University Clinic of Munich
Klinikum der Universität München (KUM) is a medical centre of maximum care. It offers the full spectrum of inpatient medical care from day surgery to transplantation medicine. Patients are referred to KUM to continue the treatment with a specific question or with a special need for the whole spectrum of high-end medicine. Since 1986 the hyperthermia research program was started and up to now the KUM is one of the leaders world-wide. The strategy of combination of chemotherapy with regional or part-body hyperthermia has been developed to a high standard. More than 10.000 treatments have been performed on study protocols. Already in 2000, the first hybrid system (regional hyperthermia system is a 0.2 T MRI scanner) was installed.
The clinical hyperthermia program for high-risk soft tissue sarcomas consists of early phase I/II, followed by phase II, and phase III (= EORTC62961 / ESHO) studies. We could show that the addition of regional hyperthermia to a multimodal treatment of high-risk soft tissue sarcomas consisting of surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy either in the neoadjuvant setting but also after incomplete or marginal tumor resection significantly improves local recurrence- and disease-free survival (Lancet Oncology 2010). Based on these results and in conjunction with the low hyperthermia-related toxicity, hyperthermia combined with preoperative or postoperative chemotherapy is now considered as an additional standard treatment option for the multidisciplinary treatment of locally advanced high-grade soft tissue sarcomas (ESMO guidelines, NCCN). A randomized phase III trial (Hyperthermia European Adjuvant Trial - HEAT) on the adjuvant therapy in patients with R0/R1 resected pancreatic carcinoma with gemcitabine alone vs. gemcitabine plus cisplatin with regional hyperthermia has been started in 2012.
KUM is equipped with a MRI-HIFU for the treatment of uterine fibroids and will install a new hyperthermia-MRI system supported by the German Research Foundation (4.8 MEU) in the near future. Since 2002, KUM in collaboration with the Helmholtz Zentrum München is supporting the development of novel temperature-sensitive drug delivery systems for the treatment of cancer (Liposome Research Group of the Clinical Cooperation Group Hyperthermia, Head: Dr. Lindner).