/esho2022/druckelemente/ESHO22_Abstract_book.pdf

I will report on some other interesting lectures and discussions later.

11/07/2022

In the end of June, a new heckel-HT3000 system was installed by our Portuguese representative SOMS Medical Lda. in the Centro Oncologia of Hospital da Luz, one of the largest and most respected private hospitals in Portugal.
The responsible oncologist Dr Joao M. Pinto has already collected well-promising experiences in the combination of fever-range whole-body hyperthermia (FR WBH) and chemotherapy (e.g., presentation of WBH with concomitant capecitabine in third line therapy for BRCA mutated metastatic breast cancer, ESHO 2018 Berlin, P 38, p. 506).
Dr. Pinto:" I am interested very much in the use of combined fever-range WBH and systemic chemo- and immunotherapies, especially in cases where the response to standard protocols is unsatisfying".

Here you can find the pdf of the book:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs00066-018-1295-1.pdf

01/07/2022

Thermography-controlled wIRA superficial hyperthermia is becoming established in Switzerland – new installations at Kantonsspital Winterthur (KSW) and at Luzerner Kantonsspital (LUKS).
After the Lindenhofspital Bern and the Kantonsspital Aarau, KSW and LUKS are the third and fourth public hospitals in Switzerland to offer this method. In Switzerland, superficial and deep hyperthermia is becoming more and more recognized as a routinely used therapy module in radiation oncology.

More information:
https://heckel-hyperthermia.com/index.php/14-news/188-news-97

20/04/2022

We are going to present our superficial hyperthermia system in industrial exhibition, ESTRO in Copenhagen 06-10 May 2022.
A poster "Superficial wIRA-hyperthermia and re-irradiation: Role of oxygen-dependent radiosensitization" will be presented by A. Thomsen from University Medical Center Freiburg, Radiation Oncology
(Poster Session 1, Sunday, 8th of March, 10:30 - 11:30).
https://www.estro.org/Congresses/ESTRO-2022/1270/11-radiobiology/10118/superficialwira-hyperthermiaandre-i
rradiation-role

04/02/2022

Personal Review II Part 2 - Whole-Body Hyperthermia:
At ICHO congress DIGITAL October 2021 the topics relevant to our products had a high priority.

The ASHO award winner Xunfan Shao from Guangzhou Medical University, China, reported on clinical WBH studies. His working group has changed from applying extreme WBH with general anesthesia (41.8°C x 120min.) to WBH with deep sedation (41°C x 120min.) to fever-range WBH (FR WBH) under concious conditions (39.5 - 40.5°C x 120min.). A retrospective study using FR WBH combined with chemoradiotherapy resulted in an improved Overall Survival of patients presenting with advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). A clinical phase III study is in planning. In addition, they are going to carry out clinical research on WBH combined with immunotherapy for patients with metastasis from NPC.

The IOZK (Immun-Onkologisches Zentrum Köln) has developed a "Individualized Multimodal Immunotherapy" (IMI) based on personalized vaccination and including virotherapy and hyperthermia. In a retrospective analysis, reported by Stefaan van Gool, fever-range WBH (38.5 - 39.5°C, 45 - 120 min.) using heckel WBH systems, had a positive effect to restore NK cell function. The restored NK cell function was maintained during the further disease course in 36% of the patients. These positive effects were not observed in patients who did not receive WBH (most of them due to lack of time or financial ressources, not due to WBH contraindications). He concluded that WBH could be recommended as modulatory immunotherapy to support NK cell function.

Bettina Weigelin from University of Tübingen presented various effects of fever-range HT on Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes (CTL) effector function, e.g., by stabilizing CTL contacts and impairing cancer cell recovery from CTL-mediated sublethal damage. Using multiphoton intravital microscopy, the kinetics of anti-tumor immune activity can be shown in live tissue of mice. Interestingly, the immune stimulating effect of fever-range HT does only lead to a successful anti-tumor effect on the base of an activated anti-tumor response which must first be induced by other therapies, e.g., adoptive T cell therapy. However, in these combined treatment protocols, the benefitial role of fever-range HT is significant. Comparing fever-range HT of 38.5 and 39.5°C, the anti-tumor immune stimulation was interestingly quite similar. For us, the research of Bettina Weigelin and her group is a most important contribution to develop fever-range WBH as an essential module of combined treatment protocols including cytotoxic therapies and immunotherapies.

01/02/2022

At ICHO congress DIGITAL October 2021, the topics relevant to our products had a high priority: personal Review II. a - Superficial hyperthermia with re-irradiation. Personal Review II – Whole-Body Hyperthermia.

In the presidential session, Sharon Evans gave an excellent immunological overview on hyperthermia. Stimulating effects can be found at all steps of anti-cancer immune response, from release of cancer antigens, antigen presentation, priming and activation, trafficking of T cells and infiltration into tumors, to recognition and killing of cancer cells by T cells. The required temperatures are often in the fever range and well applicable in WBH treatment protocols.

