Dr Mo Keshtgar at London Royal Free Hospital is running an early stage trial for breast cancer. However, at this stage, no patients will get any direct benefit. The trial offers patients the chance of having PDT prior to a mastectomy.

Why? It is because this early trial is designed to test how the drug and light combination work. It would be dangerous to offer PDT to patients requiring mastectomy (for all good and logical reasons) and offer them an alternative treatment that has yet to be proved. I suspect with the ludicrously slow pace of cancer trials in the UK, it won’t be until maybe the summer of 2015 that PDT might be offered to patients in place of mastectomy. And then, it would still be within a trial.

Please email: m.keshtgar@ucl.ac.uk