Category: brain cancers
Cambridge, MA -- November 23, 2009 -- Agios Pharmaceuticals today announced that its scientists have established, for the first time, that the mutated IDH1 gene has a novel enzyme activity consistent with a cancer-causing gene, or oncogene.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Exercise is a key factor in improving both memory and mood after whole-brain radiation treatments in rodents, according to data presented by Duke University scientists at the Society for Neuroscience meeting.
The targeted therapy Avastin, alone and in combination with the chemotherapy drug CPT-11, significantly increased response rates, progression-free survival times and survival rates in patients with a deadly form of brain cancer that had recurred.
Brain cancer is among the deadliest of cancers. It's also one of the hardest to treat. Imaging results are often imprecise because brain cancers are extremely invasive. Surgeons must saw through the skull and safely remove as much of the tumor as they can.
Washington, DC -- Cancer researchers at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center have successfully tested a small, engineered antibody they say shuts down growth of human glioblastoma tumors in cell and animal studies.
UCLA researchers have uncovered a new way to scan brain tumors and predict which ones will be shrunk by the drug Avastin -- before the patient ever starts treatment. By linking high water movement in tumors to positive drug response, the UCLA team predicted with 70 percent accuracy which patients' tumors were the least likely to grow six months after therapy.
LA JOLLA, CA, June 8, 2009 ?As survival rates among some patients with cancer continue to rise, so does the spread of these cancers to the brain -- as much as 40 percent of all diagnosed brain cancers are considered metastatic, having spread from a primary cancer elsewhere in the body.
Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators have uncovered a mechanism that helps explain how lithium, a drug widely used to treat bipolar mood disorder, also protects the brain from damage that occurs during radiation treatments.
AUSTIN, Texas - Hospice and palliative medicine investigators presented preliminary research findings at paper sessions held during the Annual Assembly of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, in collaboration with the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association, on March 25- 28, 2009, at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.
Researchers funded by the Canadian Cancer Society have discovered eight similar genes that, when mutated, appear to be responsible for medulloblastoma - the most common of childhood brain cancers. The findings are published today in the online edition of the journal Nature Genetics.
Hotspots in two areas of a gene that encodes a specific signaling enzyme, or kinase, are vulnerable to a variety of mutations found in five types of brain cancers, according to a report published in the August 1 issue of the journal Cancer Research. Mutations in the gene PIK3CA occur spontaneously as part of the brain tumor development rather than being passed genetically between generations, said Hai Yan, M.D., Ph.D., the senior scientist of the studies. ''PIK3CA mutations are known to occur in as much as 30 percent of colorectal and gastric cancers and glioblastomas and they are also present, to a lesser extent, in breast and lung cancer,'' Yan noted. ''Our studies defined the association of mutant PIK3CA gene in a wider spectrum of adult and pediatric brain tumors as well.''
