Body fat may help destroy brain cancer cells This will make the work with mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) much easier for the patient - in the research being done in the past, they would have to remove bone marrow, which hurts a lot. Now it would be something like liposuction (kill 2 birds with one stone - you get stem cells and also lose weight:).
Merck KGaA Drug Fails in Late-Stage Brain Cancer Trial I sent a similiar story out in the last news blast, but this article points out that they are still testing this drug on GBM patients with an unmethylated MGMT gene promoter status. These tumors do not respond as well to the standard treatment, and adding a little something extra like this drug may help. Reading between the lines, now that they have the results of the big phase 3 trial, they probably analyzed the outcome in patients who have the methylated vs unmethylated status and must have seen it is worth continuing the trial on unmethylated patients. A little background on methylation status: there is a test that can determine what % of cells in the tumor have methylated or unmethylated MGMT promotor genes. If the gene is methylated, the gene becomes inactive and can not be used to produce the MGMT protien, which is a repair enzyme. Chemotherapy, such as Temodar, work by damaging the DNA in cells so they can not reproduce. MGMT repairs the damage, which makes the tumor resistent to chemotherapy. So a person who has a high % of methylated MGMT genes will have less repair enzyme and thus better response to chemotherapy than someone who has a low % of methylated MGMT genes. This make a huge difference. Time to progression of the tumor is half as long in people who have the unmethylated MGMT gene compared to people who have the methylated status.
Dasatinib thwarts brain cancer metastasis after bevacizumab use This is only in mice so far.. but very exciting. Will keep my eyes on this one.. The good news is this drug - also known as Sprycel - is approved for Leukemia, so it is readily avaialable off label.
