In the world of cancer research, there are surprising new discoveries that suggest current techniques for the treatment of brain cancers are literally missing their mark.
At the same time, encouraging new studies have determined some FDA approved drugs for fighting depression and anxiety may also be effective again brain cancer cells.
And local cancer fighters are publicizing the potential for these positive new approaches to saving the lives of cancer patients.
For example, neurologist and researcher Gregory Foltz, M.D., is proving once again it’s hard to overestimate the value of solid research to find new ways to kill insidious cancer cells.
Foltz, a neurosurgeon and director of the Ben and Catharine Ivy Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment at Swedish Hospital, also is founder of the Pacific Northwest Brain Tumor Alliance and on staff at Providence Regional Medical Center. He’s also a member of Dr. Sanford Wright’s Everett Neurological Center staff.
He wrote an article in the March/April 2010 issue of Scientific American Mind, “New Hope for Battling Brain Cancer,” noting that research is suggesting stem cells sustain deadline tumors in the brain and that destroying those culprits could lead to a cure.
His research also suggests that drugs used to treat mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia could kill cancer stem cells in the brain.
More than 25,000 Americans are diagnosed with a malignant glioma every year, according to the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States. about 60 to 70 percent of those cancers occur in the deadliest form, glioblastroma, the type that killed Sen. Edward Kennedy last year.
Foltz’ article notes that cancer recurrence after treatment has long been a mystery. Traditionally, he wrote, scientists thought tumors consisted of a largely homogeneous group of rapidly proliferating cells.
“As a result, standard cancer therapies were designed to target and kill those cells. But recently, researchers have realized that view may be dramatically wrong,” he wrote.
Foltz notes that what science has defined as cancer stem cells “have been found in a variety of solid tumors throughout the body. Like normal stem cells that help to maintain healthy tissues, the cancerous stem cells can replace themselves and never die out.”
Many researchers now believe that cancer stem cells form the lifeblood of a cancer, sustaining the mass and giving rise to millions of new malignant cells.
“Thus, cancer stem cells explain why standard cancer treatments so often fail; those therapies target the wrong cells,” Foltz said. “…the ability of these brain tumor stem cells to migrate and spread throughout the brain helps to explain why surgery alone cannot cure malignant gliomas: many cells simply elude the scalpel.”
Also, he said, research shows that tumor stem cells divide much less often than most cancer cells, which makes them less vulnerable to many chemotherapy agents, since those agents “target cells’ molecular machinery … triggering cell death.”
Despite the challenges of fighting brain cancers, there is perhaps new hope in some unexpected areas, he wrote.
“Intriguing new findings hint that drugs used to treat certain common psychiatric disorders may also be effective against brain tumor stem cells,” he said.
A 2009 study by other scientists found that in a trial screen of 450 approved off-the-shelf drugs “23 drugs used to treat mental illness such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia killed the glioma stem cells.”
Testing of those drugs on cancer stem cells is till in very early stages, he wrote, but “a major effort is under way to identify which of these compounds appear most promising by screening them against tumor cells in laboratory studies.”
Once those top priority drugs are identified, clinical trials should start reasonably soon, he wrote, noting that many are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration for other purposes.
Developing a new drug takes several decades typically, he wrote, “but the promise of combating generally
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