Ralf Kleef, Wien/Budapest, presented his novel combined treatment protocol including low-dose checkpoint inhibitors , individually titrated IL-2 treatment under taurolidine protection, locoregional hyperthermia and fever-range WBH. A case series of 131 stage IV cancer patients has recently been published with encouraging efficacy and toxicity results. In this combined protocol, low-dose checkpoint inhibitors demonstrated a better safety profile without compromising the therapeutic efficacy. Kleef hypothesises that a fully activated and "de-blocked" T-cell which is further stimulated by IL-2 can perform optimal tumor cell killing if it can operate in fever mode.

There is a new interest in extreme WBH. The Belgic company ELMEDIX presented a new device "HyperTherm" using a hot air cabinet. 6 dogs bearing different tumour entities were treated under general anesthesia. It took 2,5 hours to reach 41.5°C and this temperature was kept stable for 8 hours with uniform temperature in liver, re**um, and tumour. WBH was combined with chemotherapy (simultaneously) or radiotherapy (after WBH) and overall well tolerated. Follow-up studies are in preparation. It is - as far as we know - the first approach of a long-duration extreme WBH.

18/01/2022

At ICHO congress DIGITAL October 2021, the topics relevant to our products had a high priority: personal Review I - Superficial hyperthermia with re-irradiation.
Superficial hyperthermia combined with re-irradiation:
Akke Bakker (UMC Amsterdam) had shown in a systematic review a positive correlation of temperature and thermal dose with clinical outcome in inoperable local recurrences of breast cancer ("macroscopic disease"). In a new retrospective analysis of 112 patients treated postoperatively in Amsterdam ("microscopic disease"), local control after 3 years was 92% in the group with a higher thermal dose and 74% with a lower thermal dose. Akke Bakker suggested invasive temperature measurement as quality assurance even in routine use. https://www.tandfonline.com/.../10.../02656736.2019.1665718
Markus Notter showed from the 170 "macroscopic disease" patients published in Cancers in 2020, a subgroup of 39 patients with lesions deeper than 15mm, where the intratumoral temperatures achieved are usually below 40°C. Surprisingly, this subgroup did not show a worse response to therapy than the overall group.
One explanation could lie in the sequence and timing of the combined HT/re-RT. In all 170 patients, HT was performed before re-RT, and the time gap between HT and re-RT was just a few minutes. At this, oxygenation of hypoxic areas may play a greater role in radiosensitisation. This mechanism is already stimulated from about 39°C and too high temperatures (from about 43°C) can even be counterproductive. In almost all of the studies on which the review by Bakker et al. was based, the sequencing was reversed and the time interval between re-RT and HT was much longer. Here, the most important radiosensitising mechanism may be inhibition of DNA repair, which requires temperatures > 41°C.
Thomsen presented new measurements from the University Medical Center Freiburg on the increase in pO2 caused by wIRA irradiation in healthy volunteers: For example, at a depth of 13mm, the pO2 value increased from 46 to 81 mmHg and was still 72 mmHg 15 minutes after the end of wIRA irradiation.
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/12/3/606/htm

07/12/2021

New interesting paper on a cell cultures trial.
As in other combinations, fever-range whole-body hyperthermia at 38.5°C has no anti-cancer effect alone but significantly increases the efficacy of other therapies.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8597267/

17/11/2021

New publication in cancers:

Notter M, Stutz E, Kollár A, Vaupel P: Comment on Kronenfeld et al. Clinical Outcomes for Primary and Radiation-Associated Angiosarcoma of the Breast with Multimodal Treatment: Long-Term Survival Is Achievable. Cancers 2021, 13, 3814
- Cancers 2021, 13(22), 5707; https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers13225707 - 15 Nov 2021

Link to the original article of Kronenfeld et al: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/13/15/3814

In addition to the most interesting suggestions of Kronenfeld et al. for effective systemic therapies, especially neoadjuvant chemotherapy, Notter et al. emphasize the need of effective local therapy by combined hyperthermia/reirradiation, especially if complete resection including wide margins can not be achieved or if expected side-effects of systemic therapies might not be tolerated by specific patients, e.g., due to the age.

Notter et al. suggest an international cooperation on this topic.
They had presented their data on Radiation-Associated Angiosarcoma of the Breast and Chest Wall Treated with Thermography-Controlled, Contactless wIRA-Hyperthermia and Hypofractionated Re-Irradiation in August.

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/13/15/3911

Background: Radiation-associated angiosarcoma of the breast (RAASB) is a rare, challenging disease, with surgery being the accepted basic therapeutic approach. In contrast, the role of adjuvant and systemic therapies is a subject of some controversy. Local recurrence rates reported in the literature...

