Jill and Rob Goodlad are seen in this undated photo. Rob was the first patient in a cancer treatment trial in Kelowna.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED / BC Cancer

Doctors in B.C. are working on a new cancer treatment method and patients in Kelowna will be able to participate in the clinical trial.

BC Cancer is funding the SIMPLIFY clinical trial that’s testing whether one targeted dose of radiotherapy can effectively treat oligometastatic cancer, which is cancer that has spread to just a few sites in the body, according to a press release.

Dr. Ben Mou is leading the clinical trial in Kelowna, and he said historically cancer patients whose disease had spread were thought to be incurable. 

“There's growing evidence that if the cancer spreads to just a limited number of sites and we treat those sites very aggressively with either high-dose radiation or surgery, patients can actually live longer and some patients could actually be cured as a result,” Mou told iNFOnews.ca.

Patients are already being recruited, but there are a total of 598 spots to fill and it’s going to take years to collect and analyze all the data. Vernon local Robert Goodlad has already participated in the trial with success. 

Goodlad had colorectal cancer that had spread to his lungs. Surgery wasn’t an option so that left him with chemotherapy as the only conventional treatment. When his wife Jill found out about the trial in Kelowna, he became the first patient.

Goodlad received five radiation sessions over five days, targeting each lung metastasis.

“The treatment was non-invasive, quick, and gave me renewed hope,” Goodlad said in the release. “Dr. Mou’s expertise and the compassionate care from the BC Cancer team were exceptional.”

Goodlad’s treatment was successful. Now, he’s going for walks and getting ready for the ski season.

“Arranging daily trips to Kelowna for six weeks of traditional radiation was challenging for my family,” Goodlad said. “This shorter regimen is a game-changer, especially for those traveling from farther away.”

SIMPLIFY is expected to open at the remaining three BC Cancer centres in Victoria, Surrey and Abbotsford, as well as over ten national and international sites later this year. In total, the study aims to open at 25 to 30 centres worldwide over the next couple of years. The BC Cancer Foundation is supporting the work with $2.2 million from a fundraising campaign.

The goal is to see if precision radiation treatment, Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy, can improve outcomes for patients whose cancer has already started to spread.

Dr. Mou said that this trial is building off of previous clinical trials and studies. 

“In BC, we've been doing this high precision radiation treatment in a kind of coordinated and safe fashion for several years now. And so the only new thing is that we're kind of looking at if we can significantly shorten or simplify the treatments to just a single treatment,” he said.

He said clinical trials aren’t always successful, but they are the way medicine improves.

“For science it's about testing our hypotheses, and clinical trials are the ultimate way of doing that. And that's how we make advances in medicine,” he said.

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