Brain Metastases News and Research

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Researcher discovers treatment strategy to attack metastatic cancers that have spread to the brain

Rakesh Jain, PhD, Director of the Edwin L. Steele Laboratory for Tumor Biology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and supported by the National Foundation for Cancer Research, has discovered a novel mechanism behind the resistance to HER2- or PI3K-targeted therapies, and a treatment strategy that may overcome treatment resistance.

6 Jun 2017

FDA approves expanded use of Zykadia for first-line treatment of ALK-positive metastatic NSCLC

Novartis today announced the US Food and Drug Administration approved the expanded use of Zykadia (ceritinib) to include the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors are anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive, as detected by an FDA-approved test.

27 May 2017

Takeda announces accelerated approval from FDA for new lung cancer treatment

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (TSE: 4502) today announced that ALUNBRIG (brigatinib) has received Accelerated Approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive (ALK+) metastatic non-small cell lung cancer who have progressed on or are intolerant to crizotinib.

28 Apr 2017

Combination approach holds potential for treating lung cancer patients

An emerging approach for cancer treatment seeks to combine radiation therapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors to more effectively control tumors in the chest with an acceptable risk of severe treatment-related side effects.

17 Mar 2017

City of Hope researchers find how HER2-positive breast cancer patients develop brain metastases

Ninety percent of cancer deaths are from cancer spread. Breast cancer patients, for example, typically do not die because cancer returns in their breast, they die because it spreads to other parts of their body. The most dangerous of which is the brain.

2 Mar 2017

Guy's Cancer Centre adds new positioning equipment to enhance patient comfort during radiotherapy treatment

Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust has recently opened its new state-of-the-art Cancer Centre to provide radiotherapy, chemotherapy and outpatient services for oncology patients.

1 Feb 2017

Study suggests best sequence of therapies for brain metastases in EGFR mutant lung cancer patients

About 10 percent of lung cancers in the United States and as many as 40 percent in Asia are driven by mutations in the EGFR gene.

25 Jan 2017

Study provides scientific insight into metastatic patterns of EGFR mutated NSCLCs

The discovery of several different subtypes of Non Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC), the most frequent form of lung cancer, has been a major breakthrough in the fight against the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide.

20 Jan 2017

Researchers identify attractive drug candidate to target glioma tumors

In a paper published today in Cancer Research, researchers: 1) identify a biomarker enzyme associated with aggressive glioma brain tumors, 2) reveal the regulatory mechanism for that enzyme, and 3) demonstrate potent efficacy, using a mouse model of glioma, for a small molecule inhibitor they have developed.

16 Dec 2016

Brain metastasis persists in women with HER2-positive breast cancer despite new targeted therapies

While new targeted treatments developed across the past two decades have led to dramatic survival improvements for women with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers and collaborators report that rates of breast cancer brain metastasis for women with this disease have not substantially declined.

7 Dec 2016

Study helps identify optimal treatment option for NSCLC patients with brain metastases

A Yale Cancer Center team completed a multi-institutional analysis of treatment options for patients with newly diagnosed EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with brain metastases to determine the best option for treatment.

28 Sep 2016

Study reveals radiosurgery as viable treatment option for patients with resected brain metastases

For patients who have cancer that has metastasized to the brain, stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) results in statistically comparable survival rates, reduced cognitive decline and better quality of life (QOL), compared to whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT), according to research presented today at the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology.

26 Sep 2016

SRS reduces likelihood of local recurrence of brain metastases in cancer patients

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) for cancer patients who receive the treatment for brain metastases decreases the likelihood of local recurrence but shows no positive difference in terms of overall survival (OS) or distant brain metastases (DBMs) rates, when compared to observation alone following surgical resection of brain metastases, according to research presented today at the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology.

26 Sep 2016

Immune and targeted therapies may be beneficial in patients with melanoma brain metastases

Brain metastases are one of the most common complications of advanced melanoma, requiring multidisciplinary management.

21 Sep 2016

Whole brain radiotherapy offers no quality-of-life benefit in lung cancer patients with brain metastases

People with the most common type of lung cancer whose disease has spread to the brain could be spared potentially harmful whole brain radiotherapy, according to new research published in The Lancet.

6 Sep 2016

New combination treatment improves overall survival in patients with malignant melanoma

Among patients with melanoma, those who received both ipilimumab (Yervoy) and local peripheral treatments such as radiotherapy or electrochemotherapy had significantly prolonged overall survival compared with those who received only ipilimumab, according to a retrospective clinical study.

27 Jul 2016

Focused therapy may be effective, less toxic way to treat brain tumors

Physicians from Carolinas HealthCare System's Neurosciences Institute and Levine Cancer Institute are among the authors of a study that was accepted for publication by the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, released on July 26, 2016, shows that patients with the most common form of brain tumor can be treated in an effective and substantially less toxic way by omitting a widely used portion of radiation therapy.

27 Jul 2016

Scientific paper supports concept of CarThera's intracranial ultrasound implant to disrupt blood-brain barrier

CarThera, a French company based at the Brain and Spine Institute, that designs and develops innovative ultrasound-based medical devices to treat brain disorders, today announces the publication in Science Translational Medicine of a scientific paper on initial successes in disrupting the blood-brain barrier (BBB) with the use of ultrasound.

20 Jun 2016

Investigational drug abemaciclib shows durable clinical activity for variety of cancer types

The investigational anticancer therapeutic abemaciclib, which targets CDK4 and CDK6, showed durable clinical activity when given as continuous single-agent therapy to patients with a variety of cancer types, including breast cancer, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), glioblastoma, and melanoma, according to results from a phase I clinical trial.

23 May 2016

Inhibiting adrenaline receptors reduces breast cancer brain metastases

While we look to invent new medicines to treat cancer, a parallel approach to repurpose existing medicines may be highly effective. Stress, mediated by adrenaline, has been suspected to promote cancer growth and this research study shows that by blocking adrenaline receptors in breast cancers, they are less successful in spreading to and growing in the brain.

19 Apr 2016