19/10/2021

ESIO Update 2021: Integrative Therapie des Mammakarzinoms [german-speaking event sponsored by heckel]
18. November 2021, 14:30-18:30 in Zürich

Wir sind mit einem Stand präsent und freuen uns, Sie zu sehen!
https://esio.info/Veranstaltung/integrative-therapie-des-mammakarzinoms/

Liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen Liebe Onkologiefachpflege Komplementärmedizin hat mittlerweile einen festen Platz in der Betreuung von Frauen mit Brustkrebs. Empfehlungen zu ihrem Einsatz und Bewertung der jeweiligen Evidenz finden sich in den Leitlinien der American Society of Clinical Oncology

26/09/2021

REGISTER for 13th International Congress on Hyperthermic Oncology (ICHO) - 06.-08. October 2021 DIGITAL - https://www.icho2021.eu/

For the complete program, click on the links below.
Sessions including contributions from heckel whole-body hyperthermia users are:
08.10.2021 - 15:30-16:15 Plenary session III, Hyperthermia and immunology
OP28 - St. van Gool: Effect of whole body hyperthermia on NK cell function in breast cancer patients https://lnkd.in/dkF9uD8e

Sessions including contributions from the wIRA superficial hyperthermia group are:
06.10.2021 - 16:55-18:15 Session III, Thermo-Biology I
OP08 - A. Thomsen: Improved oxygenation of human skin, subcutis and superficial cancers upon wIRA-hyperthermia – a major sensitizer for subsequent radiotherapy https://lnkd.in/dsX-A77z

08.10.2021 - 16:30-17:45 Session XIII, Clinical – Breast, head & neck, brain
OP29 - M. Notter: Tissue temperatures and associated sensitising mechanisms upon superficial hyperthermia using water-filtered infrared-A- irradiation – new perspectives https://lnkd.in/dkF9uD8e

It is such a pity that the congress is just DIGITAL - but let's make a real event by large participation, interesting discussions, and new contacts!

Have also a look at the two ICHO webinars, one of them is presented by heckel, and a full record is available on https://lnkd.in/d6iw7vy

13th International Congress of Hyperthermic Oncology 6-9 October 2021 • Digital

15/09/2021

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6843895704490930176

Fever-range whole-body hyperthermia was done with heckel-HT3000. https://lnkd.in/dAcFpiYB ...

07/09/2021

In August 2021, the thermography-controlled wIRA-hyperthermia device hydrosun®TWH1500 was installed at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital London / King's College.

The clinical oncologist responsible for hyperthermia is Anthony Kong MD.

Training was conducted by Andreas Thomsen MD from University Medical Center Freiburg, Dept. of Radiooncology.

It is - as far as we know - currently the only hyperthermia device used in an academic institution in UK.
From left to right:

David Eaton, Head of Radiotherapy Physics;

Fiammetta Fedele, Consultant Physicist - Head of Non-Ionising Radiation (sitting);

Marina Khan, Interim Research & Development Lead Therapeutic Radiographer;

Anthony Kong, Reader and Honorary Consultant Clinical Oncologist;

Paul Freeman, Consultant Physicist - Section of Non-Ionising Radiation

09/08/2021

Just published:

Notter M, Stutz E, Thomsen AR, Vaupel P:
Radiation-Associated Angiosarcoma of the Breast and Chest Wall Treated with Thermography-Controlled, Contactless wIRA-Hyperthermia and Hypofractionated Re-Irradiation.
Cancers 2021, 13(15), 3911; doi: 10.3390/cancers13153911

10 consecutive patients presenting with this rare disease have been treated.
Good treatment results could be achieved even in patients with locally recurrent or unresectable disease.
The results are discussed in relation to other previously published treatment schedules and their outcomes.

Look at the open access publication: https://lnkd.in/ed6tidhG

29/04/2021

We are happy to invite you to

ICHO-Webinar:
"Progress of Hyperthermia in the Treatment of Locally Recurrent Breast Cancer"

Date: Thursday, 20 May 2021
Time: 06.00 p.m. (UTC+2)

Chair:
Desiree van den Bongard, MD, PhD, Dept. of Radiation Oncology, Cancer Center Amsterdam

Speakers:

Hans Crezee, PhD, Dept. of Radiation Oncology, Cancer Center Amsterdam
Cancer Center Amsterdam

Andreas R. Thomsen, MD
Dept. of Radiation Oncology, Medical Center - University of Freiburg

Markus Notter, MD
Dept. of Radiation Oncology, Lindenhofspital Bern

Program:

Hans Crezee:
Meta-analysis of clinical data of combined HT/RT in the treatment of LRBC (10 minutes summary)

Markus Notter:
Combined wIRA hyperthermia and hypofractionated re-RT for LRBC patients

Andreas Thomsen:
Practical handling and troubleshooting of superficial, thermography-controlled wIRA-HT

Hans Crezee:
Role of MW-HT and wIRA-HT for different situations of LRBC and possible combinations

The digital meeting will be presented by the company heckel medizintechnik GmbH.

The participation is free of charge but required to get the access code to the Zoom meeting. Please register here.

Register here free of charge:
https://lnkd.in/gREAMHS