Hong Kong Expands Trials of Ultrasound Cancer Treatment
Three Hong Kong hospitals will test a focused ultrasound treatment on 30 kidney cancer patients, the Li Ka Shing Foundation said this week, extending a technology the tycoon has backed with machines worth 3 million US dollars each.
Histotripsy uses high intensity ultrasound to break tumour cells into a liquid the body absorbs over months, and the US Food and Drug Administration cleared it for liver tumours in 2023. The new trials at the CUHK Medical Centre, Gleneagles and Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital will look at kidneys.
And the foundation's claim is a large one. It says the trials make Hong Kong the first city in Asia to validate the safety and efficacy of histotripsy for renal disease, which is a claim about geography rather than about evidence.
The clinical base is growing. More than 400 patients in the city have been treated, Gleneagles has completed 20 pancreatic cases since early this year, and the CUHK centre has done six since the middle of the year. Since 2024 the foundation has donated three systems, and it will subsidise treatment for 200 patients at HK$50,000 against a typical HK$260,000.
The evidence question is separate and it is live. In a paper published this year, researchers including Hop S Tran Cao of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre called the technology a genuine advance while cautioning that limited data prevented definitive conclusions about its true clinical value.
But their sharper point was about the gap between the science and the sales pitch. Public enthusiasm and commercial promotion, they wrote, had moved faster than the available clinical evidence.
That does not make the treatment hype. The FDA clearance, the kidney trials running in Britain and the United States, and the Hong Kong case volumes are real, and a treatment that needs no incision matters for patients who cannot take surgery.
The pattern is familiar in medical technology, where a device with genuine early results acquires a reputation ahead of the trials that would confirm it, and where a philanthropist's enthusiasm can move adoption faster than peer review.
So the 30 patient trial is the right next step, and the number to watch is not how many patients are treated but whether the kidney results hold when they are published.
Three Hong Kong hospitals will trial histotripsy on 30 kidney cancer patients
The Li Ka Shing Foundation says Hong Kong is the first Asian city to validate it for renal disease
More than 400 patients in the city have been treated with the technique
The FDA cleared histotripsy for liver tumours in 2023
Researchers warn that commercial promotion has outpaced clinical evidence
Source: SCMP
