“Researchers in Canada and the US have extended survival for people with glioblastoma, one of the deadliest brain cancers, by pairing chemotherapy with a targeted ultrasound technique that briefly opens the blood–brain barrier. In a a small clinical trial, the approach raised median survival from about 19 months to over 30,” reports The Doomslayer.
CTV News explains:
Glioblastoma is among the most aggressive and fatal cancers known to medicine. It’s the disease that claimed the life of Canadian icon Gord Downie and is diagnosed in about 1,000 Canadians every year.
This cancer rarely gives patients more than a few months to live.
But a new study, with nearly half of the patients in Canada, may have started to shift that reality.
Published in The Lancet Oncology, the trial followed 34 people with glioblastoma, including 14 patients treated at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
It found that a novel technique using microscopic bubbles, triggered by focused ultrasound to temporarily open the brain’s protective barrier, allowed chemotherapy to penetrate tumour regions effectively.
Patients lived about 60 per cent longer with the new technique, with a median survival time of more than 31 months, compared to only 19 months for the group treated with standard therapy.
The Lancet adds:
Brain-infiltrating tumour cells from high-grade glioma remain shielded from drug treatments by the blood–brain barrier, leading to inevitable recurrence. Microbubble-enhanced transcranial focused ultrasound (MB-FUS) enables controlled blood–brain barrier opening (BBBO), permitting localized drug delivery.
Last year, a blood test was developed that detects many brain cancers that doctors previously couldn’t detect until it is too late to save most victims. Despite advances in fighting other kinds of cancer, “brain tumors have remained notoriously difficult to diagnose. They affect hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year, and kill more children and adults under the age of 40 … than any other cancer.”
A new cancer vaccine for dogs nearly doubles their survival rates for certain kinds of cancer. This is significant, because similar vaccines might be developed for humans in the future.
A new blood test can detect which bowel cancer patients can receive a lifesaving immunotherapy rather than chemotherapy, enabling them to be cancer free after surgery. Around 10-15% of patients with stage two or three bowel cancer have a particular genetic make-up that enables them to benefit from the life-saving immunotherapy known as pembrolizumab.
Many people die waiting for the FDA to approve life-saving drugs. For example, at least a hundred thousand people died waiting years for the FDA to approve beta blockers. One of the FDA officials involved in delaying their approval was John Nestor. Nestor was notorious for following rules in ways designed to deliberately delay other people, such as his habit of deliberately driving slowly in the fast lane on highways in order to slow down other motorists.
The FDA didn’t approve a home test for HIV until 24 years after it first received an application. According to an FDA advisory committee, the test held “the potential to prevent the transmission of more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of use alone.” That means thousands of people likely got infected with AIDS as a result of the delay in approving it. As Roger Parloff noted in Fortune, the FDA’s delay in approving the home HIV test was a “scandal.” It caused the deaths of thousands of people.
