Brain Cancer Cures

Brain Cancer Cures? Are there any curative treatments available for these types of cancers?

Like any cancer in the body a diagnosis of a brain cancer can be emotionally traumatizing both to the patients and their well wishers. Despite lot of advances in the medical field a cure for majority of the cancers still a dream only.

There are cures that can be hoped in certain tumors like cervical, breast, leukemia etc provided diagnosis is made very early into the disease. Such patients depending upon the cancer will undergo a surgical resection of the tumor with chemotherapy, radiotherapy etc that may enable a real total cure.

While such very early diagnosis can have similar cure with brain tumors too but unfortunately some of the commonest tumors like GBM (glioblastoma multifome) are already quite malignant and infiltrating into the surrounding brain tissue at the time of diagnosis itself so hoping for a cure is really a big task.

Any way an aggressive surgery + chemotherapy + radiotherapy does help in prolonging the life.

But can we dream of real and total Brain Cancer Cures, means the tumor is gone forever?

Well that time has not arrived yet but the good news is lot of research work is going on and hopefully something will turnaround the table in favor of the tumor patients.

Here is a list of some newer and mostly research level therapeutic interventions for managing the brain cancers;

• Protein therapeutics
• Gene transfer
• Alternating electrical fields
• Immunotherapy
• New types of radiation therapy
• Biologic therapy
• Hyperthermia therapy etc

Protein therapeutics:

APG101 is a protein therapeutic molecule that is undergoing trial for GMB. This substance is supposed to inhibit the binding of CD95 ligand to its receptor and the invasive growth of this tumor.

Gene transfer:

There are trials going on to study the therapeutic utility of this technique for highly cancerous growths like GBM and anaplastic astrosytoma. Unlike radiotherapy or chemotherapy this technique has the advantages of selectively targeting the tumor cells so the normal brain cells are unharmed.

Immunotherapy:

A vaccine against infections we are familiar, but against a tumor, why not? There are clinical trials going on including for brain tumors e.g. a tumor B-cell hybridoma vaccine. This is also considered as a biologic or biotherapy.

Alternating electrical fields:

This therapeutic modality is based on the observation that certain wavelengths of electrical field kill the dividing cells but not non dividing cells. The theoretic potential of this approach is substantial because non tumorous human brain cells do not divide while division is exactly what a tumor cell does. Plot cannot be better than this agree? Let us see what exciting prospect this turns but to be.

Newer radiotherapy approaches:

Intra-operative radiotherapy - A high energy x ray treatment that is used during the surgical procedure for the tumor to destroy the tumor cells.

Radio-sensitizers - These are the medications that sensitizes the tumor cells to the radiotherapy and hastens their death.

Hyperthermia therapy:

Hyperthermia therapy is a treatment in which body tissue is heated above normal temperature to damage and kill cancer cells, or to make cancer cells more sensitive to the effects of radiotherapy or some anticancer drugs.

A Neurologist, and a neuro-oncologist or medical oncologist are frequently involved in the clinical care of patients with brain tumor and are all eagerly hoping for more definitive and routinely available Brain Cancer Cures.