In this interview from the 48th Annual Oncology Nursing Society (ONS) Congress, Oncology Data Advisor talks with Amanda King, PhD, APNP-BC, a Nurse Scientist at the National Institutes of Health, about her innovative approach to address distress and anxiety experienced by patients with brain cancer through the use of virtual reality.
Researchers have found that medulloblastomas and high-grade gliomas, two types of brain tumors, often exhibit frequent, complex rearrangements of the genome as a result of malfunctioning DNA repair. Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) investigated the cause of chromothripsis, one of two "catastrophic genomic events" that cause genomic instability and are implicated in the development of cancer. In chromothripsis, tens to hundreds of clustered ...
Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have found that larger brain size, as measured by intracranial volume, puts individuals at increased risk of glioma, the most common type of primary brain tumor. Gliomas, which occur in the brain and spinal cord, originate in glial stem cells. Their cause is unknown. Epidemiological studies have identified several risk factors, including age (gliomas are most commonly seen in adults), male sex, ionizing radiation, whit...
In the culmination of 10 years of research, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) has now released its final reports concerning the effects on rats and mice of radiofrequency radiation (RFR) with modulations used in 2G and 3G cell phone networks. In conjunction with a panel of external scientific experts who reviewed the reports, the NTP determined that there is clear evidence that high levels of RFR like that of 2G and 3G cell technologies caused cancerous heart tumors in male rats. They conclu...
Researchers have demonstrated the efficacy of a new treatment targeting genetic mutations in patients with chemotherapy-resistant secondary glioblastoma (sGBM), a rare and deadly form of brain cancer. Low-grade gliomas progress into sGBM, which has limited treatment options and a 5-year survival rate under 10%. Secondary glioblastoma is treated with temozolomide (TMZ), a chemotherapy drug. Upon relapse, which happens in most patients, genetic mutations enable sGBM tumors to resist the drug's eff...
Researchers have identified a new genetic marker that can be used to determine which patients with medulloblastoma have high-risk tumors in need of aggressive treatment. "Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant childhood brain tumor, and it is important that we have improved outcomes for patients with this disease," commented Steve Clifford, PhD, Director of the Northern Institute for Cancer Research at Newcastle University and co-senior author of the study, which was published in Lancet On...
Researchers' discovery that forces enhancing fluid flow within a glioblastoma's interstitial spaces can increase the cancer's invasion of surrounding tissue has critical implications for a new drug delivery technique. However, the investigators have also found a solution to this problem. The most common form of brain cancer, glioblastoma is also the most malignant. Because it is characterized by invasion into the surrounding brain tissue, it is highly difficult to treat and invariably relapses. ...
Brain and spinal cord tumors are the second most common cancers in children, accounting for 1 out of 4 childhood cancers. Despite intensive treatment, children with histologically diagnosed high-risk medulloblastoma, supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumor of the central nervous system (CNS-PNET), and pineoblastoma (PBL) continue to have suboptimal outcomes. James M. Olson, MD, PhD, Professor of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at University of Washington School of Medicine, and colleagues found that molecular profiling of patients with CNS-PNET/PBL revealed a significant proportion of patients were initially misdiagnosed and consequently overtreated and that other patients have a better prognosis than previously realized. i3 Health spoke with Dr. Olson about these findings and their implications for pediatric brain tumor practice.
Chemotherapy is an effective treatment for many cancers; however, the side effects can have huge consequences, especially on pediatric patients, who are still growing. In particular, children treated for medulloblastoma—the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor—have devastating lifelong side effects from chemotherapy. Less harmful treatments are needed. In a new study published in Nature Communications, scientists have discovered that inhibiting an epigenetic modifier protein called lysine...
MicroRNAs—strings of nucleotides that bind to and destroy messenger RNA to prevent the production of certain proteins—have been discovered to play an important role in cancer and other diseases. However, in previous preclinical trials, microRNA cancer treatments lacked efficacy. In recent developments, scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School grouped micro-RNA molecules together, encoding them in a small, artificial gene, and then infiltrated cancer cells to overprod...
A phase 2 clinical trial reports that for children with ependymoma, the third most common pediatric brain tumor, radiation immediately following surgical resection substantially increases survival, even improving outcomes for children under the age of three. "Historically, children under the age of three with ependymoma have a worse prognosis than older children," said Thomas E. Merchant, DO, PhD, Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and first a...
Researchers have found two activin receptor-like kinase 2 (ALK2) inhibitors that show promise in treating preclinical models of ACVR1-mutant diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). An incurable childhood tumor of the brain stem, DIPG has a median overall survival of nine to 12 months. The chemotherapy treatments most commonly used in histologically similar tumors found in other areas of the brain do not work with DIPG; the only treatment that produces a response is radiotherapy. Within two yea...
For patients with gliomas, tumors that begin in the glial cells of the brain and spinal cord, fluorescence-guided surgery (FGS) can improve the extent of surgical resection by enabling neurosurgeons to better see the margins of the malignancies that they are trying to remove. A recent study has revealed that when used with a new, high-sensitivity near-infrared camera, tozuleristide (BLZ-100) provides effective imaging for FGS in adults with newly diagnosed or recurrent gliomas. The high-sensiti...
Electrosurgical resection, a common neurosurgery technique done with an electric knife or diathermy blade, produces surgical smoke, called diathermy smoke, from the burning of tissue during the procedure. Researchers in Finland have developed a device that can identify cancerous brain tissue based on properties of the diathermy smoke. This device could enable a surgeon to more quickly and accurately identify malignant tissue during brain cancer surgery in order to ensure that all parts...