Dialing up the degrees to fight cancer

“My wish is simple, but I wouldn’t have given it a second thought this time last year,” Joe Castelli said as his eyes welled up with tears. “I want to see my children grow up. I have two daughters who are 9 and 7.”

This longing began soon after he felt pain on his left side last summer. After taking Ibuprofen for a couple of weeks, his physician did a CAT scan. Looking back, Castelli remembers hearing, “There is a spot we are worried about.”

The day after Thanksgiving he had his diagnosis: stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

“I was stunned. First I experienced disbelief, then just fear,” said Castelli, a 41-year-old marathon runner. “My next step was to take control of my treatment options.”

Using the group called Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, Castelli and his wife, who live in Ohio, learned about thermal therapy to fight cancer. At the Center for Thermal Therapy Cancer Treatment at the Medical School, Castelli found Dr. Joan Bull, professor of oncology.

“Thermal therapy is using heat. We’re evoking what the body does to defend itself,” Bull said. “When the body is heated, a danger signal is sent to your immune cells to go out and multiple and destroy the invader.”

After various tests in January, Castelli was approved as a candidate for Bull’s Phase 2 clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The center is currently accepting patients with the following stage 4 cancers: small cell lung, non-small cell, neuroendocrine, pancreatic, gastric, breast, endometrial, and cervical cancers.

Bull’s recent research on thermal therapy was published in the December 2008 issue of the International Journal of Hyperthermia.

“God knows what I would be doing now if I hadn’t made it into the study,” Castelli said. His only other option for thermal therapy was to travel to Germany. In the United States, Bull’s clinical trial is the only one approved for pancreatic cancer.

By April, Castelli had received two treatments of chemotherapy along with thermal therapy at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center as part of the therapy. Once inside a heavy-duty sleeping bag, he was warmed by infrared heat lamps to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is equivalent to a high fever, all while under a light sedation.

“I would be tired for the first few days after the treatment, but I sure did feel better. Before I went to Dr. Bull, the cancer had already caused me to lose about 25 pounds. In just one month following my first thermal therapy treatment, I gained 10 pounds,” Castelli said.

“Preliminary research has shown that heat increases the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs in fighting tumors,” Bull said. “The heat also jumpstarts the immune system just like a normal fever does when you are sick.”

Recently, imaging showed that Castelli’s tumor on his pancreas has been reduced by about one-third.

“My goal is to live for the next 14 years so I can see my youngest daughter turn 21,” said Castelli in a voice filled with emotion. “I am headed in the right direction.”

— Melissa McDonald, Office of Institutional Advancement, Media Relations