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Carbon ion radiation is in use in Japan and Germany. It may have an advantage over standard radiation. We funded research into carbon ion radiation, which looked good, but it was way too expensive to build a treatment facility.
The last sentence may be the key to a major breakthrough. The Novocure system worked great in the lab - they were able to cure all mice with brain tumors. The initial human gbm trial also came out great. Then the large trial for patients with recurrent gbm didn't come out as good as we hoped for - it was as good or better than any other treatments used, with less side effects, but no major improvement in survival over chemotherapy and/or Avastin. However, the FDA required them to monitor all patients who use the device after it was approved. They reported initial results on all of the hundreds of patients who used the device and the results were better than in the trial. Details will hopefully be released next week.
I think the reason the results improved is experience. The doctors learned how to better aim the electrode placement and realized the importance of high compliance rates. This article brings up what might be the missing key. Theoretically, the device is tuned to kill a range of cell sizes centered on the average size of a gbm cell. This article says that perhaps the device does kill those cells where the field intensity is strong enough, but that if the electrodes are not placed correctly, the edges of the field is not strong enough, and if a gbm cell mutates into a "giant cell" they may be too large to be killed and those cells can repopulate the tumor.
We are hosting a conference in November for researchers working with the device. Hopefully we will see these issues addressed!
This is one of my favorite new trials. It worked pretty good with melanomas. Let's hope it works with GBMs.
New target found.. Hope they can find a way to use it as a treatment!
Unfortunately this will make it hard for Europeans with brain tumors to get access to Avastin.
This was not a controlled trial, but the results look pretty good. They use a special laser to kill brain tumors that are not easily operable and the results are similiar to removing the entire tumor.
They are reporting very early results in the trial for newly diagnosed glioblastomas. For more details on the trial go to: http://virtualtrials.com/Clinical_Trials_Details.cfm?nct=NCT01465347
Popular mechanics picked up on the story of the Novocure system. They made a mistake in how it works.. they say "NovoTTF blasts tumors with alternating electric currents " when it should be alternating electric FIELDS.
Great project - but of course too early to say how effective it is.
This is one of our walks as part of the National Walk To End Brain Tumors! We have a few other events coming up - see the list at Walktoendbraintumors.org.
I will be at the Cape May event! Stop by and say hi!
I am honored to join the GBM Drug Discovery Group at Duke.
This is a live radio broadcast and online chat about coping with pediatric brain tumors. Thursday May 22, 2014 9am, Pacific Time, Noon, Eastern
From our friends at the The David S. Zocchi Brain Tumor Center
This is pretty impressive. According to the press release, this is the best reported results of any "non-experimental" treatment for recurrent glioblastomas. This reports on 457 patients, which is a very large number. The only experimental treatments that reported better results were in very small trials of about 10-20 patients and so far those results have never held up in larger trials.
It is too early to tell how it will works but worth keeping an eye on it... as well as the antifungal drug mentioned.
This may be a new way to deliver treatments into the brain over long periods of time.
Very exciting work.
The first 457 patient with recurrent gbms who used the Novocure NovoTTF-100a therapy after it was FDA approved were analyzed to see how they did. This is for people outside of the trials. Results were much better than the large trial that resulted in FDA approval.
There are 2 trials going on novocure device. One for newly diagnosed gbm and one for recurrent gbm. It is also available by prescription at over 100 major brain tumor centers (The advantage of entering the trials are the costs.)
I need everyone's help on this. In addition to raising awareness, this is a fundraiser that doesn't cost you any money. I need people to visit the website, and participate in the twitter and facebook campaign. Participation is free and easy.
For Twitter:
Go to twitter.com Log in (register if you do not have a twitter account) and search for the hashtag #tuneIn2GBM pick 2 of the tweets and retweet them (Just click the retweet button). Try to do that every day during May. And ask your friends to do the same.
For Facebook: Log in (or register) with facebook.com and go to:
https://www.facebook.com/Braintumor
Just click the LIKE or Follow button for the page and any articles from me, and also from the partners mentioned in the press release!
thanks
