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IF you host a walk for brain tumor research and it isn't on this list, contact us at musella@virtualtrials.com to join with us. There is no cost at all.
Obviously that is a big claim and there is no proof yet that it works on people, but they do mention brain as one fo the types of tumors in mice that it worked on, so there is some hope. I wish them luck and will keep an eye on it.
Nice article about the Novocure system.. unfortunately you need to subscribe to get the full article - or sign up for a free trial to see it..
We gave out $790,000 so far!
Boy does it go fast. There are so many people who need it.
Whole brain radiation is traditionally used when someone has a metastatic brain tumor. This article shows a small study which shows a limited field may be just as useful, with less side effects. This is not controlled trial where they randomized 1/2 of the patients to involved field radiation and compared them to the half who got whole brain, so although it looks encouraging, so I would love to see others repeat it to make sure it is valid. But it is something to consider.
This is more of a get together than a fundraiser. I would love to meet in person those of you who I only speak to online!
Tickets are $75 each (Would cost over $100 at the box office). To buy tickets, go to virtualtrials.com/yankees
If that is too expensive for you, contact me and we have a few tickets that we can give away - but they go fast, so reply to this email immediately if interested! Preference given to brain tumor patients and their families - so mention that in your email!
Please pass this along to your friends!
Valium may help slow down the tumor... very interesting.
This is the type of thinking I love to see. I have always thought that the cure is going to be in a well thought out cocktail of drugs - such as an anti-angiogenesis drug which does work pretty well for a while, as well as targetted therapies that shut down all of the possible resistance pathways. Perhaps throw in other treatments such as vaccines and tumor treating fields and we may hit a home run someday soon.
This article talks about the outcomes for GBM patients treated with the standard treatments in Iran. Average progression free survival was 6 months and average survival was 11 months. Only 7% of patients had a complete resection.
Here in the USA, a much higher % of patients get complete resections, and the average survival with standard treatments is over 18 months. There are some small trials that reported overall survivals of 38 months.
This points out the need not only for us to find the best treatments but to make sure they get out to the rest of the world. WIth the latest treatments being so expensive, that might not happen for a long time or ever. Something has to be done about that. I have no idea how to approach it. Any ideas?
This is one of my favorite neurosurgeons.. when I first heard about him using Avastin in the way, I thought it was crazy, but after having him explain the thinking behind it, it makes a lot of sense. I videotaped his explanation - go to www.virtualtrials.com/video2012.cfm for the video.
This might be a better way to use Avastin.
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:).
From our friends at The David S. Zocchi Brain Tumor Center
Avastin has been used for treating radiation necrosis but this is the first time I heard of it being used to treat symptomatic pseudoprogression. I guess it makes sense. This article talks about using BNCT, which was tried decades ago and failed - but the technology has advanced to the point where it is promising again. Combining BNCT with Avastin might make a big impact. It might allow higer doses of radiation with less harm. Very interesting.
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.
There was a lot of hope for this drug. Failing the clinical trial does not mean that it is useless. It means that it didn't work in the manner that they used it, which is in combination with the standard treatments. This drug has many effects on the tumor cells: it inhibits cell migration, differentiation, angiogenesis, wound healing, immune and non-immune defense mechanisms, and oncogenic transformation.
It's place may be in combination with other targeted agents and/or vaccines in a well thought out cocktail approach. I hope research on this continues.
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.
From our friends at the Chris Elliott Fund.. Sounds worthwhile.
This project tested multiple samples from each tumor to see if there were variations within the same tumor, and found striking differences which may have a mahor effect on treatments. If true (and this was a small study which needs to be repeated), then the concept of personalized medicine - targetting the tumor's specific mutations - might not work, as they found different parts of the tumor had different subtypes.
