Novel Device Shows Potential As Brain-Cancer Treatment
By Jennifer Corbett Dooren
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
CHICAGO (Dow Jones)–A portable, non-invasive device that uses an electrical field designed to blast apart cancer cells was featured at a major medical meeting over the weekend.
The device, called the NovoTTF (for tumor treating fields), was developed by a private firm, NovoCure Ltd., based in Haifa, Israel. It’s being developed for use in patients with glioblastoma, a common form of brain cancer. The product is approved for use in Europe.
Patients diagnosed with glioblastoma typically undergo surgery to remove as much as the tumor as possible. Most then receive radiation and chemotherapy drugs. Many patients also receive Roche’s (RHHBY, ROG.VX) Avastin, a drug that’s designed to block blood-vessel growth that causes tumors to grow.
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Vaccine against deadly brain cancer shows promise
(Reuters) – A small, early-stage trial of a therapeutic brain cancer vaccine developed by ImmunoCellular Therapeutics Ltd showed that nearly half the patients were alive without their cancer worsening 18 months after diagnosis, the company said on Wednesday.
The Phase 1 trial involved 16 patients with glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer.
They were treated with ICT-107, an experimental dendritic cell based cancer vaccine, following the standard care of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
“We are targeting specific antigens that are on cancer stem cells … the only population of cells that can really propagate a tumor,” said Dr. John Yu, director of surgical neuro-oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and ImmunoCellular’s chief scientific officer.
A year after diagnosis, all of the patients were alive. After two years, 80% were alive.
Historically, after a year with standard treatment, 61% of glioblastoma patients are alive, and 26.5% are alive after two years, according to the company.
In the ImmunoCellular trial, median overall survival had not yet been reached at the 26.4 months analysis point, with 12 out of 16 patients alive. Seven patients continued to live with no disease progression.
Side effects seen in the trial included fatigue and skin rash.
Dr. Yu said ImmunCellular is planning a mid-stage trial of the vaccine that would include between 30 and 50 patients.
Reuters
Possible Big Advance Against Brain Cancer
(CBS) There’s new hope for patients with terminal brain cancer, thanks to a promising technique being tried.
CBS News Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton reports that the experimental procedure “could become a major breakthrough in the treatment of brain cancer.”
Ashton went to Pittsburgh’s Allegheny General Hospital, one of four in the United States conducting trials of the use of a fluorescent compound called 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) in patients diagnosed with a glioma, the most common form of primary brain tumor.
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Study Reports Progress Against Fatal Brain Cancer: glioblastoma
WEDNESDAY, Feb. 24 (HealthDay News) — A new method to prevent recurrence of deadly glioblastoma brain cancer shows promise, say U.S. scientists.
Radiation can temporarily shrink a glioblastoma tumor, but the cancer nearly always recurs within weeks or months. Few people with this type of brain cancer survive more than two years after diagnosis.
In a study on mice, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers found that blocking access to oxygen and nutrients prevents tumor recurrence.
The first step, they said, was discovering that tumors blasted with radiation use a secondary pathway to generate blood vessels needed for regrowth.
“Under normal circumstances, this pathway is not important for growth of most tumors,” senior author Martin Brown, a professor of radiology, said in a Stanford news release. “What we hadn’t realized until recently is that radiation meant to kill the cancer cells also destroys the existing blood vessels that nourish the tumor. As a result, it has to rely on a backup blood delivery pathway.”
The Stanford team used a molecule called AMD3100 to block the secondary glioblastoma tumor growth process in mice.
The study was published online Feb. 22 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
AMD3100 is already approved for different uses in humans so it’s possible that clinical trials to test the molecule in glioblastoma patients could take place soon, according to the researchers. However, any routine use of AMD3100 or similar molecules to treat glioblastoma is likely still years away, they added.
In their study, the Stanford team focused on glioblastoma, but other tumors use a similar secondary blood delivery pathway to survive radiation treatment.
Suffering well: Faith tested by pastor’s cancer
The Associated Press
Sunday, January 31, 2010; 12:01 AM
DALLAS — Matt Chandler doesn’t feel anything when the radiation penetrates his brain. It could start to burn later in treatment. But it hasn’t been bad, this time lying on the slab. Not yet, anyway.
Chandler’s lanky 6-foot-5-inch frame rests on a table at Baylor University Medical Center. He wears the same kind of jeans he wears preaching to 6,000 people at The Village Church in suburban Flower Mound, where the 35-year-old pastor is a rising star of evangelical Christianity.
Another cancer patient Chandler has gotten to know spends his time in radiation imagining that he’s playing a round of golf at his favorite course. Chandler on this first Monday in January is reflecting on Colossians 1:15-23, about the pre-eminence of Christ and making peace through the blood of his cross.
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