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news.Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center are beginning to penetrate the molecular secretes of brain cancer. Investigators at the center are leading the US arm of a worldwide study that aims to characterize as many as 20,000 genes and proteins that may play a role in brain tumor development.
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The researchers were encouraged after a finding that a new chemotherapy drug works best in patients who have no expression of a specific genetic alteration.
Research programs at the MD Anderson Brain Tumor Center include a vaccine which has shown promise in patients that tricks the immune system into attacking a protein found on glioblastoma (brain cancer) cells. A clinical trial is soon to open on a virus designed to spread rapidly through the extended fingers of a brain tumor, killing it while leaving normal tissue alone. Whilst another trial is studying a chemotherapy drug that can seep through the brain- blood barrier and latch on to tumor cells.
Traditional brain tumor therapies also are being refined at the Brain Tumor Center with this next-generation technology that will offer safer, more precise treatment. A proton synchrotron particle accelerator will be online in 2006 to offer some brain tumor patients the most precise radiation therapy available, as will a new suite of neurosurgical devices featuring real-time imaging that surgeons can use to navigate inside the brain.
While the co-directors of the Brain Tumor Center are energized about the future, they also are realistic. The finest surgery, medical and radiation treatments are not enough, they say. Next-generation drugs must be developed to change the forecast for most glioblastoma patients. The road to developing a fleet of agents designed to disarm the numerous pathways brain tumors use to thrive will surely be a bumpy one.
“There will be no magic bullet to treat brain cancer,” says Dr Raymond Sawaya, professor and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery. “The answer is not going to come from one approach. We have to test and perfect many different avenues for treatment, and hit the right combination of multiple drugs and therapies that works best for each individual patient.”
“We are just now on the cusp of understanding much more about the molecular biology of the disease,” says Dr W K Alfred Yung, professor and chair of the Department of Neuro-oncology. “What we are learning right now can only improve our ability to treat each tumor, and each patient.”