Category: Research

A team from Duke’s University, North Carolina, have pioneered using a genetically-engineered polio virus as a method for tackling brain tumours.

Sean Parker, the billionaire co-founder of Napster, is donating $250 million to create The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, with the ambitious goal of making the disease curable.

A new scanning technique, designed to show more rapidly whether cancer drugs have worked, is being trialed on a cancer patient at Addenbrooke’s hospital, Cambridge.

Children with brain tumours will be among those offered a new genetic test that paves the way for young patients to receive personalised cancer treatment.

On 27 January, a brain tumour patient at Angers hospital wore a Virtual Reality (VR) headset during an awake craniotomy to allow neurosurgeons to ‘map’ his brain tumour as it was being removed.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina Health Care System have been exploring the role of a DNA repair enzyme in cells called Dicer. When they removed this enzyme from preclinical models of medulloblastoma, a brain cancer often found in children, they found increased levels of DNA damage that led to the cell’s death.

A major study has asked medical experts across the University of California, San Francisco, what they see as real developments in the coming year.

Scientists based at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility in Oxfordshire, have used a technique known as x-ray fluorescence to track microscopic trace metals and correctly identify malignant brain tumour cells.

The new blood test focuses on germ cell cancers that are rare but take root in cells that develop into sperm and eggs and may lead to malignant tumours in childhood.

New Zealand-based technology company, Genulin Interactive, have produced a cutting-edge visualisation of cancer immunotherapy.

In a report published yesterday in Cancer Cell journal, American researchers are focusing on gene mutations found in a third of brain gliomas.

Deadly viruses are being combined with a cancer cell killing virus in trials aimed at destroying glioma brain tumours.

China joins GBM AGILE, an Australasian adaptive clinical trial project tackling glioblastoma multiforme.

Scientists from the Translational Genomics Research Institute have identified the drug propentofylline (PPF) that limits the protein TROY in glioblastoma (GBM) cells and that also increases the effectiveness of chemotherapy drug temozolomide and radiation to treat GBM.

A research team based in Catalonia, Spain, has pioneered a more accurate and less invasive liquid biopsy technique for brain tumours.

Australian researchers, coordinating with teams from Germany, have trialled genetically-modified algae loaded with chemotherapy drugs and found that they destroy 90% of cancer cells while leaving healthy ones intact.

Claiming to be a world’s first, Canadian scientists have used targeted ultrasound and microbubbles to deliver chemotherapy drugs directly into brain tumours.

The American Brain Tumour Association (ABTA), founded in 1973 and based in Chicago, has announced it is awarding $1million in new research grants.

Scientists have discovered a protein that is produced inside the blood vessels at the invasive edge of brain tumours.

Physicists from the University of Sydney are using synthetic nano-diamonds (molecular levels of size) to identify cancer cells during non-invasive MRI scans.

New imaging technology may allow neurosurgeons to distinguish between tumour tissue and normal brain tissue in real time

Developing a new drug is hugely expensive. The whole process – from initial laboratory tests through clinical trials to licensing for use in humans (if it gets that far) – is time-consuming and often frustrating.

An enhanced Australian rabbit virus may pave the way for future drug-virus treatments of GBM.

The American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just approved Optune for the treatment of gioblastoma multiforme (GBM) patients.