SYDNEY: Sirtex today unveiled http://www.sirtex.com, a new, comprehensive and easy-to-use global website for doctors, nurses, patients and investors interested in learning more about SIR-Spheres microspheres, a form of radiotherapy targeting liver tumours that is gaining increasingly wide acceptance worldwide.

"We faced some interesting challenges to make this website genuinely helpful to the wide range of people who might visit it," said Gilman Wong, Chief Executive Officer of Sirtex Medical Limited.

"For example, administering SIR-Spheres microspheres to patients requires the skills of a team of doctors and nurses from medical oncology, hepatology, gastroenterology, liver surgery, interventional radiology, nuclear medicine and radiation oncology.  Each discipline is critical to meeting the needs of a patient with liver tumours, but all have different perspectives and informational needs relative to SIR-Spheres microspheres," he explained.

"The same holds true of patients.  A patient with primary liver cancer, or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), has a disease that is quite different from a patient with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC), who may have already undergone extensive surgical, radiation and chemotherapy treatments before considering SIR-Spheres microspheres," Mr. Wong stated.

http://www.sirtex.com has specialised content for all these diverse audiences, as well as for patient groups, through to those interested in investing in this rapidly emerging technology.  Content is also regionalised for Europe, Asia-Pacific, Australia and the Americas.

"In addition to making our website useful to a cross-section of people that is quite extensive for a therapy that is itself highly specific, our other big challenge was to stay current with a rapidly growing research data base, including a number of new studies that may lead to the use of SIR-Spheres microspheres earlier and in a larger population of patients with liver cancers," Mr. Wong added.  

Visitors to http://www.sirtex.com may click through to independent sites about SIRFLOX (global) and FOXFIRE (UK), two major studies of SIR-Spheres microspheres combined with chemotherapy in mCRC patients who are at an early stage of treatment, as well as SORAMIC (Europe), SIRveNIB (Asia-Pacific) and SARAH (France), three large studies of SIR-Spheres microspheres alone or in combination with sorafenib (Nexavar®) in patients with HCC.

About Selective Internal Radiation Therapy using SIR-Spheres microspheres

Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIRT), also known as radioembolisation, is a novel treatment for inoperable liver cancer that delivers high doses of radiation directly to the site of tumours.  In a minimally invasive treatment, millions of radioactive SIR-Spheres microspheres are infused via a catheter into the liver where they selectively target liver tumours with a dose of internal radiation up to 40 times higher than conventional radiotherapy, while sparing healthy tissue.

Clinical studies have confirmed that liver cancer patients treated with SIR-Spheres microspheres have response rates higher than with other forms of treatment, resulting in increased life expectancy, greater periods without tumour activity, and improved quality of life. SIRT has been found to shrink liver tumours more than chemotherapy alone.

Manufactured by Sirtex Medical Limited, SIR-Spheres microspheres are the only FDA-PMA approved microsphere radiation therapy for the treatment of liver metastases.  Over 25,000 doses of SIR-Spheres microspheres have been supplied worldwide.

SIR-Spheres microspheres are approved for use in Australia, the European Union (CE Mark), New Zealand, Switzerland, Turkey and several other countries including in Asia (e.g. India, Korean, Singapore and Hong Kong) for the treatment of unresectable liver tumours.  SIR-Spheres microspheres are also indicated in the U.S. for the treatment of non-resectable metastatic liver tumours from primary colorectal cancer in combination with intra-hepatic artery chemotherapy using floxuridine.  

SIR-Spheres® is a Registered Trademark of Sirtex SIR-Spheres Pty Ltd